Unique Crayons for Unique Students

I have loved my experience in the second grade classroom this semester! I have spent a lot of time with the students, cooperating teacher, and student teachers, and I feel so fortunate to have been able to be a part of such a loving classroom environment! So, of course, I had to make something special and unique for the second graders before I left! I decided to "recycle" my old crayons by making brand new ones for them - each one as unique and special as each student in the classroom.

I started the process by removing the wrappers from the crayons. Anyone who has ever tried this knows that peeling the wrappers off individually creates a huge, frustrating mess of tiny papers and crayon wax stuck under your nails. So, I decided to stick the crayons in a bowl of water for a few minutes, since the water would saturate the papers and remove the glue binding them to the crayons.

This worked wonderfully for the regular Crayola crayons after about ten minutes... it did not work so wonderfully for the Crayola Washable crayons! The Washable ones should only be submerged in water for a maximum of five minutes - otherwise, the crayons themselves begin to disintegrate! They weren't kidding when they created them to come off with water... so, be careful!

Next, I used a knife to chop up the wrapper-less crayons into tiny pieces, which I placed in a mini muffin tin that had cupcakes liners already in it. Most people mix and match the different colors that they choose to use for each crayon, but I was nervous that the colors would run together in to a dark,awful mess... so I decided to group "like" colors together in order to make crayons that had different hues in them.

I put the muffin tin into the oven (preheated at 300 degrees) for about 10 minutes, and pulled them out. The colors starting meshing together and they looked really cute! Within about 5 minutes of cooling, I was able to pop the crayons out of the cupcake liners.

And here's the finished product! I decided to pair the little unique crayons with a small note for each student! I found cute polka dot cards and envelopes from the Michael's dollar bins, and printed out these little poems for each student. 

The students loved their new crayons! They loved how each crayon was different than all of the others, and they all told me that they looked like little Reese's Peanut Butter cups due to the cupcake liner impressions all around them. I saw them coloring with their new crayons a few times throughout the morning, and I was so happy that they enjoyed them! 

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!

Book Making

Instead of attending a regular Methods I class period, we decided to venture out to Peterborough, New Hampshire to go to the Mariposa Museum. We participated in a wonderful lesson about puppets through the years and which countries they come from; which is something that I will definitely be adding to my own lessons one day!

We had some time to shop in the gift shop before our lesson started. There were so many beautiful items that I wanted to buy them all!

Beautiful hand painted elephants at the museum.

I have to say, though, my favorite part of the trip was the book-making session.

Finished product along with the steps to create it on the right!

We focused on making accordion books, and the woman who taught the class had so many wonderful examples for us to look at and use! She taught us how to create the books in a few easy steps:

1. Using a light weight piece of cardboard, cut two rectangles that are equal in size. These will be used for the cover.
2. Find pieces of scrapbook paper and cut them so that they are at least an inch bigger than your cardboard pieces all the way around.
3. Place your cardboard pieces onto the scrapbook papers, making sure that you can see the border of the scrapbook paper underneath it.
4. Using another thin piece of cardboard, place it against the corners of the cardboard and make diagonal lines across the corners. Cut those corners off.
5. Fold the corners of the scrapbook paper over the corners after gluing the cardboard to the paper. Glue the paper down for the inside part of the cover.
6. Place a ribbon on one side of the cover.
7. Make opposite "M" or "W" folds with a long piece of card stock paper for your pages. 
8. Glue one side of the card stock pages to the inside of the front and back covers.
9. Tie your ribbon to close the book! 

Finished product, showing off the pages.

I cannot tell you how excited I am to use these book-making activities in my lessons! Next semester in Methods II I will be focusing on science and math content areas; wouldn't these books be perfect for a little science unit wrap-up? I think so!

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!

Slide-a-Word Activity

Topic: op, og, and ot word families.

One morning during our Methods I lecture period, we decided to create phonics games for the school's spelling program Words Their Way. I have been in the classroom while the second graders have been working in their packets, but I have never created a game or activity that aligns with this program. 

I had a lot of fun creating this Slide-a-Word activity for the op, ot, and og word families group! The word sorting list I used was sort #9, and this activity was very easy to make. I just cut strips of colorful construction paper, made slits in some pieces and added the letter "o" to them as the base of the word. Then, I went through the alphabet and chose consonants that would help create words that fit the family.

The beginning consonant strips have a star on them so that students are not confused as to which strip belongs in which slot. The next time I make this activity, I'm going to use just three colors of paper: one for the beginning consonants, one for the middle vowel, and another color for the ending consonants. The different colored strips of paper I used for this activity look cute, but they can be confusing for anyone in K-2!

Everything is always a learning experience.

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.