Election Process!

After we wrap-up our Pumpkin Study tomorrow my kiddos and I are going to start talking about elections.  It reminded me that I wanted to share my unit  The Right to Vote: The History of the American Election Process.  It teaches students about the election process as well as the  history of voters rights in the United States. I planned the unit to meet the Second Grade Common Core Reading Standards RI. 2.3. (Describe the connection between a series of historical events, scientific ideas or concepts, or steps in technical procedures in a text. ) My kiddos aren't quite ready to tackle this yet (I taught it around Presidents Day last year) but 3rd-5th grade teachers could easily use it in their classrooms for the upcoming election.

Included in the unit:
-Teaching Guide
-7 Worksheets/Extension Activities
-Assessment Booklet & Rubric (Students summarize information from key points in history)
-Timeline Header and Pieces

You click on the picture to check it out! 

My kiddos will be learning basic information about Presidents, Elections and Voting using a variety of resources I've collected over the years and the Scholastic Election magazines my school provided (which I love!).  One of the great free resources I've found this year are these two BrainPop Jr. videos:

Presidents:
http://www.brainpopjr.com/socialstudies/government/president/

Rights and Responsibilities: http://www.brainpopjr.com/socialstudies/citizenship/rightsandresponsibilities/

What are doing to gear up for Election Day?

All About Plants!

We just finished up our All About Plants! unit and in order to review for our test we played Jeopardy.  This was fun way to review for the test and it got all of my students talking and working together to figure out the answer.  The group with the highest number of points at the end won a small prize (the real prize was knowledge of course :)

You can get the file here.  

Second Grade Super Stars Freebie!

I am finally back and refreshed and rejuvenated after our week long Fall Break! After a quite and calm week in the Smoky Mountains I think that I'm going to like teaching at a year round school! The fall break came just at the right time and I feel ready to tackle Quarter 2.   Since its been soooo very long since I have posted I am going to update y'all on some of the things we've worked on in Writing.

Here is a picture of our Easy as P.I.E bulletin board along with our Even and Odd street from The Teacher Wife.  The board isn't the cutest but I was so proud of my students.  Their work turned out great and they had a really good understanding of the 3 different types of writing we focused on.  You can grab the papers for free here  and read more about Easy as P.I.E here.

Here are examples of all three: Persuasive, Informational and Entertaining

Next up we are working on our Second Grade Super Stars! interviewing unit.  

Students will be paired with a "famous" second grade partner and both will take turns playing the part of journalist and famous person being interviewed.  I've seen a lot of units on TPT where students do this at the beginning of the year but I couldn't find any that had students creating their own questions.  We spent a lot of time after Easy as P.I.E. learning the different between a statement and a question and I really wanted the project to be more rigorous for my students.  So in this version students are the ones who develop the questions they wanted to ask their "famous interviewee"!  We haven't finished the project yet but so far my kiddos have done a great job developing questions and follow-up questions for one word answers.  Having the students develop their own questions should also make our Authors Celebration a lot more interesting since every interview will be a little bit different. I'm excited to find out more about all my Second Grade Super Stars!  You can grab the writing papers here for free!