Flip Books with B, M, and E!

In writing, we are working on pulling all the wonderful writing techniques that we have learned all year together into well written stories. We use this flip books for several things in class and I thought they are the perfect way to demonstrate how to segregate the elements of the beginning, middle, and end of a story but also how they work together to make a whole story.

We started with drafting our stories in our journals. The draft is seperated into the beginning (including the main characters and setting),the middle (including the problem that the character faces), and the end (including the solution to the problem). The students would write a section of their story and check that it included all the nessacary factors and also that their writing had lots of details.

Next, when they had comleted their story and each section flowed together, they got two friendsto  help edit their writing. When the editing was finished, they were able to make their flip book.

Here is an example of the book that I wrote about our class pet, Ollie, and how he came to be apart of our classroom.

Yummy Worms - Illustrations by Erin Gentry

Setting up the drafting paper.

Reading the beginning section of the story.

The whole story together.

The title on the back. 

Becoming Authors

Our second graders have been hard at work publishing books. Earlier in the year, we read the book The Library Mouse and it sparked an idea in the minds of my second graders to create our own classroom library full of books that they have published themselves. Now we have a section in our library center dedicated to those books for the students to browse and enjoy during independent and buddy reading times.

The process started with writing a draft that included all the parts of a story. The students peer edited their writing and conferences with me to help prefect their ideas and grammar. With every student that peer edited their work, they had an objective. The first "friend" was supposed to help the writer add details and build better sentences. The second "friend" was supposed to help with spelling and grammatical errors. When they were finally ready to conference with me, their writing was pretty close to spot on. The editing was great practice for the writer and for the editor.

After the student conferences with me about their writing, they were able put their story onto their book and illustrate their writing. When they are finished, they added an About the Author page in the back and questions that someone could ask themselves or a buddy about their story after they were finished writing.

As you can tell, the process took weeks. Every child worked at their own pace (some are still finishing up) until their writing process was complete and they have a finished book to add to our library.

The students are so excited about reading each others books and having their books read by their peers.

Our Second Grade Author's Library Section

A few of the books that have been published. 

Meet Ollie the Hedgehog

A huge part of our classroom community is our class pet, Ollie. The kids are over the moon in love with him. Ollie always has a buddy during buddy reading time and a classroom full of helpers when it is time to clean out his cage. 

I had to think long and hard before deciding on a classroom pet. My number one requirement was that it was something that did not stink and was not very high maintenance. I also wanted an animal that the kids could interact with and could become part of our classroom. A hedgehog was the perfect choice. We are able to let him out to freely roam the classroom, but the kids are not tempted to touch him. It's a big deal when Ollie is let free to roam around the room. The kids know they have to be quiet and not make sudden movements so that they will not scare him. They get so tickled when he goes under our reading bench and I have to pull everything out to get to him. I hear them talk about adventures he is taking around the room and they make up stories to write about in their journal.

I am amazed to see how such an interactive pet has transformed my classroom. Kids who are reluctant to read love to pick out a book, sit beside his cage, and read to him. Some who often have a hard time thinking of topics to write about choose to write about adventures that Ollie may take or an informational text full of facts that they have learned about him though our research.We also get in as many read alouds featuring hedgehogs as we can throughout the year. 

Before getting Ollie, we researched the differences between hedgehogs and porcupines. They wrote facts from their research in their journals.