Organization is a Beautiful Thing

With summer coming to a close (it's not QUITE over yet, though - we still have 14 days until we officially go back!), I've been starting to put a lot of focus on the upcoming year. I've been working very hard on my future students' organization, but started by making sure I was very organized myself. After reflecting on last year, I took all of my favorite organization components and decided to combine them in one notebook. The notebook has five sections and I plan to take it with me everywhere. No more grabbing this notebook for one meeting and another notebook for another! Simplifying...it's a beautiful thing.

Here's how the notebook is organized:

Section 1 - Calendar: 

After searching for the perfect blank calendar, I finally decided to simply make my own and I'm thrilled with how it turned out. You can download it by clicking here.

Section 2 - Student Information: 

This section has transportation, email, and phone numbers for each student for quick reference. It also has students' data scores and other important information (DRA, DIBELS, MAP scores, student interest surveys, etc). You can download student information here (sorry the font's not as cute!).

Section 3 - Parent Communication: 

I'm able to keep all phone numbers, parent information, and contact logs in this section. I plan to put the completed "Back to School Student Information" sheet first, followed by the contact log. Each student is separated by a piece of green card stock. You can download both pages of the "Back to School Student Information here (again, sorry about the cute fonts disappearing!)

Section 4 - School and Team Meetings

Section 5 - District Meetings: 

These two sections are full of lots of blank notebook paper, ready to be filled in with important notes from meetings throughout the year!

Now that I feel organized, I'm ready to tackle the final bits of my students' organization! That will be for a later post :)

Enjoy your last few weeks of summer!

Brand New Look

My blog has a new look, and here's what inspired me. 


My district hosted an amazing technology conference this week and I learned SO many new, useful things while I was there! Here's a recap of what I learned and plan to implement in my classroom this fall:


- Prezi.com: I plan to use this site in SO many ways! It will replace my "All About Me" bags I do at the beginning of the year - I will make my own "All About Me" Prezi to show the students and then they will get to create their own. I also plan to use it for parent orientation (much snazzier than a PowerPoint!) and various student research projects during the year, such as our Native Americans and community workers presentations.
- Blogger: While this session didn't give me quite as much information as I would have liked, it did inspire me (and my teammates) to revamp my blog. You can thank this class for prompting me to get my new layout, as well as this site where I got the template. They have GREAT templates, backgrounds, icons, etc. Their work looks much better than mine ever would!
- Study Island: I'm lucky enough to have a school that already had a subscription to this amazing site, but I will say that I honestly didn't use it as much as I could have last year. This session gave a wonderful overview of this site and I am certain that I will use it in class (reading and math workshop, perhaps?) and in after-school tutoring. I also plan to use it for students that need assistance in specific areas by assigning needed tasks and pushing them to work on these weak areas both in and out of school.
- Google Earth: I knew a bit about this program, but had no idea how useful it could be in the classroom! This site can be used in almost all subject areas, from math (perimeter, area, distance - check out www.realworldmath.org) to reading (check out www.googlelittrips.com - it shows the actual locations stories take place in) to social studies (country projects, Flat Stanley locations, Where in the World, landforms, etc. etc.) to science (weather around the world). I am so excited to implement this program in my classroom and know my students will LOVE getting to see this amazing view of the world.
- Visual Storytelling: This sessions was created to encourage storytelling through pictures. The presenter encouraged us to use only pictures for writing prompts (no other information), as well as introduced me to the idea of "6 Word Stories". The 6 Word Stories could be a great writing technique for older students that need to condense their thoughts, but would also be excellent for my young students that have limited writing abilities. Another inspiring session!
- Demo Slam: The conference ended with a "Demo Slam" where oogles of presenters shared their favorite technology tid-bits. They presented for about 3-4 minutes each and gave great, useful information about products, websites, and other forms of technology. 
Some slamming highlights: 
- Search Stories: digital storytelling through Google searches
- Socrative App: student response software through ANY technology - phone, computer, Chrome book, iPad, etc. Just like SMART Clickers!
- Google URL Shortener: shortens any URL and can be added directly to your GMail account (search in the Chrome store)
- AccessNow: This website allows you to access your computer's hardware from any computer
- Slide Rocket: Presentation app for Google Chrome
- Stich.it: Puts together a bunch of URLs (audio, websites, presentations - like from Slide Rocket - videos, images) and turns it into one seamless presentation
- Skitch: Use to take screen captures and add arrows, captions, and more
- Scratch: Created by MIT, this site allows you to make your own interactive stories, games, music, or art, almost like an interactive comic book.
- StudyBlue: Make your own flashcards (available in an app)
- BookSource Classroom Organizer: Keep track of your classroom books and who checks them out
- Google Drive: This is the Google Cloud - a must to download! You get 5GB free (lots of space), and can buy more if you want.


