A "Goldilocks" Planet?

As we begin our journey into our moon unit tomorrow, I am incredibly intrigued about the discovery about a new planet that they are referring to as a "Goldilocks" planet. It is not too hot, not too cold, it is just right. Read all about it here:

Goldilocks Planet Article

Book Commercials!

We started one of our "new" literacy projects for this year, our book commercials. We were inspired by watching an episode of Reading Rainbow to create our own technologically advanced book presentations. The students began by reading the book "Have I Got A Book For You" by Melanie Watt. We then talked about what kind of information goes into a commercial, and how we are going to present our book. We are going to, at the end of our project, use Flip Cameras and I-Movie to produce our own movie segments. We are so excited to share our completed projects with you!

Doubles and Near Doubles

Over the last few days, we have been talking about adding with doubles and near doubles. The students have really gotten a quick grasp of these two closely related concepts, and are enjoying working on them during math workshop time. I just wanted to show you a few of the activities that they did today. What hard workers!!

The Power of Our Writing

Today we read the story "The Pencil" by Allan Ahlberg as a start to our writing workshop. It is a story about a pencil who has the power to design and control his own world, because he is the writer and illustrator of the story. We related this back to how ultimately, we have the power as authors to make our writing the best it can be. We can create a world where we are anything we want to be, and anything can happen. There is so much excitement in writing! If you get a chance, you should really take a look at this book, it really is fantastic!

What Makes Us Great Spellers?

Today we took a "reflective" look at our spelling practices. We talked about everything that we are doing well, and how that ultimately helps us to become better readers and writers. The students lead the discussion on what "good spellers" do. I had explained that they are all good spellers in their own way, because they are all trying new words, implementing strategies, and giving it their best shot.

The things that they came up with were pretty incredible. When we broke out for small group discussion, as I was walking around facilitating, I heard a group talking about "discovering words". WOW! These are all strategies that we all use, and sometimes, it just takes putting them in a public place to have as a reference tool to aid us in our writing.

What a successful day!!!

Assessment for the Year

Here is the link to the 2nd grade assessment calendar. Note: we will only be taking assessments that are listed for 2nd grade (-:

10-11 Assessment Calendar

Conference Schedule

I have created a GoogleDoc to keep up the conference schedule sign-ups. If you have not already signed up for one, please use the link and you will be directed to my sign-up page. Keep in mind that conferences last for 15 minutes. You are welcome to just input your name (please do not erase another name), and I will check the document daily for new additions. Thanks, and I can't wait to meet to discuss your child's progress!!

CONFERENCE SIGN-UPS HERE

Trotting for the Tigers!

I just wanted to share some pictures with you from the Tiger Trot on Friday. We had so much fun! We walked on the soccer field, and it was great to be out under the clear blue sky! Four laps around the track was equal to a mile, and there were some of us who did over 8 laps! No wonder we were exhausted. I am so impressed with this class and their willingness to come together and work for a common good. They really do have caring hearts!

Word Study Challenge!

Today I issued the students a challenge. Not only did it test their knowledge about letters and words, but it also gave me a great deal of information about their background knowledge. The challenge today was to see how many three letter words they could spell with the given letters in the picture. One part of the discussion that we had was how the "A" was going to be in every word (which led to a great mini-lesson on vowels and their roles in words). The students were able to come up with a list of 31 words! I am extremely impressed! We also had to discuss how some words were tricky- gnat is not spelled nat. I really do love the conversations we have. There is so much learning that goes on! It really is magical!

We Are One World

Pierre lives in Canada,

Marla lives in Spain.

But both like to ride their bikes

Along the shady lane.

Liv lives in Norway,

Ramon is in Peru.

But both laugh with the giraffe

When visiting the zoo.

Anwar is Egyptian,

Kim is Japanese.

But both run beneath the sun

And fly kites in the breeze.

Jack is from the U.S.A.,

Karintha is from Chad.

But both can write a poem at night

Upon a writing pad.

