End of Year Rewind, Top 5 Projects, & Some Giveaways!

Those last few weeks of school are always such a whirlwind!  We've been out since
the end of May and I'm just now catching my breath!  I had to do some dreaded bathing suit
shopping as soon as school was out, then we headed to Los Angeles for a mini family reunion
and to celebrate my niece's high school graduation. We had a such great time and it was so nice
to see everyone. I could really get used to the beautiful weather in Southern California!
We arrived back home to Phoenix to 108 degrees!

Here's a little rewind of some of the things we did in my classroom during those last weeks of school....

We talked a lot about the goals we set at the beginning of the year and reflected on our learning and
our accomplishments....and boy did we do a lot!  As we looked back over the year, my kiddos
chose something they were particularly proud of that they had accomplished during the year.
They made superhero booklets of themselves and inside wrote about what they had
accomplished, how they developed their "superpower" and why they were so proud of it.

During our last week of school one of my amazing parent helpers put together some
end of year gifts from my I Learn! What's Your Superpower? bundle. Each student got a
book and these cute bookmarks to remind them to read over the summer!

I also gave them these little treats.

On our last day I gave each student an award.  I've never done end of year awards before
but I definitely will from now on!  It meant so much to each child when they received
their award and the rest of the class clapped and cheered!  My sweet friend Jamie Rector
sent me these adorable end of year achievement awards and you can find them {HERE}

Every Friday my kiddos write a letter to their parents describing what they learned in 

school during the week. It's been a wonderful way for students to really master the correct way

to write a friendly letter and our parents just love them!  Mom or Dad writes back on the other

side of the page and each student has a file folder where they file and keep their letters until 

the last week of school.  I bind these little treasures into a book for students to take home 

at the end of the year.  These letters make perfect a addition to a student's writing portfolio,

and it's really a great way to be able to see their growth.

My friend Maribel from Learning in Wonderland is so the crafty! You really should check out
her blog to see all of her wonderful projects and crafty amazingness!  We used her adorable
writing activity, Owl-ways Remember,  to make these precious little owls and
write about our second grade memories.

I usually start sending some desk contents home a couple of days before school is out.  I get brown bags with handles from the grocery store and line them up against the wall.  As I take things down

 and pass out completed projects students add them to their bags to 

take home on the last day.  We do a big end of year open house so there are usually

a lot of projects to go home!

I'm linking up with my sweet friend Maribel from Learning in Wonderland to show you our

Top 5 classroom projects!  I told you she was crafty! 

It's really hard to narrow down to 5, but these are 5 projects

my class really loved doing this year! Be sure to click on the button below to stop by and find 

some ideas for your classroom for next year!

Click{HERE}to see more *APPLE LOVE*

You can find this activity {HERE}

Click {HERE} for more Pigeon fun!

Click {HERE} to see our Stellaluna projects

Click {HERE} to see my class decorating for data

Before I go I want to tell you about two great giveaways! Click on the button and be

 sure to stop by The Hands-On Teacher in First for a Beat the Heat Summer Giveaway!

And be sure to check out Second Great Nest's I'm Wild About Blogging giveaway! 

click on the button to enter to win three HUGE prize packs!

Gift Tag Freebies for Parent Helpers and Teacher Friends

I've had the most wonderful parent volunteers this year and gave them these little 

thank you gifts. Honestly, I would never make it without them!

I found the the ribbon and flower at Michael's craft store.  The tumbler and 

million dollar mints are from Dollar Tree. Simply tie the ribbon around the tumbler and hot

glue the flower on. I taped the tag to one of the flower petals.

I also made these:

Graphics by Miss Tiina      Font by Hello Fonts

I purchased all of this from Dollar Tree!

Be sure to ask if you don't see what you need.  They sometimes keep these in
several places. I've found the mints in the candy section and the wedding section and
the flower ties in the gift wrap and baby shower sections. I found the tumblers on a
display at the front of the store.  I simply tied the ribbon around the cup and threaded
one of the ribbons through a hole I punched in the tag.

