Biographies

Call me crazy but I decided to dive into another research project with my second graders. I like to integrate what we are doing as much as possible so we are up to our eyeballs in biographies this month (reading, writing, social studies). I found a great Wax Museum research packet on the Teachers pay Teachers website.  Each student is hard at work finding out as much as they can about their famous person. During our previous research project my students worked in pairs.  This time they are researching independently. I think the most amazing part of this is that they are learning to take notes like "big kids!"  They are so proud of themselves. I have tweaked a couple of the research ideas in the Wax Museum packet so I could stay consistent with the research strategy we were already using.  Here is a picture of what we have done so far...

What have we done so far?


1. We spent two days exploring biographies.
2. On day 3 students chose a famous person to research.
3. I modeled writing down "dash-facts" while we read about Helen Keller.
4. Students had three 40 minute work sessions to read and collect "dash-facts" about their famous person.
5. Students cut dash facts apart and organized them into four categories (fame, childhood, contributions and fun facts) using a mini pocket book.
6. Students wrote paragraphs for each category using their facts.  I modeled how to do this using our Helen Keller research.


Where we are headed?


7. Students will edit their drafts and write a final version.
8. Students will write up a plan for their wax-museum costume with their parents over the weekend.
9. Students will learn how to take their research and turn it into a speech.
10. Students will write and practice speeches.
11. Students will participate in a wax-museum where they come to life and share about themselves with their families, schoolmates and friends.

Sight Word Phrases with Pictures

Class sizes are bulging across the country right now, but I am lucky to have only 15 students this year.  However, many of these little ones are reading and writing below grade level.  Because of this I have been studying like crazy to come up with strategies to help them.  I have been reading an excellent book called The Successful Inclusive Teacher: Proven Ways to Detect and Correct Special Needs, edited by Joyce S. Choate.  Many of my students need a lot of help with sight words (reading and spelling) and fluency.  One of the strategies in this book suggested making flash cards with pictures to help students make a visual connection with the word.  I decided to try this with the phrases and short sentences for repeated reading that Timothy Rasinski suggests using to help build reading fluency in his book The Fluent Reader, 2003. New York: Scholastic Professional Books. I am introducing ten phrases a week and then students will practice reading and writing them during our Daily 5 word work.  I am also sending the list of phrases home with students to practice reading and writing over the weekend.  Here are the first three Fluency Practice.

Adjectives...and Letters We Flip For.

This is a chart I made to help students remember which letter's can have more than one sound.  There are few  more I will be adding....ow and gh to name a few.   I find this chart especially helpful for those kiddo's who struggle with accuracy.

These are some turkey's that we made during our adjectives unit.  After reading  A Plump and Perky Turkey by Teresa Batemen and Jeff Shelly, and brainstorming a list of adjectives, students created a turkey using acrylic paint, construction paper and paper plates.  Students then wrote stories about their turkey's using adjectives.  The turkey's and stories were quite entertaining!