Miss Nelson is Missing!

Topic: Use word parts to determine the meaning of words.

After morning meeting in second grade, we have time for a read aloud session. One of my favorite read aloud lessons was the last one I taught as a Methods I student this spring. I was told that the students had no experience with prefixes, but they knew a little bit about suffixes; so I brought out my Slinky Dog picture analogy that I used in my phonics lesson previously.

Skinky Dog was a perfect way to introduce this concept!

After the introduction to the parts of a word, I brought out the prefix and suffix index cards that I created in order to help me teach the meanings of the word parts to the students. I started by asking them what they thought the part of the word meant, and I gave them a few examples of words that have those parts in them. I was blown away by some of the students' answers - they were spot on!

(Forgive my iPhone quality pictures. There was no natural light in the room.)

I began reading the book Miss Nelson is Missing! by Harry Allard, which some of the students had read previously, but no one was complaining! Once I explained the different word parts we would be working with, I instructed the students to put their thumbs up every time they heard a word with one of those parts while I was reading. I have to say: it went really well! While I was reading, I saw little thumbs jutting up into the air each time I said a word with these prefixes/suffixes.I loved how engaged they were while I was reading!

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While prepping for this lesson, I took the time to create flashcards of words in the story that had prefixes and suffixes that I wanted to address with the class. I wrote the root words in green, and the prefixes/suffixes in pink, so that students could see the difference between the word parts. Once I got to a page with a flashcard paper clipped to it, I read the sentence with the word, and then stopped to hold up the flash card and ask students to break it apart to figure out its meaning. This was a huge hit!

(Forgive my iPhone quality pictures. There was no natural light in the room.)

Students were able to break apart the words and define them on their own, which was fabulous. I reinforced the idea that students should use this strategy while they are reading during The Daily 5, and then sent the students off to snack time.

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As an added bonus, one of the students that I work with during RTI time loved the book so much that we worked on reading the story Miss Nelson Has A Field Day - where we continued to work on prefixes and suffixes. Just perfect!

Minions & Dinosaurs

Topic: Fluency; reading with expression by paying attention to punctuation within the story.

During an RTI session, I worked with a student on his reading fluency. We used a book that is one level below his instructional level because the goal was to have him know how to read the words in the story without hesitation so that his main focus would be to pay close attention to the punctuation.

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We chose to read the book Pet Show by Ezra Jack Keats. This particular student loves animals and his a huge fan of Pete the Cat, so we decided that a story about a cat in a pet show was perfect for him. This book was a big longer than the student had been used to, but he did a great job staying focused and working on his reading skills. After he was done reading, we worked on drawing our own crazy pets and decided what prizes they could win at a pet show.

Pet Show pets.

The first pet my student wanted was a dragon named Fliy, who would win the prize for being the biggest. I may or may not have told him I would want a Despicable Me minion as a pet... and he took off running with it, asking me to draw him a Minion body. So, the second pet my student would like to have is a Minion named Dave, who would win the "awesomest pet" prize. He LOVED that little activity after reading the story!

Credits:

• Pet Show worksheet: The Penguin Group -The World of Ezra Jack Keats. 

Old Jacket, New Jacket

Topic: Identify the major event in a story and how the character responded to it.

I am fortunate enough to be involved with a school that has multiple adults in one classroom, so we get to have the benefits of small group Response to Intervention (RTI) groups each day. I have been working one-on-one with a particular student for the past few weeks, and he is wonderful to work with!

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We read the book Old Jacket, New Jacket by Elliott K. Goldberg, and I introduced the idea of a "picture walk" to the student. We looked at all of the pictures and made predictions before reading the text. After we read the story, we completed a character response worksheet.

"She did not like the jacket.
She made the jacket new.
She got beads and stars and hearts."

I realized we finished our character response worksheet a lot earlier than I had planned! So, I rushed to grab a piece of paper and I drew an outline of a jacket, telling the student to make his own jacket "new" just like Iris did.

Student's "new" jacket creation!

Once he finished with his jacket, he looked at me and said, "I want to draw a picture just like the jacket in the story!" (Happy teacher moment!) So, we grabbed another piece of paper and drew our own interpretation of the character's new jacket!

New jacket!

Me on the Map!

Topic: How our community fits into the rest of the world.

During an integration unit, I had to find a way to integrate Social Studies and the Arts. It was purely by luck that I was browsing through Toadstool Bookstore in my college town and found the book Me on the Map by Joan Sweeney. It was the perfect book to start my lesson on how our community fits in with the rest of the world!

This book was a perfect read aloud for an introduction to maps because each page shows a picture of the place the girl is describing, and the adjacent page shows a map of the place. It helps students visualize the difference between photographs and maps, and the little girl starts her journey in her room, and expands her view to the entire world. Abstract concepts such as this are often difficult for students to understand, so the book was a great visual, although my students were upset that the wording was so simple (they're lean, mean, reading machines - so a page of a book that says "This is me" was SO beneath them!). 

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I found a wonderful mapping flip book activity on TeachersPayTeachers that I decided to use. I talked about Marlborough and New Hampshire with the students, making sure to explain some of the landmarks or important features of each place, so that students had an idea of what to make on their own flip books.

One student's finished flip book. 

I also made a differentiated version for one of my students, which was really fun! Her task was to put the pictures in order from smallest to biggest (just like the flip book activity above); the only difference is that I pre-made the pictures and labels for each flap, and her job was to color them and put them in order.

The student's flip book before she put it together.

The finished product!

Click here for the lesson plan, which includes:

• "Me on the Map" flip book pages and instructions.
• "Me on the Map" differentiated flip book coloring pages.

