Nouns, Nouns All Around!

Right now we are learning all about nouns!  Honestly, we find this so much fun (as nerdy as that sounds!)  There are just so many fun activities and ways to teach parts of speech that we are constantly coming up with more and more ideas!  We watched a Brainpop, Jr. movie about nouns (on our smartboard) to introduce the topic, they can't get enough of Annie and Moby (and neither can we)!  If you haven't checked out Brainpop you really should, there are a ton of topics and subjects and they are all aligned with the state standards so you can search them by topic or by standard.  They have easy quizzes and hard quizzes that you can take with your class after the video as well as follow up activities and practice pages.  You need a subscription to use most of the resources but some are free.  Here is a link in case you are interested in checking it out...

Mrs. Biel also found a great song to help the students memorize the definition of a noun.  It's pretty catchy if I do say so myself :)  The kids really enjoyed it, they have been singing it all week!  Maybe you can use it in your classroom!  We play it on the smartboard and give the students the lyrics to take home with them....

Last but not least, we have our noun centers.  We came up with these a few years ago and they turned out really cute!  We have five different centers and they are differentiated for the students.  The first center is an I-Spy Nouns: Write the Room Center.  

We usually only put two to three students at this center because having too many students wandering around the room at once gets a little crazy.  

The second center we have is a noun sort.  The students cut out the nouns and glue them under the appropriate category (people, places, things/animals).  

Center #3:  Mrs. Frost's mom is very crafty, and she made this board a few years ago.  It has labeled pictures and a Noun Board with headings: People, Places, Things/Animals, Not a Noun.  The students have to identify the picture and velcro it to the board under the correct heading.  They also have to record each of them onto their recording sheet.  Here is a picture of the students in action.  

Center #4:  Noun Scattergories

We have dice with different letters on each.  The students have a recording sheet with a place for the letter and four boxes under each.  They take turns rolling the dice to come up with a letter.  They record the letter and then have to think of four nouns starting with that letter and write them on their recording sheet.  Here are some pictures...

Our last center is our favorite.  We ordered these paper bodies a few years ago and weren't sure exactly what we were going to use them for, but we found something!  These actually serve a dual purpose.  We use them as a noun center.  We have the students label all the nouns on the bodies (i.e. shoulders, eyes, legs, thigh, foot, toes, etc.).  We make sure to remind them to keep it appropriate, not that we need to of course ;)  We also have the students put their names on the back of their "bodies" and we use them when we get to verbs.  They also use these when we get to verbs.  They record the verbs for each body part on the back (i.e. kick, throw, digest, chew).  Here is a picture of an example...

We have follow up worksheets for each of these centers.  These are all different levels so this is another way we differentiate the work at each center.  The students did such a nice job with all of these!  What are some ways you teach nouns in your classroom?  Do you have any good center ideas to add?

Fire Safety Month

October is Fire Prevention Month.  Every year the local fire department comes and teaches the students fire prevention and fire safety.  They also bring some of their firemen/women, fire trucks and equipment to our school for a demonstration.  This year we were extra lucky because our student, Paul's dad volunteers at the Scullville Fire Co. and he came to do the presentation!  Paul helped his dad by showing students how to stop, drop and roll, crawl through smoke and test a door to make sure it's not too hot to touch!  He did such a good job of demonstrating in front of all those people!  He even had his very own fireman uniform with his name on the back.  The students got to see what firemen look like with all of their equipment on (which inevitably scares quite a few kids every year!), see the fire truck spray water out of it's hose, just like it would if there was a real fire and they also got a tour of the fire truck.  We really appreciate the fire department taking the time to present at our school.  They do such a great job!  Here are some pictures from our Fire Safety Assembly...

Addition Fun!

