Rainbow Verb Clouds

Throughout the current unit in our Reading Street Program our second graders have been learning about verbs. Students have discovered that verbs describe actions and they change depending on if they happened in the past, present, or the future. For example, students know that they would add an “ed” to “call” if it happened in the past or they would add an “s” to “call” if it is happening in the present. In order to practice this skill, we created something called “rainbow verb clouds”.

Each student was given a different verb such as “bake” or “dance”. First, students were responsible for drawing and cutting out a cloud on a white piece of paper and writing their verb on the cloud. The next step in these verb clouds was writing their verb in the past, present, and future tense on different colored strips of paper. After writing each verb tense, they were responsible for writing a sentence using each of these verb tenses on different colored strips of paper. For example, if a student had the verb “bake” he or she would write “bakes” for present tense and write an example sentence like “She bakes muffins today for dinner.” Students enjoyed building their own colorful clouds and thinking of sentences using these different verb tenses. Today these “rainbow verb clouds” are hanging around our classroom, bringing a bright pop of rainbow color to our day.

Compound Word Concoctions

Just this past week, second graders were learning a new concept through our Reading Street curriculum: compound words. Throughout the week, students were spelling, reading, and forming compound words in multiple activities in the classroom. One of these last activities was by far the most fun for the students. We liked to call it Compound Word Concoctions.

In this activity, each student in the classroom was given a different compound word, such as “butterfly” or “pancake”. Their job was to show these compound words as two separate words and one whole word through pictures. For example, given the compound word “ladybug”, the student would separate the word into two words, “lady” and “bug”, and draw a picture to go along with these words. After breaking the word apart, they would put it back together to make “ladybug” again and draw the picture for this compound word. Students truly let their artistic talents shine through in this activity and they enjoyed putting creative touches to their pictures.

These Compound Word Concoction pictures are now decorating our hallway window. Feel free to come and check out the creative compound word talents of our second graders!

Craft Day

The Friday before Christmas break, our second graders, along with the rest of the students at Bethlehem School, had the opportunity to participate in a whole school craft day! Each of the teachers in the school prepared two crafts and the students had the chance to decide which crafts they would like to make. Students had two hours to walk throughout the school and make crafts, bringing a small cardboard lid to hold their many goodies throughout that time. If students became tired and needed a break from craft making, they could go into the youth room to have some popcorn and watch a movie while they relaxed.

The students loved walking throughout the school and choosing which crafts to make. They were so proud to take home all of those craft goodies after school that day and I know that they couldn’t wait to go home and show their goodies to their families!