My classroom library is by far my favorite part of my classroom! Reading is such an important part in what we do at school and having lots of books only adds to your students success. I have my books separated into different kinds of categories! One section of the library is split up into different genres, authors, and topics. I also include stickers on the binds of the books that indicate if the book is a fiction book, nonfiction book, chapter book, or a leveled book. All the baskets are numbered and I just write the number of the basket the book belongs in on the sticker! Speaking of leveled books, I also have a leveled section in my library. This was created to give my students a quick way to find a just right book. I let my students exchange books multiple times a week if they need to and they can get "choice" books as well as "leveled" books. This allows them to take ownership in their reading!

Here's a closer look at the genre, topic, and author section!

And here is a look at the leveled part of my library!

I also have some fun things in my library that aren't books! I have some cool headphones students can use to listen to themselves whisper read to work on fluency. I also have finger pointers if they feel that would help them. I have some soft pillows to make them comfy as well as reading buddies they can read to! I also have small flash lights that students can use and magnifying glasses. These last two tools are just to make reading a little extra fun! 

I learned about Stikbot from one of my tech classes at Winthrop while I was getting my Masters. It’s a free app that helps you create stop motion animation. There’s also these really cool, flexible figures that go with the app, but you can also use other things!

In my classroom I’ve used the Stikbot app to provide an option for students to visually present research findings from our animal project. My students used Play-doh to create their animals and created a stop motion animation of their animal based on some thing they learned.

Our research project was inquiry based. Students picked an animal based off of the animal books we had in our classroom. I had gathered all the books that went together and made “sets” of 3-4 books on animals. They explored and chose the topic they wanted to explore. I guided students through the research process by first exploring the books. Then we moved to books on Storia and then we used websites (Discus and National Geographic for Kids). Once they had all their research students wrote an informational book on their animal. Part of the project was also, to take it public! They each chose to do a Blabberize (I’ll tell more on that later) or a stop motion animation using Stikbot!

The students that chose Stikbot first sketched out what they wanted to do with their video in their research notebooks. Then they showed it to me to get approval! Next, they created their scene or background. I let students completely work independently on this. I gave them their materials and explained the reason for the background, along with showing them one example from a previous year. Then they got started! I was super impressed with their backgrounds and the detail they put in them on their own!

Once they had their backgrounds completed they created their animal and any other animals out of Play-doh. I also had one student that created paper animals instead of Play-doh. You could do that as well! You could even use toy animals if you had them! Once they created their animals they set them up in the scene they created and began taking pictures. I had students use iPads with the kickstand attached. This helped them keep the iPad in one place to help make their animations more fluid. One student also included a voice over, although I did not make that mandatory. Being in 2nd grade, I thought that would be a little harder for them to match up what they say with their animation. If you teach older grades you could totally include that as an extra component!​

It’s summertime and even though the school year is over, I’m already looking ahead at the new year! I’ve decided to make a top 5 summer to-do list of goals I’d like to accomplish during my summer vacay to help make the start of the school year go smoothly!

Here they are...
​
1. I want to dig into my Reading Strategies book and my Writing Strategies book by Jennifer Serravallo. I got these books with some fundraiser money at school this year. I’ve used them already, because they are really awesome, but this summer I’d like to dig deeper into looking through all the strategies!

I'm changing how I use this blog! Originally I used this blog as a place to post newsletters and information to stay connected to my students and their parents. This past year other ways of communication better suited my students and their parents and so I've decided to use this blog to share my ideas, teaching practices, lessons, and much more to those who might find it worthy of reading!

Some of the things I've already planned to share include specific lesson ideas that work for a 2nd grade classroom, classroom management ideas, classroom organization and set up, and technology tidbits.

Please stay tuned to learn more about what I do in my classroom! I hope you find it helpful!