Thank you so much to everyone who entered my 500 Facebook fan giveaway! I am so thankful for all of you who follow, comment, and share my work!!

Congrats Tammy, I've sent you an email! Hope to hear from you soon!

And now let me tell you about an Activity that's been a real winner in my classroom this week! I have a group of 2nd graders who are struggling with main idea. They are good readers, but main idea is tricky and it just wasn't sinking in for them. So I went on a search for some resources to help them out! That is when I found Mrs. Daniel from Second Grade Sparkle! She has these amazing Main Idea Bags for fiction and non-fiction! and my students have LOVED them!

The "bags" each have three detail cards in them, the students read them then determine what the main idea of the three cards is. I put mine in "library" envelopes I got from the Dollar Tree, they worked perfectly!

I numbered each enveloped and used different colors to help me keep the fiction/non-fiction sets easily recognizable. I used my new Boho Birds stickers to make them cute!

We started out using them together in the pocket chart.....

The students all had their clipboards to record what their thinking was and we talked about what we each thought the main idea should be! They were so engaged look at them all working away!

After a couple of days practicing they got to take off on their own. I gave them each an envelope and they got to work!

I was so excited to see that they were actually getting it! I loved the work I saw. Most of them were actually giving great answers (we didn't use the "What do you think the main idea is?" cards yet). They kept coming back asking for more envelopes. Having them numbered helped me to go back and check once they were done!

I love this activity! The kids were excited about it and they were learning! Head on over to Mrs. Daniel's Store to check them out!!

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I am so excited that my Facebook page just reached 500 fans and wanted to do something fun to celebrate all of you!! I am so grateful for everyone who follows this blog, my fan page, and my store! So I decided to create two new freebies just for you!! These fabulous spring activities will be perfect for the next few weeks. You get by clicking on the pictures below!! 

Oh but this is not the end of the fun!! You could also win a $25 gift card to Target or Amazon (your choice)

Please enter using the Rafflecopter below! The giveaway will end on Wednesday at midnight. I will post the winner next Thursday!
 a Rafflecopter giveaway

Thanks again for following me! I appreciate your kind comments and support!! Hope your all having a fabulous Thursday! Good Luck with the giveaway!!

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Can you say C-R-A-Z-Y that is how I feel right now! Even after two days off last week to get ahead I am behind again!! I know it's just that time of  year, so many things going on, so much to do!! I am looking forward to a couple more vacation days soon :)

I worked hard this weekend to get my February Fluency Pack all ready for the new month!! Here it is...

Six Valentine themed centers or small group activities all ready to go! I can't wait to start using them! The January set went over so well and I know the  kids are going to love getting new stories, poems, reader's theaters, and games in their centers soon! This week is our fourth week using the January pack, to mix it up a little bit I used the pocket chart cards as a "read the room" activity. I taped a few up around the room, students used pointers to go around and read them! They loved it so much I decided to add a couple of fun elements to February's pack! So I created these.........

Heart glasses and pointers! All you have to do is cut them out and laminate for some Valentine read the room or pocket chart fun! The kids can just use the tab on the glasses to hold them up to their faces, or attach a small dowel rod to hold them up with!! I can't wait for my students to see these in their center they are going to love using them to read!! If your students would enjoy them feel free to click on the picture and get a free set for your classroom!!!

If you would like the whole February set, just click on the picture above to come on over to my TPT store and purchase it. Again it's only $4.50 for the whole thing!!! Thanks for checking it out! 

I hope your all having a great Monday!!

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The alarm went off way to early this morning!! I was not prepared liked I wanted to be!! WHY did I procrastinate!! I did enjoy the time off with my family doing nothing work related, but now I'm feeling a little behind! I did get things together but not as well as I would have liked!!

I spent a large amount of time over vacation creating my new January Fluency Practice package!! Six different small group or center activities all about winter fun! I am so excited about this because it includes a lot of original work!! Five original winter poems, original fluency passages, and reader's theaters!!

