I Mustache You a Question

I feel that I should preface this post by sharing that I am always a year or two behind the trends - as in, I purchased my first maxi skirt this summer (why did I wait so long!?). ANYWAYS... it took me a little while to embrace the whole chevron / mustache trend, but now I must have chevron and mustaches on all. the. things.!

Obviously, I needed to make my first unit of the year a chevron and mustache masterpiece - you know, because I'm such a trendsetter and all. For our scope and sequence, we always start the year out with asking and answering questions. It just seems like a good fit for the beginning of the year, and it really is the basis of all comprehension in reading. Thus, extremely important that students master this concept early! That being said, asking and answering questions can get a little... how do we put this... redundant? after a few days.

While I love reading, and I am constantly asking myself questions while I am reading, I can tell that my students just want to read the book; and don't necessarily want to stop to think about their thinking or ask questions. I knew I needed something that would be entertaining, and convince them that stopping every so often while they are reading to ask themselves questions is actually fun.

I decided to hook them with mustaches, because who doesn't love giving themselves a pretend mustache?

Handlebar mustaches make everything more fun! 

First, I read the book Help! by Holly Keller to my students, then I busted out some mustaches and had the students buddy read the story (we have this story in our reading textbooks) with their partner. I gave each student a mustache, and as they were reading they were allowed to hold the mustache up only if they were pausing to ask a question. Needless to say, lots of questions were being asked ;-).

After the students finished buddy reading the story, they grabbed a questioning tic-tac-toe game to continue the questioning fun!

I loved how they would look back in the book to find answers to their questions! 

Working on mastering a standard before breakfast was even finished!

The students LOVED the tic-tac-toe game, and they were so engaged while they were playing. I loved that this activity was really easy to differentiate, and it allowed me to work one on one with kiddos who I knew were struggling; while the other kiddos had a very meaningful activity that they were able to do independently. I originally thought we would only do questioning tic-tac-toe once, but the students loved it so much that I worked it into a couple more lessons throughout the week; and I put a copy (with mustaches of course) in our buddy reading station.

You can get a copy of questioning tic-tac-toe for FREE! here on my TpT store, and if you would like to grab my whole questioning unit (which include several other fun games and activities - as well as the mustache cutouts) you can purchase it here on TpT.

Tell me...

1. What is the first standard you usually work on with your students
2. How to you jazz up those standards that just seem redundant?

We're Back!!

Sorry for the hiatus on the blog, I was busy having one of these...

My husband and I welcomed a beautiful baby boy (I call him "The Squish") in early May, and I spent all summer cuddling and smooching my sweet boy - and trying not to think about leaving him in the fall :-(.

Alas, the school year came around and through many many tears, I kissed my sweet boy goodbye and embarked on my third year of teaching second grade. I must say, there has been some divine intervention with my class this year (someone must have known I was in a fragile state this year!), and my class is seriously the class you dream about having. They are absolutely fantastic, and they make leaving my baby boy each morning a little less hard.

That being said, lets get down to business! I'm going to backtrack a little here - seeing as it's the third week of school, and I'm just now sitting down to blog! The first week we started off with several get to know you games.

Starting the year out right with a snowball fight! 

One of the biggest hits of the first week was a class snowball fight. I had the students write three things that were true about themselves, and one lie on a piece of paper. Then they crumbled up the piece of paper, and I put the song "happy" on and we had a three minute snowball fight. When the song ended, the students grabbed the piece of paper that was nearest to them and tried to guess who it belonged  to. The kiddos LOVED this activity, and are still asking me when we are going to do it again.

We also had a find a friend scavenger hunt, and made an adorable Scaredy Squirrel craftivity that I found here on TpT.

I love how you can see each student's personality! 

Well, this post is getting quite lengthy and wordy, so I think I will end here today - but I will be back tomorrow with a fun questioning unit and a freebie!

Don't forget to leave a comment and tell me...

1. What did you do / what are your plans for the first week of school?
2. What was your favorite activity in the first few days when you were at school?