ABC Countdown

I can't believe that we are in the home stretch of the school year! What fun things do you have planned before the end of the year? A couple of years ago we started doing an ABC Countdown of activities for the last 26 days of school and tie in character traits as part of our Morning Meeting.

Here's a copy of my ABC Countdown that we're using this year! Click HERE or on the image to download it.

And here's a link to the song from Gracie's Corner on YouTube.

I'd love to hear about how you celebrate the end of the year!

Book Madness 2026

It's been SO long! After attending the VSLA Conference in Roanoke, VA, last week, I had time to sit down, without responsibilities, and reflect on what I've been reading to my students lately. I have an extensive classroom library and try to be very intentional with the books I read and am always looking for new books and/or ways to engage with my students to, hopefully!, read more on their own. So, with March Madness coming soon, I wanted to do a picture book edition and make Book Madness happen for my second graders.

I know that some teachers use books that they've already read to their students, but I knew I had SO many I still wanted to read before the end of the year, so I gathered 16 picture books that I hadn't yet read and made sure there was a mix of literary and informational texts.

Here's the books I came up with ...

and then how I matched them up ...

4 silly books

4 library books

4 spring themed books

and 4 books about inventors.

I then grabbed cover images and made them into 2 sizes - 1 for the first round and then a larger size for the next rounds ... and I have a "books we've read" wall that I clip up a book image with every book we read throughout the year so I used this size for 2 places.

Then I created my board and got it ready with the book images to use on the first day.

Click on the image above or HERE to get a copy of the board to print and use in your classroom!

Be sure to follow to see which books make it to the next round! Until then, happy reading!

Christmas Phonics Freebie!

Merry Christmas!

We had 2 days off of school this week for ice. Back for one day and then off for break! This was a quick activity that my students completed at the end of our reading block. The words are ones that we have either had in spelling or part of our phonics lessons. I didn't even print all of the ornament pictures - just displayed them on my Smart Board from my computer! Click on the image or HERE to download a freebie for your classroom.

Merry Christmas!

summer school part 2

Earlier this week I wrote about returning to school for a couple weeks of summer school. It has helped my teacher heart so much to be back!

summer school

Summer school.
Wait.
What?

Yep! Summer school! I have been back in the classroom for 2 weeks (thankfully just Monday-Thursday) for several hours a day. It's been great to be back on a schedule and to teach!

support for you

On these days when you're not sure how to proceed, I wanted to share some free things that I've added to my blog that you can send to your families or print to use at home. Please check out the freebies link at the top of the page. I have added 3 things there in the last week.

A new item that I had the chance to use for one day in my classroom before being shut down was this to practice 10 more, 10 less, 100 more, and 100 less. Prints great on colored paper and I did laminate mine, but that's not necessary.

Just provide your student with a paper clip to use the spinners and markers for the board. We played until we had 5 in a row. There are 4 different boards to download and use.

Best wishes to you!

Double Digit Addition

My second grade class has been busy solving two digit addition problems. They are such hard workers! I was blown away this week, watching one struggle and his team member leaned over his desk and walked him through step-by-step how to solve the problem. 

end of the year slide show music

Happy summer! Check out my post on Virginia is for Teachers blog for fun music, perfect for your end of the year slide shows!

Classroom Library Update

I've just finished reading Game Changer by Donalyn Miller and Colby Sharp. Wow. The book is packed full of ways to make books real and alive for your students ... how to update your classroom library ... finding newly published books to add to your library ... to finding ways to get books into the hands of your students and their families.

So check out these updates in not only my own classroom library, but also in my thinking about children and books.

Importance of School Attendance

We know as educators of the importance of school attendance. But what do your families know about it? For the last three years our school has had a school-wide push for attendance - not just being at school, but coming on time AND staying all day.

Nonfiction Text Features

I haven't met a group of students who doesn't love to read animal books. National Geographic books are some of our favorites in the classroom library. And Fly Guy has a great selection, but the absolute best are from the Who Would Win? series. 

I believe that my students in particular love them so much because it gives them a chance to "see" even if they have never been to a zoo or aquarium. I've been trying as much as possible to link our reading to science and social studies units. This particular nonfiction reading was for us to work on text features. 

This little booklet is perfect to use with a variety of shark nonfiction reading, which you probably already have in your classroom. Use articles from World Book Online for Kids or your favorite Nat Geo book.

 A snap shot of the shark captions page - match up a caption to the correct photo.

 And a look at the diagram page - label the shark using the correct information.

What do you use to teach text features? I would love to hear about it!

