Get Colorful with Astrobrights Paper

This post brought to you by Astrobrights Papers by Neenah Paper. All opinions are 100% mine.

I love colored paper! I always keep an ample supply on hand so my students will always have beautiful colors for all of their creative projects. Last year, we called one of my students the "Origami Master", because, when we had a little extra time, he would show us how to make cool things out of paper.

My favorite brand of colored paper is Astrobrights because the color is so brillant and there are 23 to choose from! This high qulity paper is great for art projects, but it is also perfect to use when you want to get some attention. As a teacher, I have been frustrated after sending home important information on white paper, only to find out it had been thrown away or lost in the shuffle of papers in the take-home folder. Astrobrights will stand out and not go unnoticed. Pick your favorite color and use it for your next flyer, field trip letter, party sign up, or anything else that you want to be seen! 

Now for something really terrific: Enter the "Give a Brighter Year" sweepstakes for a chance to win a $500 gift card for yourself and school supplies valued at $30,000 for your favorite school (K-8). How awesome is that? Just click on the link and  fill in the short questionnaire - it's just that easy!

I love all of the projects people are submitting on Astrobright's Facebook page! Anyone can participate! Just "LIKE" Astrobrights on Facebook page and click on the "Make Something Astrobrights" link to get started. Take their challenge, create something awesome, and you just might win a Visa giftcard!  

Get inspired and share your own ideas with the Astrobrights community via Twitter, Pinterest, and Facebook or other social networks using the hashtag #goastrobrights. I can't wait to see what my students and I come up with this year using beautiful and versatile Astrobrights paper!

Wonderopolis: A New Find!

Last night during #2ndchat, several of the participants suggested Wonderopolis for students. This morning I checked it out and thought it would be a great widget to add to our class blog. I like it because it focuses on one "wonder" a day, but the students can also click on the back arrow to look at previous "wonders". Wonderopolis is also a great site to suggest to parents so they can share learning experiences with their children at home. They also have a mobile app!

Learning is happening everywhere, all the time! We have bottled a little bit of that learning in each Wonder of the Day®. Experience a daily dose of time with your child to make the most of each and every moment together — learn something new, try out an idea, create a masterpiece, imagine possibilities. It’s easy. It’s fun. But the learning is big! http://wonderopolis.org/

One of the #2ndchat participants, Barbara @WonderPhillips, is a lead Ambassador for NCFL's Wonderopolis.org Wonder Year Adventure 2012 and has an entire blog devoted to "Wonders of the Day" called Wondering Through 2012.

I can't wait to try this out with my students. There are so many learning possibilities with this. I really love the idea of having Wonder Journals where students record their thinking about the Wonder of the Day.

The Wonderopolis widget can be embedded on your class blog. To get the code click HERE.

New School Year Resolutions

Here's a chance for you to set some goals for the upcoming school year and share them with the world! I am a big proponent of public goal-setting because it forces me to stick with them! Last year I set 3 goals and posted them on my blog. I also shared my goals with the entire staff at my school. Nothing like putting yourself under a lot of pressure...but that's how I roll best. So here's your opportunity to set some goals, share them with the rest of the world, and then go have an awesome year! 


Just write a blog post stating your goals and then click on the picture below to link up!

MY GOALS FOR 2012-2013

1.  IMPROVE UPON THE GOALS I SET LAST YEAR: Daily 5, Blogging, and connecting with the world. Last year I implemented some huge changes and the payoff was enormous! My students learned to be independent learners and thoroughly enjoyed The Daily 5. They also benefited from the the many contacts we made through Skyping and blogging. This year, my students will experience quad-blogging and more global interactions right from the start. I hope to do a "Skype Etiquette" session during the first week of school with another classroom. (Any takers?)

2.  LESS CLUTTER! I envy the teachers whose rooms look pristine all year long. When I look at my room in the afternoon, it looks like a tornado hit my desk because it tends to be the catch-all. My goal is to have a place for everything so that things don't just get thrown on my desk or on the floor behind my desk. I am skeptical about this goal, but I have seen a lot of great organization ideas on Pinterest that may help.

3.  BUILD STRONGER RELATIONSHIPS WITH MY STUDENTS: I sometimes feel that I miss out on opportunities with my students because I am too focused on the tasks at hand instead of what the students need. Taking time to really listen to my students will go a long way in helping build mutual trust and motivating them to work to the best of their ability.

