It's ALMOST Christmas...What Am I planning for December?!

Well Thanksgiving & Black Friday are officially over and it's on to planning for Christmas! Christmas is by far my favorite time of year from decorating your house with a tree in every room, buying presents for people, to decorating your classroom for your little ones; how could you not enjoy it!  Every year my second grade team and I do themed weeks the whole month of December for our reading classes so I try to continue these themes throughout my math groups since we are ability grouped! If you have not checked out Allyson Sutton's (goingstronginsecond) creativity on TPT you need too! She is amazing! My team and I use her Polar Express and Grinch units every year!  Here is Allyson's Polar  Express & Grinch units and if you click on them, it will take you to her store! Our main standard this quarter is compare and contrast so we always watch the movie the first day and then talk about the different elements from the movie the next day. Once the students have a good understanding of the movie I then introduce the book and we talk about the story elements and see which aspects we can compare and contrast. Her unit has tons of activities from math to reading!!  I incorporate centers into my daily math routine and the ones in this unit are perfect and easiest enough the students can operate on their own!! 

    

Another person I absolutely love is Alisha from Missing Tooth Grins! Her math journals have completely changed the way I teach math. I found her math journals last year during the middle of the year and I couldn't imagine my math block without them! I teach our lower block of math and some days are more challenging than others. Alisha's math journals spiral all of the standards which is an awesome review for my students all year long! Her journals are a constant in my weekly center rotation. I very rarely use our resources from Envision because there isn't enough repetition for my students. If you are looking to step outside the box from your math series click the pictures below! I promise you'll love them! The other great thing about these journals is she has them for First and Second Grade! 

   

 

The HW Club!!

Hello All,  I'm extremely excited to begin this blogging adventure as Styling and Profiling in 2nd! This is my third year teaching 2nd grade and I have to say I'm still changing stuff daily! One of my favorite things I have implemented in my classroom is the HW Club! During my first year and half of my second year of teaching, I was noticing that the students weren't bringing back their homework. As I could have sent them to the HW table to complete it, I didn't really like doing that because I usually reviewed their homework in class, so they weren't being held accountable.  I was going over my students homework one day and it was like a light bulb went off! I had an empty bulletin board just staring me in the face, so I decided to make the HW Club right then! I teach both math and reading so I knew I needed to include both classes. I found two sets of reward sticker charts, added the students names, and explained the rules right then!  Every time the students return their homework, they receive a sticker and add it to their homework chart. This way the students are held accountable for returning their homework or not returning their homework. Once their sticker chart is full they receive a homework pass for One Night of NO Homework and a new sticker chart!  There has been a huge success rate with the return of their homework! The students get excited to put their sticker on their charts and get really disappointed when they don't receive a sticker.  Here is a picture of my current board right now!! You can see that some students have already received their 2nd chart! 

FIRST DAY BACK!!!

Well today was the first day back with students and it went AWESOME!! In my homeroom, I have 15 girls and 9 boys!! That is much different than the last two years where I have had more boys than girls!

I first started the day off by reviewing rules and having the students put their supplies away, taking attendance and explaining different items in the room. Then I got to do one of my favorite things as a teacher which is read children books! 

The book I read first was: Amelia Bedelia's First Day at School. My students loved the illustrations and quirky humor within in the book. The next book I started was Junie B. Jones The Stupid Smelly Bus. I have always been a huge fan of Barbara Park since I was in second grade so it's really neat to read these books to my students and see their enjoyment. 

I hope your first days go extremely well and you have a wonderful year! 

Fall Main Idea and Details!

If you're like me a part of you is thinking about how you're going to decorate your classroom, which centers your going to prepare, and what kind of new idea you're going to impliement. On the other hand you might be thinking, it's still summer vacation that's the last thing on my mind! Well I decided to join the #tptsellerschallenge and recreated my Fall Main Idea and Details. My students had a hard time last year understanding the MAIN IDEA! This packet hopefully will help them determine which is the Main Idea and which are the Details!

I've posted my newly resdesigned Fall Main Idea and Details in my TPT store and it's 50% off through the end of today! Here's a little preview of what it includes!

It's Almost Over....

WOW!! I can't believe school is almost over! What an incredible year it has been and I'm amazed at how many teachers I have connected with through Instagram! I thoroughly enjoy scrolling through my page and looking at all the wonderful ideas everyone has!

As I finish my second year teaching second grade I have more of a routine and system as to how I want to teach my math and reading series!! I can't wait to see what next year brings and what creative ideas everyone has to share!

Wishing everyone a wonderful last week or month....and I hope you all have an amazing summer!

-- Tiffany

A Peek at My Week!

It's getting close to the end of the year! I can't say that I'm not excited to enjoy sleeping in everyday and laying by the pool. However, there is still much to be learned in the last 5 weeks of school! Here is what I'm planning on teaching this week! The second page of my plans have the resources I'm using! :)

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5 Ways to Stay STRONG before Summer!

I don't know about you but I'm ready for summer to be here! It is getting that time of year when End of the Year testing begins and you know the students are just about done! They are squirmy and "dreaming" about being outside. However, we have about 5 weeks left!

I've linked up with Tiffany Gannon from The Lemonade Stand and Liana Davis from Reflecting with Mrs. Liana to share our ways of staying strong until school is out! Join us in sharing your ways!!

Horrible Harry and the Ant Invasion

Towards the end of last year my fellow teachers and I decided to try chapter books with our students. Since I teach the on-level group it wasn't a major challenge for the students with the right chapter book. This year, we decided to try it again with our new group of students. Our school library has a wide variety of class sets our teachers can choose from. For this week I decided to try "Horrible Harry and the Ant Invasion."

In my comprehension unit for this book study each chapter has Comprehension Questions the students can answer. I also created a table where students can create their own questions for each chapter, (that is a big standard we have been working on.) In addition, there is 3 activity pages for each chapter on Vocabulary. The students will get a chance to draw a picture for each word. I tried this with my own students last week and they loved it. It was a nice a change from just writing the definition. On the other hand, I feel like the students learning the definitions is important so I included a work page where they use a dictionary to find the definition. There is also a writing prompt for each chapter. We have been working on restating the question and writing details from the story so I chose a question students could expand on.

I hope you enjoy my new unit & be looking for others as I choose different chapter books from now until the end of the year! Just click the link below to find it in my TPT store! Enjoy your Sunday!

Horrible Harry and the Ant Invasion

It's back to work tomorrow....(SIGH!)

Well tomorrow ends my nice two week Christmas Break. Part of me is ready to get into a routine but  part of me is dreading setting that alarm!! I am excited to use my new purchases from my teachers friends! Below are some of the items I purchased while they were having awesome sales!

Math Centers have completed changed the way I conduct my math classes.I love Amy Lemon's math stations & Missing Tooth Grins Math Journals. My students get so excited using these Math Journals & Stations. They come up to me as soon as they get into the classroom and say, "Miss Strong, are we using our journals today?? Are we doing stations today?" To see them this excited about math makes me excited! Click each of the pictures to purchase these items for your own classroom!