Using Mini-Lessons to Revamp Reading Instruction

Hi all! It's Courtney from Swimming into Second. I'm dropping by today to tell you about how I've revamped my reading instruction this school year.

This year, my district got a new reading series. I'm sure you know how that goes but I felt like I was drowning in materials last year. I'm happiest teaching with picture books and coming up with my own lessons. So at the end of last year, I decided that I needed to make a change to save my sanity. 

Around this time last year, I decided to ditch the reading series (for the most part) and do my own thing. I found a book that I love in my classroom library. 

If you've never read "Arnie the Doughnut" by Laurie Keller, you really need to check it out. She also has a new series of chapter books featuring Arnie that my students love.

So I pulled out this book and I thought, "What can I do with it?" I came up with a lesson on character traits.

Before reading the book, I cut out some doughnut circles from some brown construction paper. As I read, I stopped after every few pages and had my students come up with character traits to describe Arnie. Then, they wrote these down on the doughnuts and we taped them to our anchor chart.

After the whole group lesson, I gave my students a brown circle for their doughnut and had them glue it in their reading journal. Then, they wrote character traits for Arnie around the doughnut and decorated their doughnut to look like Arnie.

I love how these turned out. So cute and my kiddos loved this lesson!

I made this lesson with some added printables into a freebie for you. Click on the image to download.

If you like this, I've also made some mini-lesson packs out of the resources I have for Reading Street. If you've bought my Reading Street pack, you already have these but I wanted to make these available for those who don't use Reading Street.

Have a great weekend!

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Teaching Types of Sentences

Hi! This is Courtney from Swimming into Second. I'm stopping by today to share a book that I recently found to teach different types of sentences. I ordered this book at the end of last school year and just remembered that I have it. #toomanybooks

 

I have recently just finished teaching the 4 different types of sentences and I thought this book would be a great review. I love that the characters in each book only say a certain type of sentence and their names are related to this. For example, Declara only says declarative sentences.

For our review, I read my students this book. Then, I pulled sentences from the text and typed them up without punctuation marks. In groups, the students had to add the correct punctuation marks to the sentences and then glue them on a piece of chart paper.

Declarative sentences and Interrogative sentences are on the other side of the paper.

This was a great review of the sentences and I heard some great discussion going on about why the sentences had to have certain marks.

I have these sentences available as a freebie for you. Click here to grab the freebie.

There are a few other books in this language series that you also might be interested in. You can check them out below.

 

If you enjoyed this post, I would love it if you would leave me a comment or come visit me on my blog.  Have a great day!

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Spring Fling Freebies Continued

Hi everybody! It's Courtney from Swimming into Second. Well, guess what? The freebie fun is not over. I'm here today to share another freebie with you. I've been loving all these spring freebies because, well, I love spring. My allergies do not but that's okay. Since I live in the allergy capital of the United States, this is just a part of life. (I'm not even kidding about this. There was a study and everything... haha. Here it is. )

 I decided to make a brand new center and offer it up as a freebie. I know my students need some help with prefixes so I hope this helps you out too. Click on any of the images to download.

In case you missed it yesterday, some of the ladies at Owl-ways Be Inspired are giving away one of their great resources. You can check it out by clicking here.

Thanks for stopping by!

Check out the links below for more great spring resources.

An InLinkz Link-up

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Winter Games Freebie - Main Idea Challenge

Happy Thursday! This is Courtney from Swimming into Second. I'm stopping by to bring you another Winter Games freebie. I hope you have enjoyed this week on Owl-Ways Be Inspired. I've really loved all the freebies.

This week, my kiddos and I have been working on main idea. Well, at least for the 2 days we were in school before the snow storm arrived. I made a Keynote that introduce the task to my students.  After I had shown my kiddos how to find the main idea and details and they helped me find it in a text, I had some breaking news come in.

The pictures below were part of my Keynote. I had the text zoom in like a text message and the kids loved this. 

I put my kiddos in teams for the week. We are really working on teamwork and getting along. We do group work all the time and it never fails that someone doesn't get along with another person in their group. Ugh! Drives me crazy! Anyway, I decided to let them earn gold medals if their group worked together during the week.

The slide below shows them what I expect them to do to earn their medals.

Each group was named after sports that are in the Winter Games. At the end of the day, my kids got their gold medals if they met my 3 expectations. So far, so good.

On the first day of the challenge, my kids read about the sports that their group was named after. The Ski group read about freestyle skiing, the Sleds group read about the luge and the bobsled, the Skates group read about speed skating, and the Sticks group read about hockey and curling. 

On day two, the students got a set of cards and they had to find out which was the main idea and which card had the supporting details. I made 4 sets of cards (one for each group) and then we rotated so they had to do 2 sets of the cards. We will do the other two eventually when we head back to school after this snow.

For your freebie, I have made the cards into a pack for you. I've included 2 versions of each set of cards so you can choose what better matches the ability of your kids. The recording sheet is also included. Click on any of the images below to grab the freebie.

If you are looking for my Winter Games activities, check out the links below.

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Getting your Classroom Management Mojo

Hi! I'm Courtney from Swimming into Second.

I'm joining you today to bring you some classroom management ideas. I don't know about you but classroom management is always an area that I am constantly tweaking. 

This year, I started teaching using the Whole Brain Teaching method. I absolutely love this! I am still trying to implement some of the ideas but the classroom rules are amazing. My kiddos learned them so well and were singing the rules to the entire school. 

I found a great video of the rules that I used to help me the first few weeks of school.

She seems so amazing!

I am all about giving students responsibilities in second grade. Each student has a job in my classroom. In order to get a job, he or she has to apply.  I use a job application from Amanda Nickerson's Economics unit each month. I love it because it makes them explain why they deserve the job that they are applying for and they usually have some pretty funny responses.

Click on the image to view her blog post.

I have my jobs posted in my classroom and I only change them at the beginning of the month. I just can't remember to change them every week and I don't really feel like there's a need.

 Here's my job board before I hung it up. I used small sticky pockets from Michaels for the students' names. This makes it so easy to change out the names.

I have the job titles as a fan freebie on my Facebook page. Click here or on the picture above to get a copy. Remember that you must be a fan first.

Another thing that has made my life so much easier this year is my Morning Routine printables and my Dismissal Routine printables. I feel like when the morning starts rough, it makes your whole day go down hill. These really help the kids know exactly what to do and leaves you time to handle things like attendance, homework, folders, and all those morning tasks.

The Dismissal Routines help dismissal go much smoother and keeps the kids more on track. I feel like they move much faster when they don't have to always ask what comes next. This leaves me a little extra teaching time that I used to spend on getting ready to go home.

You can find both of these printables in my TPT store.

What's your top classroom management tip? I would love to read your comments on this.
Have a fabulous weekend!

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