What We've Been Up to This Week

Hello friends!  Our All About Me Unit is coming along beautifully!  Since I last shared the kiddos have created precious family trees and family banners.

We have been having a grand old time with end punctuation as well. :)  Each student created an interactive flip book telling all about the three different types of sentences.  Then, to make our learning authentic, our second graders got to be the teachers and teach their first grade buddies all about end punctuation.  They even helped them think of, and write an example sentence for each.  After we were experts, students had a chance to play a fun game where they figured out the correct end punctuation for each sentence and sorted them accordingly.  Way to go second grade stars!  I am so proud of your hard work!

We have started reading centers, and the students are really starting to get the routine.  Thank you Mrs. Madison for being my right hand gal during center time.  This learning could not happen with out you!  You are so appreciated!  I'm a big believer that centers should be independent learning time, which frees me up to meet with small reading groups.  Research shows that students need to practice reading, writing, and working with words every day...so our centers are based around just that!  Students read independently, or with a buddy, they listen to books being read on the computer, they visit the writing center, and they work with words.  Here are our little readers in action!

Buddy Reading

Serious cuteness overload here!  Taking an AR with a buddy.

Sharing writing

Our Writing Center

Working With Words

Readers Gonna Read!

A quick peek at what's going on in math... We are nearing the end of our first chapter of study; addition and subtraction strategies.  Here are our mathematicians working during centers.  I love center time because it allows time to review and practice key concepts.  I think the kids are having so much fun, they don't even realize they are working! Ha!

Odd and Even Marshmallow Roast

Playing Headbands to review vocab.

Finding the missing addends

Making standard form, expanded form, base-ten block s'mores. 

Hope everyone is having a lovely day!  Looking forward to seeing you all tomorrow!

Let's Catch Up!

Wow!  It has been a wild three weeks!  Oh my word have we been busy in room 8!  Here is a recap so we can catch up and celebrate all of our many, many accomplishments so far.  The hard part is figuring out where to begin... I guess I will just jump right in.  Ready, set, here we goooo!

Math

Our second graders have been working away in math!  We have been focusing on addition strategies such as: counting on, making a ten, doubles facts, and near doubles.  We've also learned some pretty smart vocabulary too.  Ask your little one to share what an addend, sum, and equation are.  :)  We've jumped right into math centers and I am so proud of the kiddos hard work.  The have really taken to this interactive math experience and I love the collaboration that is taking place between peers.

Mathematicians practicing key concepts during our math meeting.  Sweet Owen is leading the group in a fun math game!

Ordering numbers and skip counting during math centers.  Working as a team to complete a SILENT math puzzle. 

Getting ready for a great year of math! After all, we are mathematicians!  We work hard, never give up, and try our best!

Reading

Oh my, we have been reading maniacs in room 8!  So far we have practiced reading to our selves, and reading with a buddy.  We even had a chance to read with our first grade study buddies.  It's so precious to see our sweet second graders take on the role of big buddy.   They are so responsible and such great reading role models!  

We LOVE books!

Book boxes and buddy reading!  

We have also read a few treasured books as a class.  Two of which are  Chrysanthemum and Wemberly Worried.  I love Kevin Henkes books. :)  To accompany Chrysanthemum, students watercolored a beautiful flower and we created a wonderful class project with them.  They also created their own Very Special Name books to celebrate what is special and unique about them.   

Me Posters and Writing

I have been so enjoying learning all about our sweet friends through their fantastic All About Me Posters!   To accompany each poster, the children wrote a paragraph telling all about themselves.  What a delightful group of students! 

This and That

Dancing to some music while searching for our synonym buddy!

Mrs. Lara's 2nd grade stars!  Beautiful self portraits! 

Practicing thesaurus skills, locating synonyms with a partner.  We are ready to expand our vocab. and use powerful words!

Setting a foundation for a successful year.  In second grade we will feed our brains, do sharp work, and have bright ideas!

Happy birthday Sofia! 

 I'm sure there is so much I am forgetting to share about.  But it feels great to get some of our happenings on this sweet little slice of cyber space.  On a personal note, it has been a difficult start to the school year for me.  My grandmother passed away this week.  My words can not accurately describe how special she was.  She was my first and favorite teacher, and also the reason I became a teacher.  This is the reason for my absence on Wednesday and Thursday.  I apologize for missing these two important days with your child.

Second Grade is a SUPER Place to Be!

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!