Reading Centers

Something I love about teaching is that it is a profession where I am always growing.  While in my reading master's program I spent a good deal of time researching best practices for reading centers.  I have modeled our classroom reading block on these practices and am loving this targeted, strategic, focused reading time.  A huge thank you to all you amazing mommas who come in and make this magical time possible.  We love and appreciate you!  In our class we spend an hour on small group reading instruction each day.  Ideally the children rotate to two centers or stations each day.  Sometimes we only get to one because of a special event happening on campus.  We use the acronym LEARN (which I learned from my dear friend and colleague Mrs. Powers) to structure our rotations.  L stands for listen to reading.  E stands for enjoy a book.  A stands for attention to writing.  R stands for read with the teacher.  N stands for notice words.   The children receive targeted small group instruction at the writing, woking with words, and reading with teacher centers.  Again, this would not be possible without our fantastic parent volunteers. <3

Working with words with our talented student teacher Ms. Berry.

Making connections to text with my last year's student teacher Ms. Fekete.

Focusing on long a spelling patterns in my group. 

Our sweet readers reading away! 

What We've Been Up to This Week

Hello friends!  Our All About Me Unit is coming along beautifully!  Since I last shared the kiddos have created precious family trees and family banners.

We have been having a grand old time with end punctuation as well. :)  Each student created an interactive flip book telling all about the three different types of sentences.  Then, to make our learning authentic, our second graders got to be the teachers and teach their first grade buddies all about end punctuation.  They even helped them think of, and write an example sentence for each.  After we were experts, students had a chance to play a fun game where they figured out the correct end punctuation for each sentence and sorted them accordingly.  Way to go second grade stars!  I am so proud of your hard work!

We have started reading centers, and the students are really starting to get the routine.  Thank you Mrs. Madison for being my right hand gal during center time.  This learning could not happen with out you!  You are so appreciated!  I'm a big believer that centers should be independent learning time, which frees me up to meet with small reading groups.  Research shows that students need to practice reading, writing, and working with words every day...so our centers are based around just that!  Students read independently, or with a buddy, they listen to books being read on the computer, they visit the writing center, and they work with words.  Here are our little readers in action!

Buddy Reading

Serious cuteness overload here!  Taking an AR with a buddy.

Sharing writing

Our Writing Center

Working With Words

Readers Gonna Read!

A quick peek at what's going on in math... We are nearing the end of our first chapter of study; addition and subtraction strategies.  Here are our mathematicians working during centers.  I love center time because it allows time to review and practice key concepts.  I think the kids are having so much fun, they don't even realize they are working! Ha!

Odd and Even Marshmallow Roast

Playing Headbands to review vocab.

Finding the missing addends

Making standard form, expanded form, base-ten block s'mores. 

Hope everyone is having a lovely day!  Looking forward to seeing you all tomorrow!

Reading Centers and Tracking Our Math Progress

With the dust of Open House settling, we are now back to a bit of normalcy.  (In an end of school year kinda way! HA!) Here's a little peek at what we've been up to with reading centers this week.   We have been working on the Dive Right In and Investigate the Ocean centers from Swimming Into Second Grade.  (By the way, I'm sot sure if I've mentioned lately how much I love the amazing network of teacher bloggers out there.  They inspire me daily!  In fact they sparked me to start this sweet little blog.  A heartfelt thank you to teacher bloggers everywhere.  You fill my sails!)
Back to our reading center time... :)
We have been working on 9 different centers.  Here are the ones a managed to snap a picture of:

Octopus Antonyms

Shark Facts and Opinions

Sea Turtle Synonyms

Crabby Adjectives

These Ocean Centers have been so perfect!  They kept the students working and engaged which allowed me to complete all of my end of year assessments.  Phew!  Quite a feat if I do say so myself! Each student has made so much growth this year and I am so very very proud of their accomplishments.  Look out third grade here we come!

We have also been working so hard completing all of our end of year Common Core math assessments.  (Also a gem of a resource created by Clutter-Free Classroom) This was definitely a process!  Each morning for a little over a week the students took a few assessments that covered the Common Core math standards.  Then, I quickly graded their work and returned them either that very day, or the following morning.  (The reward was worth working through lunch -for sure!) The reason I was so speedy to return the assessments was because the students graphed their results for each math standards.  This was SUCH a POWERFUL learning experience!  To hear my little BIG :) second graders discussing what concepts they had mastered and which ones they needed to practice was priceless.  It also upped the motivation level to put forth best effort on the assessments each day.  Each assessment had 10 points possible, if they scored 70% or above they showed mastery, 60% or below meant we needed to practice a little bit and try again.  Since we covered all the standards throughout the year most just needed a quick refresher or explanation of what the problem was asking since it was a different format from our usual Saxon math pages.   I have been busy pulling small groups all week to answer questions and reteach where needed, but my most favorite part of this reteaching process was when the students taught each other.  They each self reflected to see what area they needed to practice or what area they could teach to a peer, then we got busy!  SO POWERFUL!  I am 100% sold on the value of student-centered assessments.  They took such ownership of their learning.  I could go on and on about this process because, well, it was extremely effective. :)  I hope you got the gist.  Please look out for your child to bring home their math assessments.