Come Be a Fly on My Wall!

Happy Sunday! I've reeeaaaallllly been looking forward to linking up with Jodi at Fun in First to showcase a typical day in my classroom!! Here's a sneak peek at a day in second grade...

Our day starts out with calisthenics at 8am...YAY ;) Afterwards, we walk back to our classroom and begin our academic day with our morning song and calendar. My scout for the week leads our calendar. They LOVE it since they get to be "teacher" for a bit. :)

After our morning routine (announcements, calendar, etc), we dive into our whole group language arts block at around 8:45. We work on dictation, word work, grammar, read our anthology & decodable story, and comprehension strategies together. 

During our language arts block, we often use our resource journals to take notes, analyze word patterns/grammar rules, or work on our inquiry question for that unit. My students get super excited when we get to use these...they think they're like high school students taking really important notes in their notebooks! :)

After ELA block is over, we launch workshop time. This gives me about 45-50 minutes to pull about 2-3 groups for small group while the rest of my students work independently on workshop centers and tasks. This is usually when they would work on my monthly themed centers too. Workshop is followed by our 40 (but really 30) minute lunch. I get to scarf enjoy my lunch with my teacher pals. ;)

Right after lunch, I pull my ELD groups for more intensive English Language instruction at their level. This week we worked on prefixes and suffixes. This lasts about 30 minutes everyday.

After ELD, we go right into whole group math instruction. We start out with a CGI (cognitively guided instruction) or common core daily math problem in our investigation notebooks. This lasts about 10 minutes. It's a quick math problem that gets my students thinking about various math strategies and using important academic vocabulary. Each student gets to solve the problem using any math strategy that works best for them. The key is getting them to justify their thinking by sharing how they solved it.

More math (after whole group lesson). We've been working on multiplication and division!

Our school uses Accelerated Reader as part of our daily SSR time.

Social studies instruction happens on Thursdays and Fridays. I didn't get a chance to take pictures of our current unit. :( Soweeeee!! This is typical of all the GLAD strategies I use during a unit. We just started our last unit on Friday. It's all about American heroes and inventors!

We're working on writing about the various life cycles of grasshoppers. This student was working on his flow map during writer's workshop.

In my classroom, I use Rick Morris' clip chart as part of my behavioral management. I've used it for years and really like how it focuses on moving up and good behavior, not so much negative behavior. 

After cleaning up, reflection time, and switching out math kits, folders, etc., we call it a day at 3pm! I hope you enjoyed being a fly on my wall! Link up and join the fun!

-Mrs. Rossi