Number Sense {comparing numbers}

Number sense ... something so very important for our younger students to understand smaller numbers or else they won't understand much larger numbers.

Money!

As we wrap up this week before Spring Break (and try to cram every last bit of Easter themed activity possible!), we are also finishing our money unit in math.

We have been using these coin boxes to practice counting collections of coins and to support our money lessons. Second graders in Virginia are to count pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters to $2.00. The second part of our standards states that the second graders will compare amounts to $2.00. This is something that my students struggle with, especially the children who have a hard time correctly counting the amounts as they in some circumstances have to count 2 sets of coins and then compare them using greater than, less than, and equal to.

When I came to second grade from first grade (I did 2 years of first/second combo classes), I had a hard time finding materials to use to cover this, so I created my comparing money mini unit.

There are 2 sets of task cards with recording pages. This image is from one of the sets, which only require the children to look at a given amount and decide which is greater than, etc. The second set has 2 amounts to count before comparing.

Well, we still needed more practice. So this happened:
(and who can't pass up these cute unicorns?!)

here's the compare two sets of coins in which the amounts need to be counted first

 and the recording page for the cards (and there's an answer key included)

And if you click on one of the images from the unicorn set, you can download it for free! I hope your students have success at comparing money!

Double Digit Subtraction

A couple of posts ago I shared that my second graders were working on double digit addition and subtraction. Well, we are 4 full days into subtraction with borrowing. We do a quick review each day before beginning the lesson. 

Last week when I introduced this, we started using unifix cubes - our best friend!

First we built the number on top of the problem - 37.

When we saw that we couldn't take 8 away from 7, we borrowed from the tens and broke it up into 10 cubes.

Then we changed the numbers on the top of our problem to show what we have using the unifix cubes.

And now time to start subtracting! 

17 - 8 = 9

And 2 - 1 = 1

We have tried writing the problems on our own, but some of my children have sloppy handwriting and writing the problems on their own is challenging and frustrating, so I quickly put this together to help alleviate some of that frustration.

Check out this low prep double digit subtraction unit. 3 pages of just printables and 20 half-page colored cards with recording pages, perfect for a math center or use as part of your math groups!

Tracking Student Data

Four years ago in a faculty meeting my principal challenged us to find a way to have our students monitor their own progress. Having taught fourth grade for eight years before moving down to the primary grades (5 years in first, 2 years as a first/second combination, and now just in second), I knew it would be easier for older children to do this, but my first graders? Several teachers sat down and talked how we could do this. We knew the importance and that it would both motivate and challenge our students to work harder and push themselves in ways that we couldn't. But what were we to do with all of that data? Math standards from unit tests ... reading levels ... iStation reports ...

We decided charts would be the easiest for us to create. Our report cards are standards based for kindergarten through second grade, so a 4-3-2-1 vertical chart made the most sense to us. The first year we made math charts for first and second grades and had them in chronological order according to our pacing guide.

During the summer after that first year I wondered how I could add in spelling. That year I was teaching the combination class and the number of words on the tests were different, so I created different charts using the percentages that they could color in after the weekly tests.

With all that said, here's what we came up with.

These are my folders this year. (In my combination classes I had different color folders to keep them easily sorted.)

This is what the math standards charts look like. The SOL (Standard of Learning in Virginia) is listed at the top, along with what part of the school year we covered it. But our pacing guide changed over the summer after we had already copied all of our folders, so we left them for this year.

The green section was from one test - identifying ordinal positions and writing the ordinal position. I sometimes take summative grades that I use for my data folders in a large unit, but other times, in smaller units, I take just one for several parts of the standard.

Depending on how well they do on the summative assessments correlates with what is colored in on the chart.

When students do not show mastery of a skill, we pull something that matches the content and place in the back of their folder. That work is used to drive our intervention time one to two times a week as needed.

This is what the spelling sheets look like. At times it has been a real struggle to get the charts colored in each week due to time constraints. This afternoon when I was having mini conferences with my students to color in their charts from our test, several were excited that they had improved this week's score from last week's. It made me smile!

Here's a link to get the spelling charts to use in your classroom. There are 3 completed ones - with 10 words, 12 words, and 16 words - as well as a blank one to edit as you need.

Do you use data folders or charts? Pros and cons of them? Do you include something different in yours?

I will be honest - it's a lot of work at the beginning, but once you have it finished, you shouldn't need to change it (unless your pacing guide changes!) and not only is it a motivator for your students, but a great piece of information to use in parent conferences.

Until next time,