All in all, this was a wonderful conference and I left rejuvenated and inspired to use even more technology in my classroom. I'm grateful I was able to attend and I know my students will be, too!

Wrapping It Up

Goodness, where has the time gone? The last few weeks of school were a wonderful blur and we are now officially on summer break. We learned up until the last minute, though, and had lots of great experiences. We filled our time with Cultural Arts Day, awards day, memory books, and end of the year parties - whew! We also experienced supply and demand by creating our own classroom stores. The students got to create their own products and then sell them to their classmates in our classroom mall (Shopping in our classroom?? Yes, please!). It was very interesting to hear their reflections as they discussed what items sold and why they think they were top-sellers in our room. Video games were a big hit, FYI (surprise, surprise), but model airplanes really struggled to sell. 

It's hard to believe that my precious group of second graders has finished their year and will be third graders next year. We had an amazing year and I know they will do a great job next year. To my lovely students: enjoy your time off, but make sure you read something every single day!!! Look for more posts next year when I get a new bunch of kiddos!

Enjoying popsicles after a hard day of work!

Busy creating advertisements for our classroom stores.

A shoe store! 

Who can resist a candy store??

A picture one of my wonderful parents took on one of our last days. We sure did have a great year!

Riverfront Highlights

There are a few things that all students (and teachers) look forward to each school year and one of those things is a wonderful field trip. The last one we went on was last fall so it was due time for another one. After contemplating various locations, the other second grade teachers and I decided to take our students to Columbia's Riverfront Park. We had never taken students on a field trip here, but we were SO glad that we did! The trip was completely outdoors, was filled with tons of hands-on activities (including wading/splashing/trampling through a river), hit tons of second grade standards, and, best of all, was completely free! I would highly recommend this field trip to anyone in the Columbia area and I think that all of the students would agree. They couldn't stop talking about all of the things they learned and I could tell it really reinforced many of the science concepts we've studied throughout the year. Other than the snake we caught in the river (eek!!), I would go again in a heartbeat! 

Here is my small group going on a walking tour/scavenger hunt. We found lots of interesting plants and animals...

...such as this snail!

We might have scared away most of the animals with our trampling, but we had a good time.

Our little snake...eekk!

Poetry Month

In celebration of National Poetry Month, we wrote a different type of poem each week during the month of April. Our celebration began with us writing acrostic poems, followed by cinquains and haikus. The students really caught on to these different poems and had a wonderful time picking topics to write about. For our acrostic poems students chose a "springy" word as their topic and then created a kite to display their work on. Our cinquains focused on friendship (and included an official friend interview to become informed of their writing topic) and the haikus centered around animals, which we were studying in science at the time. In addition to writing poems, we also read poems whenever possible. The students have become obsessed with Shel Silverstein and all of his wonderful poems! We have started a new end of the day tradition in which students pick a page number and I randomly read aloud from one of his books. I think the students can officially be called poetry experts at this point!

Our acrostic kites proudly displayed in our hallway

Fantastic Field Day

I'm a bit behind the times, but wanted to share our field day nonetheless. We had a wonderful, busy, exhausting field day a few Fridays back. Our wonderful related arts team created an entire day of events that revolved around the theme "The 50 States". Students traveled to different states and did activities that went along with the history of each state. The day was a blur, but everyone had a great time - me included (I might have had more fun than some of the students!!). The kids couldn't stop talking about all of the fun activities!

Let the games begin!

Students did an "Eskimo Pull" when they traveled to Alaska.

Group games in the multipurpose room put our teamwork to the test.

Boys vs. Girls relay

Clickers!

We have MAP testing next week, which means that we had to spend a lot of time this week reviewing what we've learned all year in the areas of math and reading. Reviewing is not the most thrilling thing for most students, so I decided to use SmartBoard clickers to make the math review more exciting and engaging. We practiced with the clickers the week before and the students LOVED them! I loved them, too, because they showed me every student's scores without me having to do anything! How handy dandy. The clickers were a great resource to help students practice important concepts and I just know that they will do great on their MAP tests next week!

Pure joy using the clickers! Look at what pros they are :)