Children live all over,

The world's a giant ball.

But far and near, it's very clear

We're one world after all.

-Meish Goldish

Working With Words

Today we started introducing our word study choices. The students were given the chance to work with two new games, Bananagrams and Scrabble Slam. They had a great time. Our classroom has two games of each (thank you to the parents who donated a few), so we were all able to play during word study time. It was great! It also gave me a great opportunity to see what they knew about letters, sounds, and words. I can't wait to introduce the rest of the activities!

Personal Narratives

Learning about ourselves and others is an important part of being in a classroom family. During our first writing unit, we will be exploring important small moments that have occurred during our life. We have talked about how our important events (vacations, getting a dog, 1st grade) can be "zoomed into" just one small moment. I used the analogy with the students that if they look at their big topic, it is like a big jar of jelly beans. What we want from our story is to focus in on that one jelly bean that was the most important. For example, if we want to talk about going on vacation, we could pick the one thing that we did that was our favorite. That would be our small moment. We will be working on these for a while, and I hope that the children really enjoy writing about themselves!

Our Promise For A Great Year!

Because the start of the year is all about building community and relationships, we took a great deal of time to write and refine our class promise. We talked about our expectations to each other, the expectations of myself, and what we wanted our year to look like. Our class promise is the foundation for everything we do, and I think they did a great job with it!

Thank You!

Thank you so much for all of the wonderful birthday wishes, cards, and gifts! You are such a fantastic group of families to work with! I consider myself very blessed to consider this my second home. Thank you all so very much!

Over the past few days, our class has been studying surveys and graphing. We have been talking about how we can use this information to create a graph to represent the student population in our classroom. They did such a fantastic job that I wanted to share them with you! Keep in mind that everything the students did was on an independent level (with guidance from me when needed). The decision of the creation of the graph (as to how it would look) was up to them and their creativity. I am so proud of the end result, as I know you will be!

Curriculum Night 2010

Thank you so much for an incredibly successful and informative curriculum night! I feel like we all had some fantastic conversation, and learned a great deal from each other! I thought I would include our Powerpoint, as well as answer a few of the questions that came back from the group as a whole.

Snack: Yes, we do have snack time every day at 10:15. My only request is that it is a healthy one. (-:

Reading logs: I have decided to not do a home reading record this year, but I will continue to encourage reading at home from my students and families. We will also continue the book check-out program that will be explained to the students in September.

Have a great evening!

Math: A Time of Choices AND Learning

Today I introduced our Math Choice time and all that is incorporated with that. The students had such a great time!! They really enjoyed playing some of the activities that we have available. I spent a lot of time over the summer researching some new and fun things that the kids can do to not only have fun, but also incorporate some of those basic math practices that we are working on during this early part of the year. They really seem to love the GeoBoards, Wrap-Ups, and Make 7 games that were just added, along with some old staples such as our Addition and Subtraction Bingo, calculators, and Geoblocks. I really loved hearing some of the conversations that occured today! What wonderful thinkers we have!

A Graphing Adventure!

We are talking about surveys, graphs, and probability as our first math unit in second grade. What fun!! We started by playing a graphing game all about animals (how much fun it is to start with a game!). The students really seemed to identify with having a hands-on activity to bring this concept to life. I am looking forward to a great unit!

Let's Do Something!

We started off our year thinking about what we wanted to do with our year. What were our goals? Where did we want this adventure to take us? To get this thought process started, we read the book Let's Do Nothing! by Tony Fucile. It is a wonderful story, and the class really loved it! These two boys are trying so hard to do nothing, and then they realize that it's impossible. So, they decide to do something. That is our motto for this year: we are going to get up and do something. We will make the best of every day, and greet every challenge with a positive attitude!

What A Start!

We have had a fantastic start to the year! I am so excited to share all of this adventure with sucn an amazing group of students! I know that there were some of you who did not get a chance to come to the walkthrough, so I just wanted to give you a quick "snapshot" as to what the room looked like on the first day!