Lilly the Mouse

This year, our character/series reading unit corresponded with our "Authors as Mentors" writing unit, so we were able to use Kevin Henkes books as mentor texts for both!  In reading, I relied heavily on the Lilly books, including Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse, Lilly's Big Day, Julius, the Baby of the World, Chester's Way, and Lilly's Chocolate Heart.  Lilly is a complex character so she is great to consider across texts.

As I read each book aloud, the kiddos worked to identify Lilly's likes and dislikes, emotions, and traits. We noticed how many of her traits carried across multiple books.  For instance, Lilly demonstrates loyalty when she defends Chester and Wilson in Chester's Way, and when she stands up for Julius in Julius, Baby of the World.  Lilly is jealous of Julius in Baby of the World, and she's jealous of Ginger in Lilly's Big Day.  The kiddos recorded their own observations on this cute worksheet and then practiced identifying other characters' emotions and traits in their own books. 

The kiddos really loved the Lilly books!  Toward the end of the unit, after we had read each of the Lilly books, we took a vote on our favorite Lilly book. Lilly's Big Day was the big winner, but Chester's Way was the 2nd most popular among my avid readers.  I'm hoping to incorporate more graphing in to our thematic reading/writing units in the future!

Word Study Routines

Last year, I posted here about how we review rhyming word families, using the Words Their Way program.  This year, I've been thinking about how I want to set my students up for success with this program once again.  In the past, I've noticed that although most kiddos appear to be very successful with their sorts during the week, they often struggle to incorporate taught spelling patterns into their own writing.  I think this has to do with the lack of context with the words during word study, and sometimes a mis-match of skills and sort (i.e. kiddos working on sorts that are too hard or too easy).  

This year I'm trying to incorporate more practice opportunities into our word study routine, including building rimes (adding different consonants to at), writing words, and reading rhymes.  This week I started by having the kids think of words that rhyme with cat, before we even looked at the sort.  I drew pictures of the -at words they thought of on a large "at" (see picture).  Then I modeled using the WTW sort to match -at words and pictures.  

The following day, we used magnets to create -at words, and then the kiddos got to cut out their own pictures and words.  While the class worked on matching their sort pictures and words, I pulled a few kiddos over to make sure they could independently read the words, with and without the pictures.  This coming week we will use our sorts again for a few simple games.  The kiddos will write words to match pictures and fill in blanks in sentences using the same words.  They will get to highlight rhyming words in phonics readers (if I can find them in our storage closet ;) )  Finally, I am hoping to give a short weekly check -- quiz -- to see if they are able to write the practiced words as well as new rhyming word or two.

Hopefully these extra activities will help the kiddos generalize what they learn during word study into other times of the day, when they are reading and writing independently!

Character Parade

For the past few years, our school has had a "Character Parade" around Halloween and this year it fell on the 31st.  Personally, I don't believe that character or costume parades or parties have a place in public schools, but I wasn't the one making the scheduling decisions.  (I found this post at care2.com which includes a variety of reasons why Halloween activities are not such a great idea in schools.)  But since we had to participate in the parade, the fabulous 2nd grade teachers had the idea for each class to select a book and have the entire class dress up as the characters from the story.  I loved this idea because we could make the costumes in class and ensure that no student would be left out.

I selected Caps for Sale, by Esphyr Slobodkina because we had just read the book and I figured monkey costumes would be really cute. And they were!  The kiddos colored in monkey masks and visor caps (from Scholastic.com).  They were allowed to be out of uniform so they all wore brown or black clothing.  My wonderful and accomodating assistant teacher agreed to dress up as the peddler.  The kiddos had a great time in the parade and we got a lot of compliments from other classes and families.  (I think some families were just pleased that they didn't have to send their child's actual costume to school and risk it get ruined.)

A lot of the arguments I've heard for why schools should do things like have Halloween parties and be able to wear their costumes to school is because they are fun, but I have to say, I think my kids might have had more fun with this than when they wore their own costumes.  In fact, one of them even said to me, "It's so cool that we get to get to be characters here at school and then we get to do Halloween and trick-or-treating after school too!"  Success!

Morning Warm-up Work

Morning Work is an essential part of my day.  When the kids come in to the classroom, I need to have something for them to do independently for a few minutes while I'll take care of all those little things that need to get done in the morning (attendance, checking folders for notes, the occasional check-in with a parent, etc.).  This year, I developed my Morning Warm-up after looking at a number of different versions online.  I wanted something that would be routine but also offer some challenge.  I came up with "Number of the Day" and the "Daily Fix-It."

In the beginning of the year, I gave all of the kids a copy of the Morning Warm-up page in sheet protector and gave them a dry-erase marker.  We've had to replace a couple of wrinkled pages and dried out markers, but I don't have to worry about printing out a new worksheet every day.  Plus, because it's the same page every day the kids have gotten really good at the routine.

...And the "Number of the Day" addresses so many math skills!  The "Number of the Day" is always the number of days we have been in school (38, tomorrow).  The kiddos have to break the number into hundreds, tens, and ones, then tally the number, add and take-away 1, and add and take-away 10.  Since the routine is the same every day, I get to see how the kids are incorporating new strategies that have been introduced.  For instance, some are now using the 100s chart to do +/- 10 while others are still counting on their fingers.  I think that after Thanksgiving, I may transition to a new version with tens frames instead of tallying (because tallying over 50 takes a long time!).


The "Daily Fix-It" is always on the board when the kids walk in to the classroom.  I write 2 sentences replete with mistakes, like sight words spelled incorrectly, missing or wrong punctuation, and incorrect capitalization.  What I think is great about this activity is that it's really open-ended to allow for practicing any number of skills.  As the year goes on I imagine we can do more with grammar and complex sentence structure.  So far we still need the practice with our capitalization and punctuation, but we're getting there!

Word Families

I use Words Their Way to teach word study.  I think this program is great because it's so hands-on for students.  Each week I introduce a new spelling pattern and the kiddos get to manipulate the words within that pattern as they sort, match, read, and write their word sort pieces.  At the end of the week, students glue their sort into a Word Study Journal and write a list of the words to reference as their own word study dictionary.  We began the year by doing the word family sorts.  Many of these are review from Kindergarten, but it's important to go over the short vowel sounds and practice these common word families because they are essential to reading and writing.

I made posters for each of the word families as well so that the kiddos can easily reference them during reading and writing.   (I got the clipart for the posters online.)

Story Retelling

My students love to re-tell stories! They feel so successful when they can "read" all by themselves. They also love to use props to help them re-tell.