Clearwater Cottage: Summer School

This summer I had the wonderful opportunity to teach a 2nd/3rd grade combo class for six weeks at a local Christian school. I had the best time working with my 12 students and watching them grow in their relationship with Christ. One of the perks of working at a Christian school, you get to talk about God and pray with the kids!!!

We had a very short day, only 2 1/2 hours long and then most of them went off to the church's summer camp. Therefore we had a tight schedule that looked like this:

8:30 Prayer and Bible Lesson
8:45 Language Arts Centers
* Daily Language Review Page
* Practice Fluency by reading a passage for 1 minute
* Read a story and answer comprehension questions
9:45 Recess
10:00 Math Centers
* Daily Math Review Page
* Lesson and Independent Work
* Timed Addition Test
* Math Game
11:00 Dismissal
That's it, the day always flew by so fast!

Now, onto the fun stuff, here is what my classroom looked like. I was borrowing a kindergarten classroom, and my kids constantly asked why the tables and chairs were so small, but we made it work!

The walls were completely bare and since we were only going to be there 4 days a week for 6 weeks I didn't want to go overboard. I went with my favorite theme, the forest. It especially worked well because that was the theme for summer camp, so we matched! Also, most of the furniture was turned backwards to face the walls because those items belonged to the regular classroom teacher, and on top of that the church uses the room for other activities too!

During math centers the students worked on earning ice cream scoops for their Math Sundaes by passing timed addition tests for the grade level. They were very into this, and were always thrilled to know if they earned another scoop. My favorite was the way they encouraged each other to keep trying, LOVE!

You can make your own Math Sundaes, just click here.

Click Here to Print

During the first week of school we created work samples to display in the classroom. I have a no red pen policy for work that is on the walls, so you may see some mistakes.

The math assignment Composing Numbers was an idea I found on Pintrest and modified to fit the short time frame I had to work on it with the students. You can print your own copy here. Have the students pick a number to go in the center of the flower and then write math sentences to create that number on all of the flower petals. All you need is a strip of green construction paper to add to the bottom for grass.

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I organized the students into three groups (high, middle, low) so that I could give them work at their level. I did not tell them about how the groups were chosen, just assigned them to a colored folder where all of their work was kept. Each day I would lay out their work at their table so they could come in, sit down and get right to work. Pencils, crayons and erasers were kept in my little blue buckets that I bought on the dollar rack at Target.