We just recently finished up our chapter on addition.  Our goal is to try and get the students to become less dependent on a number line.  We have been practicing the “counting up” strategy instead, and we have also been memorizing our doubles facts.  To use the "counting up" strategy, students slap their lap on the first number and count up from that number until they get the answer.  Once they get the hang of it they usually become less reliant on their number lines.   To encourage students to memorize their facts, and become a little quicker solving them, we have been playing “Around the World Addition.”  Games are always much more motivating than just pencil and paper worksheets, and much more fun too!

They also learned to solve addition problems with three addends.  Ms. Rosenberger used ice cream scoops to demonstrate the steps in solving this type of problem.  When all else fails food always gets their attention! 

Their ice cream cones turned out adorable and they had a great time making them and learning how to add three numbers.  J

Happily Ever After...

We are so happy to announce that Miss Thomas has tied the knot! On Saturday, September 29^th Miss Thomas became Mrs. Frost.  She celebrated on a beautiful day with her family, friends, co-workers and even a few of our students.

Our class made her a special book while she was out titled, “Our Wishes for the Mrs.” It made her smile and laugh out loud! 7 year olds certainly have a way with words, and kid spelling is always entertaining! 

Back to School Night

So Back to School Night, or Open House as some schools call it, can be a stressful night for teachers. Here in room 11, we like to keep things fun! It is a time to meet our students’ parents and show them just a little bit of who we are and what we will be doing with their children this year. It is a time to show our creative side and give the parents a sneak peek into their child’s school experience inside our classroom. Here are few things that take the stress out of the night for us. First, it helps to think of a theme for the night. I just happened to find these cute little parent gifts to put on the desks as a thank you and, our theme was born.

Packages of popcorn with this cute card stock label were a great thank you to the parents for “popping in” to our back to school night and a great inspiration for our movie inspired theme.

Continuing with your theme, you can have your students create original art work for their parents to take with them. This way they have something to document the beginning of their child’s school year (handprints and/or photos are great). As a teacher they are easy to do, and as a parent they make great keepsakes to look back on! Display their work in a fun way so that the parents can see their great work, and know that you are just as excited about their projects as they are.

Our big marquee sign with the Title “A Year to Remember” was the perfect way to display our students self written bio’s that we knew their parents would enjoy reading.

We even did a version of the Hollywood Walk of Fame on the floor leading up to our classroom door.

This worked out great! Not only did this display get a lot of attention, we also managed to give parents a photo of their child with their handprints to document their start of second grade!

Don’t forget to do something inside your room too! I try to always have something that will make the parents feel like their children are right there with them! We try to create something fun that the parents will enjoy seeing and or doing. I learned from several teachers (when I started teaching) that it is always fun to have the parents find their child’s desk. You can use clues that the students leave on their desk, you can make paper bodies of the students to help them, or you can do a little of both. We like to give our parents written hints as well as visual. We have our students make foam faces that look like them and then place a face on each of their seats. In addition, the we have the students complete a "Who am I?" page that gives clues to parents in order to help them find their child’s seat in our room. These serve and the duel purpose of covering their name tags so the parents can't peek! :)

With the help of our clues, and the sometimes uncanny resemblance of their foam faces, parents were easily able to find their little ones' seats in the room. All while having some laughs along the way!

Making your presentation fun is another way to relieve some stress. It’s important to remember that Back to School Night is not parent teacher conference night. This is a night to let your students’ parents know a little bit about you, and what to expect of their child this year. 

We use a PowerPoint presentation to help keep us on point, and to ensure that we don’t miss any important information. We add a little music to make it fun, we stop and talk (we make sure to not read the slides, but just talk about them as we go). We also like to feed our parents. Parents are just like kids, they are usually a whole lot nicer when they are not hungry! They love to munch on goodies like the soft pretzel tray that Miss Thomas brings every year, or some good old fashioned home-made cookies. 

This year’s Back to School Night was a success for us. We had a GREAT turnout and enjoyed meeting all of our students’ parents, and even got a few visits from some former students’ and some former parents. I even had a visit from a former student who is now in high school! Wow, that makes me feel old!

We hope that you have a great Back to school night too. Please share any ideas that you do to make this night a fun one!