Practicing Reading Fluency with Piggie and Elephant

In 2nd grade reading fluency is a skill that really begins to develop as decoding smooths out and the students are able to read with more automaticity. Reading fluency isn't just automatically recognizing words though.  It also includes reading with expression.  Imagining what the character might be feeling and expressing that with our words makes our oral reading so much fun!  What better way to practice this skill than with the hilarious pair- Piggie and Gerald!  Pairs of students chose a book from this series to practice and read for the class.  We kicked if off with Mason coming in to demonstrate this skill by reading "Today I Will Fly!" with me.  We had a blast with this! 

Bee Ticket Choices

Throughout the last few months many students have earned all 8 punches on their Bee Tickets.  The students earn a punch for bringing in a completed reading log every Friday, and also 1 student is celebrated each day for demonstrating behaviors and choices from our 5 Bee Promise.  Once the ticket is filled up, the student can make a fun choice from the Best "Bee"havior Catalog.  Show and tell, bumper seats, and lunch in the classroom have been popular choices.  Below are a few pictures from some of the students' choices this fall.

Thanksgiving Fun

A few weeks ago we started a Thanksgiving writing project after reading the book "Turkey Trouble" by Wendi J. Silvano.  In this book the turkey doesn't want to become the Thanksgiving meal so he dresses up in many different disguises to try to trick the farmers.  The students chose a way to disguise a turkey and wrote a letter to the farmer for reasons that the turkey should not be eaten.  They worked on writing specific details to go along with the disguise.  We put all this all together in a class book that the students love to read!  This project dates back several years now, and the class loves going back and reading these booklets of disguised turkeys from previous classes!

Today we played Turkey Bingo, and we had 1 winner!

Happy Thanksgiving 2nd grade families!

Fall Trees

This week we finished up this beautiful fall tree art project.  I love this project so much because the colors are stunning and each project is unique in its own way!

Making our own Bar Graphs

Recently the students made their own bar graphs.  Each student chose a topic, polled everyone in the class to collect data on a tally chart, used the information to make the graph, and then analyzed the data by writing 3 true statements about the graph.  The students always love when they can incorporate math with movement and conversation!  Since making this graph, many students have continued to poll their classmates on different questions after their wake up work is done!