Besides Rooted in Reading, my Busy Teacher packets are always what people thank me for when I get to meet readers in person. This weekend one of my friends shared with me that she used my unit to get her Sub Tub ready and how good it made her feel to be prepared if her little one was to get sick. I have used Busy Teachers as morning work, homework, sub plans, OR just that "one more" activity that I needed.
I decided to give you a closer look into my October Busy Teacher Units!
Race to the Top is such a fun way to practice math fluency. I would turn on KidzBop to drown out the sound of the dice hitting the desk and watched my kids have fun as they worked!
Cara from The First Grade Parade shared about these tiny spiders on Instagram. I found them in the party section at Walmart and they were called "Spider Confetti." They would be a great manipulative to children that were not secure with mentally calculating the subtraction problems on the above page.
Oh goodness, my kiddos love a spinner game! I felt like this is an incredibly difficult skill for 2nd graders, especially when crossing over that 100 threshold. Obviously the stronger their number sense, the more confident they will feel with this exercise. To differentiate, try providing whiteboards or place value blocks for struggling students.
"Expanded Form" is a term that I always circle back to over and over again. We want to make sure that skill is strong before the end of the year!
I don't know what it is about Compound words, but I just love teaching them. This exercise is a great way to not only reinforce the concept of a compound word, but to also see who is hearing all the way through multiple syllable words.
My second graders were pretty secure with syllables, but there is nothing wrong with a little extra practice to make sure! This is a relatively quick activity so it could be used for an assessment piece. I also LOVE the check off boxes at the bottom that require students to assess their own writing.
My Read it! Draw it! exercises are a great way to check comprehension. I also love giving kids an opportunity to draw.
In every Busy Teacher packet, I provided writing pages for popular themes in that month. This paper asked students to explain how to carve a pumpkin. A little tip- have students highlight or circle the Time Order words to show their understanding of using them!
This last sheet might be one of my favorites in the pack. I love the open-endedness of letting the students decided where the "story" is going. I was also talking with Emmie's teacher about how important it is for second graders to work on complete, thoughtful sentences. They also need to work on a variety of sentence structures.
If this is something you are interested in, click on any of the units before to find my October Busy Teachers.
