It's Simply Elementary

Organize · Simplify · Teach

2nd Grade Product Swap & Blog Hop

By

Welcome to the second grade product swap and blog hop!  EIGHTEEN wonderful second grade bloggers have joined together to swap and review each other’s products.  Best of all, we are giving away all of the products to one lucky winner!  
 
If you are looking for the start of the hop, head over to see Casey at Second Grade Math Maniac to start hopping.  As you check out all the fabulous products, make sure to follow each blog on Bloglovin’ as well.  There will be a Rafflecopter at the last stop.  This is where you can enter to win all of the products being reviewed!
 
I was lucky enough to get to try out a product by Furnell from Owl Always Love 2nd Grade! I got to test out her Timeline Templates.  
Quite possibly my favorite part about this product is that is it SO versatile!!  You could use these timeline puzzles  for SO many different things!
Here is a closer look at all of the template pages in the pack.
I knew that we were going to be working on summaries this month, so I decided to take Furnell’s templates and use them as an interactive way to summarize and illustrate the most important parts of a story in puzzle/timeline form!   We summarized a story from our Reading Wonders book . . .”Once Upon a Baby Brother”.  The kids LOVED the story, so I thought it would be a perfect story with which to practice a tricky skill . . .SUMMARIZING!
I teach 2nd grade, so summarizing the beginning, middle and end of a story can be very simple for some, and more difficult for others.  My kids, too, have difficulty sometimes zooming in on the most IMPORTANT parts and events in the beginning, middle, and end.  I felt like these puzzle piece templates helped them to zoom in on ONLY the most important parts instead of trying to tell me EVERYTHING that happened in the beginning, middle and end.
Here are some action shots of my kiddos drafting the beginning of their summaries – using their texts to refer back to, of course! 🙂 #proudteacher
Confession . . . . we ended up redoing our summaries of the beginning pieces again on a “middle” piece so that we could add our title page and the beginnings could link right into the title page puzzle piece, so in the final product pictures, you’ll notice something just a bit different! 🙂 🙂
The timeline pieces even include a title page/cover page to give your timelines, summaries, etc. a title!
I loved that I got to see and learn which ones of my reading kiddos were great artists! We switch classes for reading class, so there isn’t a lot of time to draw or illustrate, well, EVER, so I was excited to see their illustrations during this summary activity!
After we got our title pages and beginning of the story written and illustrated, we moved on to summarize and illustrate the MIDDLE of the story!
Like I mentioned before, there were really able to zoom in on the most important parts of the beginning, middle and end, because there was only so much room for them to write their summary!
Then, we moved onto summarizing and illustrating the end of the story!
 
One of my little guys needed to zoom in a little bit closer to the END of the story, but his illustration is just too cute! I added that to the formative assessment anecdotal notes page annnnd then we moved on to assembling our summary puzzles!
 

 

 
 
 
We mounted our summaries onto a sentence strip to display including our title page, the beginning summary page and illustration, the middle summary page and illustration, and the end summary page and illustration.  
 
 
Alternate idea/use/differentiation of this product:
To vary this activity, though, you could have the kids write a summary of a story the class has read or of a story that they know that a friend or a partner has read and make it more of a SEQUENCING activity.  They could write their summary, cut out the puzzle pieces, and have their partner/group arrange the puzzle pieces in the right sequence! This would be a great sequencing assessment for the partners arranging the puzzle pieces, and a great summarizing assessment for those students MAKING the puzzle pieces to be sequenced! Like I said, the possibilities to use this product are endless!!
 
If you want to take a closer look at Furnell’s Timeline Puzzle Pieces, check it out HERE in her store!! But come right back, so you can keep hopping along anddd enter to win the GRAND PRIZE of ALL of the products we swapped this month at the end of the hop! 🙂
 
 
Click the button below to head over to Owl Always Love 2nd Grade to see Furnell’s review!….

 

 

Comments

  2. 2

    Owl Always Love 2nd Grade says

    Thanks for an amazing post!!!! =) This was a great way to start my Sunday! I love the idea of the sentence strips and how you added in the other uses! =) I'm glad your kids were able to zoom in and had fun using them! They came out super cute!

    -Furnell =)

  10. 10

    Schroeder Shenanigans in 2nd says

    Thanks so much, Casey! I'm TRYING to put more time and effort into my blog – with all of the other to-dos and media outlets, my blog always gets left out haha! So I'm trying to make it better one post at a time! 🙂 THANKS!

  13. 13

    Marcy Bernethy says

    I love this! We work on summarizing every week and this is going to be perfect! I already have it added to my cart. Great review friend!

    Marcy
    Saddle Up For 2nd Grade

  14. 14

    Angie Olson says

    You are amazing, Ashley! Everything you do is done very well with a lot of time poured into it! This was a great product review and I especially love how versatile this is! Your kids really did a nice job with making their work quality. Side note-I appreciate your honesty/confessions! 😉
    Mrs. Olson’s Lucky Little Learners