Thanksgiving Inference activities

This year has been such an exciting year! I love teaching 2nd grade and my kiddos are adorable! They are so wonderful to teach. Since this is my first year teaching 2nd, it is like my first year teaching all over. In my school district, we are still using Open Court. However, they want us to start implementing the new CCSS. So, I've been doing a lot of work trying to connect the CCSS to Open Court. By the end of the week--I am pooped!!

One way I have been implementing CCSS is by using various metacognition reading strategies with my little kiddos. One that we have been working on a lot are making inferences when reading. Since it is Thanksgiving, we looked at different recipe cards and tried to make an inference about what the recipe is. The did this in three steps:

• what background knowledge they have on the recipe
• what the recipe text says
• what they think the recipe is

My kiddos had so much fun with it! I got this resource from Lyndsey at A Year of Many Firsts. This was such a great resource and I think my students really are starting to understand inferences in a fun and engaging way!

I projected the the recipes onto the screen and we worked together to make inferences about the recipe.

Then they worked on using their background knowledge and the recipe instructions to make an inference. Some were even drawing illustrations to help them with their inference!

My kiddos did such an amazing job with these inferences! I was so proud of everything they worked on.

The next day, they worked on writing an inference story about Busy Betsy! I projected an story on the screen of Busy Betsy cleaning and getting ready for Thanksgiving. Then, all of a sudden she smelt something and say black spots on her pie! After my students saw that short story about Busy Betsy, they had to finish the story and infer how Betsy felt and what would have happened next. I wish I had more time to do this because my kiddos were so creative with their responses! They had so much fun and loved sharing their inference stories. 

With CCSS right on my door step, there are days when I ask myself, "Can I do this?" My district doesn't have any CCSS "curriculum"yet and we are receiving extensive training and collaboration on how to unpack the standards. We also discuss how it implement CCSS into our classroom. Some days, it can be a lot to understand and handle. But other days, like last week, I felt like and told myself, "Yes! I can do this!" because my kiddos did such an amazing job on this inference activity. In addition to these Thanksgiving recipe inferences, we learned about the pilgrims and the May Flower. The made a map of the May Flower Voyage.

We had so much fun last week learning about the first Thanksgiving and inferences with Thanksgiving recipes. Last week just went so smoothly and I feel my students had fun learning about different ways we celebrate Thanksgiving and why. I just kicked some serious CCSS butt!! 

In addition to these various units I'm working on, I've also been working on reading journals for Open Court. I got the idea from Amanda Nickerson at One Extra Degree. It's worked pretty good so far. I'll do a post about it next week. I'm headed off to go see the new Hunger Games! I've been so excited to see this. Before I go, I wanted to share this picture I took yesterday of one of my students during read-to-self. I just couldn't resist :)

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! From my classroom...to yours.

Open Court Focus Wall Headers

The curriculum that my school currently uses is Open Court. During my student teaching, both schools used Open Court; so I have some experience. I started getting ready for next year by getting my focus wall ready. I created some focus wall headers. I was so proud of myself because this was the first time I created anything like this!

Focus Wall Header

An example of one of the unit headers. I have one for each unit.

In Open Court, they have a questions and concept board. This will be new to me, but I like the idea. One this board, it allows students to make connections and ask questions about the concept. I have done a bit of this with my third graders last year, but I'm really excited to do more of it this year! Here is an example of the headers I made for my question and concept board

This is what I have done so far. I don't have the teacher editions yet and I have not met with my team. But, I am excited about what I've done so far and letting my creative juices flow more during the summer. I want to do some more about writer's workshop, common core techniques, and organizational ideas.