Mrs. Short's Second Grade

Yesterday we had our writing celebration with Mrs. Laidlaw’s and Mrs. Taylor’s classes. We meet in the Media Center and were put into groups of 3, one student from each class. We took turns reading our reviews to each other. When we were done, we got to enjoy some pretzels.

Today we learned about similes and how to use them in our writing. We read a book called, Crazy Like a Fox, a Simile Story and watched a video on BrainPop Jr. We also wrote a simile and put it with a picture in an app called Skitch on the iPads. Watch for a slide show of them coming soon.  Here is a cool simile video I found last year.

Today we had our first writing celebration. We have been writing during writer’s workshop since the beginning of the year. Student’s picked their favorite story to “fix up and fancy.” During the celebration students took turns showing their covers, reading their titles, and reading their favorite part. Then we broke off into groups of three. In our small groups, we got to share our entire story. Finally, we got to drink some juice and eat some cookies. Great job everyone!!!

Last week we learned another aspect of the Daily 5. We began “Work on Writing.” During “Work on Writing” students are writing independently around the room about what they choose to write about. We started off  just writing in our reader’s response notebooks. The students were given an activity ring to keep in their book baskets. On the ring are 12 ways to respond to texts. We had learned 3 of them; story map, favorite part, and beginning, middle, end. We did an example for each activity together as a class last week. This week they will pick one of the three activities and write about a book that they have read from their book baskets. Students wrote at their desks, but will eventually be allowed to sit anywhere in the room and will have a choice about what they are writing about. Each day we have been building stamina, and are already up to 20 minutes!!

Today we got to decorate our treasure books. We brought in stickers, pictures, and words to glue on our notebooks. These will be our writing notebooks. We will be putting all of our “treasured” stories in them. We are so excited to start using them. Here are some pictures of us decorating them. If you would like to see a picture of us with our finished products, click on Treasure Books, over on the left hand side, under pages.

Last week we worked on Ideas in writing. We have been learning how to come up with writing ideas, and then how to keep our writing narrowed down to a specific topic or idea. We read a story called, The Best Story by Eileen Spinelli. In the story, a little girl is trying to write the best story ever. She goes around asking her family what makes a good story. They all have different ideas of what makes a good story and they all tell her to add different things, such as humor and romance. Finally, she asks her mom what makes a good story? Her mom tells her that a good story comes from your heart. Today we talked about that, and then we each made our own “heart map”. Inside a big heart, we wrote down things that are important to us and close to our heart. We also drew some little pictures. Below are a few examples of our “heart maps.” Click on one to see a bigger picture of it.

Last week we had a writing celebration. We picked our favorite story to publish. We fixed and fancied it up. We picked our favorite sentence or two to read to the entire class. Then, we got into small groups and read our entire story. When we were done, we had cookies and juice.

Today we learned how to use alliteration in our writing. Alliteration is the use of words with the same initial letter or sound. We read a book called, Willie’s Word World. Tomorrow we will read a book called, The Big Book of Absolutely Animalistic Alliterations.  After reading the story, we practiced making our own sentences using alliteration. Here are some samples of the sentences that we came up with.

Bob broke his bones by the boat. By Brett

Lilly licked little Lexie. By Miranda

Doug’s dog digs dots. By Aubree

Will’s walrus waves to winter. By Nathan

Andrew and Andy ate an apple. By Camryn

Five frogs fiercely flipped. By Cede

Hilarious Henry hurried home. By Rakiya