Credits:

• Me on the Map flip book activity: Mrs. Faulkner on Teachers Pay Teachers.
• See the lesson plan for coloring page credits. 

Eggs & Paint Chips

Topic: Suffixes.

I love creating manipulatives and fun visuals to use for my lessons. When I introduced the idea of suffixes, I used a picture of Slinky Dog from Toy Story, because he has three very distinct parts, just like words that contain prefixes and suffixes!

After explaining the definitions of the suffixes -ment, -ness, and -ful, I engaged the class in a word sorting activity. I held up word cards,and the students had to tell me which category it went in and what their reasoning was for placing it there. They also had to break apart the word into its root word and suffix in order to determine its meaning. 

Once we completed this task as a class, I explained to the students that they were going on a "Suffix Hunt!" After creating paint chip and plastic egg manipulatives in small bags (one for each student), I gave the direction that students needed to put the endings on the root words in order to make a word. They also had to figure out the meaning of the word they created, and record it on a piece of paper. 

Here are the eggs when they came out of the package.

These are the eggs when the activity is completed correctly.

It very interesting to see which students chose the work with the plastic eggs so that they could turn the suffix ending to see if it fit each word family; while others chose to work with the paint chips as if they were a detective's magnifying glass. (I love paint chips!)

Paint chips before the activity.
(Sorry for the low quality iPhone picture!)

Paint chips after the activity was completed.
(Sorry for the low quality iPhone picture!)

Click here for the lesson plan, which includes:

• Suffix Hunt Worksheet (Would need to be revamped for younger grades.)

Writing a Friendly Letter

Topic: Writing a friendly letter.

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To go along with the read aloud Three Cheers for Tacky by Helen Lester, I chose to do a bit of an author study about Helen Lester. I created a poster (seen below) to tell students more about her various works, interests, and hobbies. I made sure to tell students that Mrs. Lester wrote her books based on the personalities of her own second grade students, but I left out details such as her family life to encourage students to want to know more about her.

I showed students the poster above, and then we took to the Promethean Board to think of questions that we could ask Helen Lester if she came to visit us. Students came up with wonderful questions, and then I introduced how to write a friendly letter by using Tacky the Penguin from Helen Lester's books to help us along with the writing process!

Students found the character guide helpful when creating their letters!

Once we recited the different aspects of a friendly letter, students took off to writing their own letters! I left the brainstorming slide on the board and students were able to write their own questions based on the ideas we came up with earlier.

I projected the friendly letter template onto the Promethean Board, and I began filling in some of the blanks such as the date, greeting, closing, and signature as students were writing. Students always have the best questions and ideas when writing letters - one of the most popular questions was, "Will you write a book about me?" Mission accomplished.

Click here for the "Writing a Friendly Letter" lesson plan:

• Includes a "Friendly Letter" worksheet and differentiated worksheet template
• Click here for the screenshots of ActivInspire flipchart slides I used in class

Credits:

• Friendly letter templates (included differentiated worksheet): Kelly Dolling from Teacher Idea Factory. 

If You Give a Pig a Pancake

Topics: Sequencing, summarizing main events of a story.

The school that I am currently placed in does a lot of work with The Daily CAFE. As one of my language arts lessons, I wanted to choose a strategy from the second grade CAFE menu that the students had minimal exposure to.  I chose to focus on the strategy, "summarize text; include sequence of main events."

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I began the lesson by introducing the strategy and that I wanted students to pay attention to the order of the requests as I read the book If You Give a Pig a Pancake by Laura Numeroff. This really grabbed students' attention! The second graders had already heard this book previously, so they were excited to chime in with me as I read all of the crazy requests the little pig made, which made this lesson a very fun one to teach!

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After reading the book, I modeled the way I wanted students to fill out the sequencing bubble sheets. They were eager to work on it, but I found that halfway through the working period that many students were becoming flustered due to the amount of bubbles on the worksheet. I solved this problem while I was teaching by projecting half of the answers on the bubble sheet with the Elmo Projector, so that students could fix any mixed up answers before continuing the finish the second half of the worksheet.

Completed sequencing sheet.

When I teach this lesson again, I will fill in one bubble after every three blank ones, just to give students an idea of how to stay on track through the process and make it less overwhelming. Overall, students really enjoyed this lesson and it was a big success!

Completed differentiated sequencing sheet.

Click here for the lesson plan which includes:

• "If You Give a Pig a Pancake Sequencing Bubble" worksheet & differentiated worksheet
• "If You Give a Pig a Pancake" pictures for sequencing activity
• Answer key to sequencing worksheet.

Credits:

• Sequencing worksheet: Created by Regina & Angela from Fairy Tales and Fiction. 

Three Cheers for Tacky!

Topics: Diversity, teamwork, cooperation, acceptance, literacy (writing), creativity. 

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I started the lesson by reading the book Three Cheers for Tacky. Students loved Tacky's crazy cheers, and they even repeated the cheers with me as I read! We also talked about the things that people need to do in order to work together in a positive way (positive communication, listening, working together, compromising, etc.).

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I also had students work in small groups in order to create their own wacky cheers; I wanted them to be able to work on their social skills and putting aside their differences in order to achieve a common goal, all while working on their writing skills.

After floating around to groups and helping students prepare, it was time for the competition!  All of the groups got up in front of the class and performed their cheers together, just as the penguins in the book did. At the end, I gave them all blue bow ties as prizes, and the students were so happy to have earned their bows just like Tacky!

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Click here for the lesson plan, which includes:

• "Three Cheers for Our Class!" worksheet
• Blue bows to be distributed as prizes
• Click here for a screenshot of the slide used on the Promethean Board for the two cheers found in the book.