One of my student's favorite activities is the "unique voice" reading we do. I give them fry phrases or sentences, they choose a "voice" card from the jar and then read their phrases using that voice. It was a fun way to get back into reading today! So here are my Unique voice cards for January if you would like them!


If your first or second graders need some practice with fluency you can check out my entire unit, just click on the picture to head on over to my store!!

Hope you all are having a great first day back! I got a couple packages in the mail today, can't wait to share what's going on in my classroom, but right now I need to take a nap go make dinner!! Happy Monday!

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We've been working on Fact vs. Opinion during 2nd grade groups. I started out with an anchor chart and foldable activity that I loved (I picked it up on TPT from Amber Polk - Adventures of a Third Grade Teacher). We talked about what a fact is and what an opinion is and sorted the words that are associated with each, then we made these foldables, on the outside the kids wrote the definition for fact and opinion and inside they wrote two examples of their own!

 

Next we did a sticky note sort. I placed sticky notes with fun facts and  opinions on them throughout the room. I made a quick T-chart for fact opinion and then students got to hunt for sticky notes, bring them back and place them in the correct column. They were instructed to find two sticky notes each! They loved the "hunt" aspect of this activity and it really got them engaged.

I decided to make some nice cards for this activity that could be used in the same way! The first Freebie I have for you is the sort. It has the two header cards that can be placed in a pocket chart or on your T-chart and 30 fact opinion phrases to have the students sort. I also added a cut and paste activity for independent work! Hope you can use this!!

I thought we had a good understanding of fact opinion so I decided to have the kids start working more independently.  I created cards that had a word and picture on the front, gave each student one and they had to write one fact and one opinion about that topic on the back. I gave them three minutes to do this. Then they switched cards with the person on their left and they added to the card another fact and opinion. We kept going for several rounds until I noticed they didn't have a lot to add! Again this activity go them engaged they loved passing the cards on! So here are the cards for you to use if you like!

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First off, Congratulations to Rachel of Ms. Rachel's Room she is the winner of the Carson Dellosa Bingo giveaway! Your package is on it's way, I hope your kids enjoy it as much as mine :)

No for what we've been up to! We've been working on drawing conclusions and making inferences. I blogged about this a while back when I worked on it with 2nd graders, but it came around again when my fifth graders needed to focus on this skill as well so here's what I came up with......

First we used  this poster as our anchor chart, you can get this free here on my blog or at my TPT store, I had it printed on a car door magnet at Vistaprint.com - love how easy it is to put up and not have to worry about it falling down!

We used this riddle game as an introduction each day, the kids LOVED the riddles they would beg to solve more at the end of each lesson.You get clues that progress giving more information as you go, some were relatively easy to figure out others took some time!
 
Next we used these light bulbs I got from Anne Beninghof's book Engaging all Learners, I printed several, cut them out and laminated them.I read small paragraphs with descriptions of a place someone would travel to, students wrote down what they were thinking on the light bulb and held them up for me to see.

I printed several pictures from google, one of a cool car, one of a birthday party, the beach, a baby crying, etc. and placed them around the classroom. Students worked in pairs traveling around the classroom writing down their conclusions about what was going on, where, when, and why. They came up with some very interesting stories!!

Then I made these suit cases, I printed pictures of things you would pack for each destination, placed them in the suit case and labeled them with sticky notes 1-5, one of the suit cases says winner inside. I placed them on the board and we played an adapted version of deal or no deal! I drew a name of a student, they choose a case number, I offered a different case in place of theirs, then they either choose my case or theirs. If they got one with a destination they had to use clues from what was packed to decide where the person was going and what they would do there. If they got the winner suit case they one a piece of gum!

We played this inferring bingo game from Florida Center for Reading Research The game starts on page 20! The kids really loved this one!

Hope your all having a wonderful weekend! I'm busy decorating for Christmas!! Can't wait to share some of my latest projects and freebies with you for the holidays! This is my favorite time of year, and while I've been overwhelmed with things to do I am looking forward to planning lessons and activities for the next three weeks! Thanks for reading!!

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