Teaching Heart Blog

  What a school year this was…  After this year, I think I can do anything…  I got a second grade position for the year, a day before school started. In to an elementary  classroom I went (after being out of my own second grade classroom for 12 years)…  A totally bare classroom with nothing except the district programs to use.   After about seven hours of non-stop work (luckily I have years of teacher goodies created and purchased – plus teaching second grade all those years ago came in handy as well…  my millions of boxes came out of storage) and I... 

We are enjoying the last few days of second grade with a fun ABC countdown.  A small portion of our day is devoted to our letter countdown.  My kiddos are well behaved but this keeps them in check the last few days.  They know they have to so well during the day to get to the countdown fun.   My class is journaling about each activity on each day and the journals are turning out so cute…  I just love them.  They have a rubric they follow and the journal will be their final writing grade.  Have to share what we have so far. The write ups below explain what we did for each day! ... 

One of our most popular downloads is our summer buckets and in 2015 I added a few more printables to go with the glyph and writing activity!  You can view them by clicking here! The extra printables can be found here!  

There is lots to see in this post – scroll through for goodies galore… Hopefully you are driving successfully into your end of the year!  I just listed a new product that I completed with my second grade class (well actually three things – see below for the others).  The district I work in this year uses the Benchmark Literacy Series…  BTW, I have grown to love it!  Unit 8 of the series teaches about comparing and contrasting as a comprehension skill.  To sum up our learning, I created this craftivity for my students to complete! It is on TPT.  You can click here... 

I just finished two days of bubble lessons for a STEAM project my school is doing.  I uploaded my resources to TPT… Click here to learn more… This set contains lessons I used with my second grade class to complete a STEAM bubbles project on our bubbles countdown day. The lessons were done in two days (but could be extended to three if you choose to). You will receive two days of lessons plans with objectives, videos and pictures highlighting the lessons, links to other resources, printables for an anchor chart that goes with the lesson, and three activity sheets to use with the lesson. Some... 

  Here’s a perfect writing craftivity to go along with the Mystery Genre. I used this activity with my second graders in guided reading groups. Each group read a Cam Jansen mystery together. To summarize their story, they each created a top secret case file. That included clues they found while they read, a summary of the mystery, a magnifying glass showing a visualization of the story, and a detective card with their picture and thumb print. This file set includes all the materials you will need to create a top secret case file with each of your students. We added pictures to the files. ... 

Add a little spring fun to your lessons this week!!!  You can click here to purchase on TPT for only $3.50 - Print and be set for a spring review of nouns, verbs, and adjectives!!! I created this activity to encourage my second grade students to demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English grammar and usage when writing or speaking by guiding them in the creation of SPRING themed cinquains. A cinquain is a five-line poem that describes a person, place, or thing. In this activity your students will use nouns, verbs, and adjectives to create spring cinquians for display! Perfect grammar... 

What a fun creative writing experience for your students during the early days of March.  My second graders loved catching a leprechaun in their jars and writing a creative story about their imagined experience! You can get the printables to create these with your class too…   CLICK HERE This craft comes with six different leprechauns to choose from so each craft will look different. It includes a thinking sheet for your students to prewrite ideas on. It also includes a rough draft form as well as a good copy form. There are also three different jars to choose from. I laminated the jars... 

I took down the snowflakes and snowmen this week because this second grade teacher is done with winter!!!  Our math garden in the back of the classroom is so refreshing!!!  You can have one too!  You can download the printables to this craft on TPT by clicking here! How does our garden measure up craftivity -I had my second grade students complete this as a math center.   I can imagine it would work well in first and third grade as well.   You can see how I set up the center in the packet. Once the students have the craft put together they measure their two flowers (everyone’s flower... 

Here is an easy way to create a type of mailbox for students to use on Valentine’s Day. Have each student design a LOVE CRITTER baggie!!!   All you need to supply is a gift bag and the printables in this set. I set it up as a rotation during the week of Valentine’s Day. I use it as a center during literacy center rotations (There is writing involved!). You can see the printables for this fun project in my TPT store…  Click here to learn more about this Critter!!! Basically print the patterns. The only pattern I printed on different colored paper, was the body. The rest of the patterns,...