 You can download the tags {HERE}


At the end of the year, squirrelly kids mean squirrelly teachers!
I made these little gifts for my teammates and our office staff.
I found the Zero bars at Quick Trip.

Graphics by Ashley Hughes & Krista Wallden       Font by Hello Fonts

Download the tag {HERE}

I hope you can use these to thank your friends and helpers!

Teaching with Tomie dePaola Books Part 4: Responding to Literature

Graphics by Lisa Parnello & Sonya DeHart 

As we transition to Common Core and implement new writing frameworks 

in my district our students are learning to use the writing piece of Thinking Maps  

to organize and plan their writing.  

Teaching students to write a response to literature has been our focus this quarter. 

After reading Strega Nona Meets Her Match we wrote a character analysis of 

Strega Amelia.  I asked my students which book and character we should choose and 

hands down it was this one! Guess why?  I wish I could say it was deeper than this, 

but it's because she dresses fancy and wears makeup! And they love that she's sassy!

They've noticed that many of Tomie dePaola's characters have little black dots for eyes.

Except Strega Amelia....  She has fancy blue makeup on! 

I guess you just never know what's going to make an impression!

We talked a lot about this character and reviewed her relationship with

Strega Nona.  We thought back to telling events from other stories in the series 

that might give us some insight into Strega Amelia's character.

In their journals, students made these maps describing the character and gave 

reasons for their word choices. 

As students shared their ideas I recorded them on a class chart.

Next, I had students fold a piece of  legal size paper into 4 parts and choose 

markers in 5 colors to color code each step. This is a 3-4  day process so 

I have students make a little tally mark in the top corner of the page with their colors so 

they remember which ones they should take out the next day. From here it is an

 "I do" then "You do" process. I first modeled each step then it was their turn.

This is the first time my second graders have written a character analysis so we started 

very simple.  I wrote a topic sentence that introduced the character then

 chose three adjectives I wanted to tell more about and recorded them in this map.

Students used their own  bubble maps and did the same. 

We added details under each description that we wanted to include 

in our writing. Lastly, we wrote a closing sentence that included a feeling,

 a personal connection, or an opinion about

the character. We color coded  these as we went along. 

 Next, we used the same color coding to write a rough draft. 

Here we added transition words and any changes.

I had originally planned for us to publish our writing in these little Strega Nona houses, 

but when my kiddos saw these they begged me to put our letters 

 to Tomie dePaola, written the previous week, inside Strega Nona's house

and mail them to him. So, that's just what we're going to do!

We've been publishing one piece of writing each quarter in these seasonal

trees from my September Writing Activities pack

to save for our end of year open house so we published our writing

 instead in these spring trees.

 I originally made different writing inserts for our Strega Nona houses but since we

were sending them to "our Tomie" as my one little sweetie 

refers to him, students instead wrote 3 wishes they have, things they noticed

during our author study, and their favorite Tomie dePaola book. 

Oh my gosh, these turned out so cute!  I really just wanted to keep 

every single one of them!  We hear that Tomie actually writes back to kids 

and my class is very worried that they'll be in third grade when he does. 

 I have solemnly sworn to gather them all up when/if (fingers crossed!) we receive a letter 

so we can all open it together! 

If you'd like to make Strega Nona's house with your class, you can!   

 I've just added  this fairy tale cottage to my TPT store.  Please note, this cottage is 

not included in the Tomie dePaola Author Study and can be purchased separately. 

You can see all the posts in this series by clicking the pictures below. 

            

          

With the exception of Strega Nona's house, all of the activities in these posts can 

be found in my Tomie dePaola Author Study on

TeachersPayTeachers and Teacher's Notebook.

Stop by and visit my Tomie dePaola board on Pinterest!

Thanks so much for following along and happy teaching with Tomie books, friends!