WHAT ARE YOUR GOALS?

HearALL Assessment Recorder Giveaway!

I have been having so much fun blog hopping today. I haven't done this for a while and I am finding some great blogs are out there! Amanda over at Teaching Maddeness is giving away a HearALL Assessment Recorder - hop on over and enter to win!

$10 TpT Giveaway and Linky Party!

Jean over at Diving Into 2nd Grade is celebrating her first 25 followers by doing a  $10 Teachers pay Teachers gift certificate giveaway! If she gets 50 followers she'll sweeten the deal with a second $10 gift certificate! Head on over and give her a follow and join in on the New School Year Resolutions Linky Party too!

Chrysanthemum Activity for the 2nd Day of School

I usually read Kevin Henkes' Chrysanthemum on the second day of school because it's all about a little girl who loves her name, but when she goes to school, she encounters some unkind children who make her feel embarrassed about her name. This is a good book to teach tolerance, good manners, and kindness.  

To help learn and appreciate each other's names we sing the "Chicky Chicky Song". It's a really fun song that is fun to do even later in the year when you need to liven things up.

Another fun activity incorporates patterns. The students write their name continuously on a 10x10 graph and assign a color for each letter. Once the graph is completely filled in, the students will see the different patterns their names make.

Once the grid is completely filled in, the students cut it out and glue it to a colored piece of construction  paper. This is our first hall display for the year!

The example above is a 5-letter name, so the pattern is very easy to see. Students with longer names will have to wrap their names to the next line and it will take a little longer for them to see the pattern.

This 6-letter name has a more complex pattern that may take a little longer to see. Encourage students to keep going. Eventually, you will hear "Cooolllll!"

To download this activity page, please click HERE!

Using Blogging with The Daily 5

Last year, one of my goals was to implement The Daily 5 and The Daily Cafe in my classroom. I was very pleased with the results and how my students responded. I found that by following the routine as recommended in the books really helped my students become independent learners who all worked to the best of their ability.

1 teacher + 18 students with laptops = fun!

Another goal was to implement blogging. I was not sure how this was going to work with 2nd graders, but the second week of school, I checked out the portable laptop station from the library and jumped right in! It was hard for some of the students who had never used a laptop, but some of the others were very helpful in getting everyone where they needed to be. I used Kidblog  because I was able to set up a separate blog for each student. They used their student i.d. as the password, so it was very easy for them to log on.  After a few sessions with the laptops, most of the students were comfortable with how it all worked and were doing short, little posts about themselves.

Anchor charts

When I felt that they were ready to blog on their own, I introduced the "Work on Writing" component of the Daily 5. During work on writing, they write in their notebooks using the writing process: Prewrite, Rough Draft, Revise and Edit, Proofread, and Publish. When they got to the Proofread stage, they made an appointment to meet with me. They read their work and I listened. When finished, I asked them what changes they could make to their story. Most of the time they were able to pick out spelling and grammar errors, but I guided them in making other revisions that were appropriate for their age level and ability. Once all revisions were done and ready to publish, they moved to the computer to type it all in. At first, it took a long time for the students to type their posts, but by the middle of the year, most were very familiar with the keyboard and were able to get their posts done more quickly. Some even figured out how to do fancy, colored fonts.

This handy tool helps keep track of where each student is in the  writing process.

Once we got to the point where the students chose their Daily 5 round, using blogging for "work on writing" worked perfectly. Since we had three desktop computers, I stopped using laptops because the carts took up so much space in my room. Also, since the students were all at different stages of the writing process, three computers worked out fine. Sometimes the students were so in to their writing and blogging that they wanted to choose "work on writing" more than once per day. I did not usually allow this unless they were really close to finishing. 

Students engaged and blogging independently.

When the students finished their posts, they hit the "submit for review" button. I received an email notifying me that a blog post was ready for my review. Generally, I would just look it over and publish it. I am not looking for perfection, I am looking for good, quality work that demonstrates the students' best effort. They are motivated to do their best because they know they have an audience that includes other teachers, administrators, friends, and parents. 

Sample blog post

When I set up our Kidblog last year, I kept it password protected because I wasn't sure how the parents would respond and I wanted to make sure that I was taking all safety precautions.  This year, our blogs will be open so that classrooms around the world can visit and comment. I have it set up so I can moderate all posts and comments. I am looking forward to introducing a new group of 2nd graders to the world of blogging!