Learning Lessons With Amy Labrasciano: timeline

Click here to learn all about teaching ELA in the second grade classroom. These free and fun lesson outlines will detail curriculum and ideas for all informational, literature and writing standards in my 2nd grade elementary classroom. This week's lessons will be all about: Candy Canes, Cookies, Fruitcake, Gingerbread, author' s purpose, author's point, timelines, retelling and writing paragraphs. Your second grade students will love the lessons and activities shared here. These lesson outlines are added and updated almost each week.

How many more weeks do you have before winter break? We have two glorious weeks before we get off for the holidays. Getting through to the end just may be the biggest test of my teaching skills yet. This week will be all about thematic days. Tuesday -Friday I will throw in food to help motivate my students to keep on learning . We'll have a Cookie Day, Hot Cocoa Day, Candy Cane Day and a Gingerbread Day. Monday is set aside for fruitcake, but we won't have any food because I spent the weekend loving on my family and not shopping for my class. Each day we will also have a fun holiday read aloud, Grinch Reader's Theatre fluency time and Grinch sing alongs. We will perform the reader's theatre, song and various poems at our holiday party. Writing will look the same as last week, but we'll be writing about holidays around the world. We are keeping the same format because otherwise kid's attention span wanes and we lose learning time. Using a high interest topic coupled with a familiar format will keep the kids learning to the end or as long as I can possibly get them to.

We'll also be planting our traditional Candy Seeds. You can find the seed pack and activities in my Peppermint Day unit by clicking on the picture below.

You can find my lesson plan page outlines from A Modern Teacher.

Hi everyone! I'm so sorry for missing the last two weeks. We had a horrible hurricane and I couldn't post my lesson outlines. The good news is that I'm back, and I may say this all the time, but next week is going to be so much fun!! I'm a huge proponent of engaging lessons that meet the student's needs while helping them to grow as learners. I'm also a sucker for thematic lesson plans and next week is a must for my students - Apple Week. Don't you find great joy in teaching fun topics?

Before we start talking shared reading, let me tell you about a couple of activities that we'll be doing. We will be sampling yummy crockpot applesauce. Of course I don't have the time to make it from scratch so I use jarred applesauce and warm it before the students arrive. They have never figured it out and I hope you don't tell them! We'll sample different varieties of apples and graph our favorites. We'll sample some apple candy and for incentives I'll pass out Apple Jacks. We'll also have a basket full of fun apple books.

The standard that we will be learning is a little more challenging than others, but still very engaging and interesting to students. We'll be taking a look at how events can connect through history and science. In order to do this, we'll look at John Chapman's life. The students will determine what each event causes later in John's lifetime. For example, it is believed that many apple orchards exist because of John's work. Without his travels we would not have had so many crabapples. We'll also be taking a look at how apples can add nutrition to our diets, the pollination process and the apple lifecycle. Just think of a time line and lifecycle wheel.

Once again writing will be an extension of our shared reading plans. Each day we'll be writing an informative piece on an apple page. When the students are done they we have an awesome apple book. Just look at it below!

I am super excited to give my students independent workstation materials that couple so well with our shared reading and writing. These centers will center around the five core components of reading: phonics, phonemes, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. I've spent a lot of time trying to create materials that work for each student, are engaging, purposeful and self explanatory. Thank goodness I finally figured it out. Click on the image below to find the unit.

To find the other materials that I used in these lesson outlines, click on the links below.