Spring is in the Air (Part 2)

We have been reading so many fantastic books in room 8.  I love this time of year because the emphasis shifts from fluency to comprehension.  We really dig in deep to our text and there is so much rich discussion.  Pitter patter my teacher heart. <3  Our second graders have become quite skilled at asking and answering text dependent questions, and we have just recently learned how to infer.

Tar Beach

Last week we read Tar Beach by Faith Ringold.  After reading this magical story about a young girl that can fly, the students wrote their own flying stories.  We tried to keep our flying adventures in the US to tie in our journeys unit, but we do have some trips to Paris and Italy too.  :)  I was so impressed by the students ability to use description and paint a picture with their words.

Of course we created beautiful art to go with our project!  Aren't these so wonderful!

A Chair for my Mother

Next we read A Chair for my Mother and continued to practice our comprehension skills.  After close careful reading with a lot of rich discussion the students wrote their own stories.  Their objective was to tell about a special gift they would give to someone special to them.  We called it "A ____ for my ____".   The kiddos did such a wonderful job and created some sweet art to go with their writing.  On the back we are going to tie in math.  I drew a huge coin jar that they will use coin stamps to fill up and practice counting coins.  I sure to LOVE me some project based learning that spans across the curriculum.  Reading, writing, art, and math for the win! 

Class Dojo

Yes, Spring is definitely in the air!  Every March I get the itch to shake things up a bit and pump up our classroom incentives so  we end the year on a high note.   If you haven't yet logged in to your child's Class Dojo account please do so right away.  You'll love it!