Welcome to room 8 friends! I have been having a wonderful time getting to know the second grade class of 2015-2016. What a bright, polite, and fun bunch! Our week was full of energy, as we set the stage to engage, and embarked on a SUPER year.
In my classroom this quote by Dave Burgess is near and dear to my heart, "Provide an uncommon experience for your students and they will reward you with an uncommon effort and attitude." My goal was to make the first day magical to ensure my second graders were super excited to come to school! I hope you each received a special postcard in the mail welcoming you to second grade. Since the moment I received my class list I was just so excited to meet my kiddos, and I wanted to let them know I how thrilled I was to be their teacher!
Our week was so full of fun! I'm going to highlight what we did relating to our superhero theme (more posts about everything else coming soon), but first, Jitter Juice!
I love starting day one with this sweet activity because it really sets the tone that our classroom is a safe, comfortable place. First I read a wonderful book called, First Day Jitters. In this book the main character is feeling so nervous about starting a new school year, she really doesn't want to go at all. With a lot of encouragement she musters up the courage to go to her first day. At the very end of the book we learn that she is actually the teacher! Even teachers can have some first day jitters! I prepared some Jitter Juice for our sweet second graders to make sure any jitters we may be feeling settled right from the start. We read this adorable poem and drank our juice together as a class, and then got busy learning! We identified capitals, punctuation, and rhyming words in our poem.
To get to know our new friends, each student completed a questioner titled, Im a SUPER Second Grader, and many had the chance to share with the class. This was the perfect opportunity to practice our "strong speaker" voice. Later we will play a game called, I Need a Hero. For this game students will circulate around the room on a mission to find a classmate that fits each description on their paper and collect their superhero signature (name). This is a perfect opportunity to get to know more about each other and it promotes a lot of movement throughout the room.
At the end of the day on the very first day of school the second grade teachers surprised the students with a Superhero Party!!! We had costumes, props, a photo booth, and a dance party. A huge thank you Mr. LaGuardia for DJing this awesome event. :) Our goal was to set the stage for an awesome year! Along with hyping the students up for a great year, this party allowed us time to quickly develop relationships with all of our new friends. We laughed, danced, and snapped photos together. I'm a firm believer that building relationships is the key to a successful year. Mission Accomplished!
On Friday, students wrote on the topic, "If I Were a Super Hero." They wrote about the power they would have, and what they would do with it. They even came up with their own superhero name. :) It was too cute seeing their faces light up when I referred to them as their superhero name. Just to make writing a little more engaging, each student received a special pencil with a superhero cape!
Check out this FLIPAGRAM abut our mazing week!
