Week 2

This past week was just as busy as the last! Throughout the year, I'll be blogging once or twice each week with highlights of large-scale projects or exciting events happening in our classroom. This week we practiced our routines and procedures in reading, writing, and math and continued to learn about one another.

This week's large project revolved around our social/emotional curriculum called the 4R's from The Morningside Center. The 4R's are Respect, Responsibility, Reading, and WRiting. We practiced all four this week!


On Monday, we read The Big Orange Splot by D. Manus Pinkwater. The book tells the story of Mr. Plumbean and his neighbors.  Mr. Plumbean lives on a "neat street" - one where all of the houses and lawns look the same. One night, a bird drops some orange paint on the roof of Mr. Plumbean's house.  Rather than washing it off, Mr. Plumbean designs a dream house for himself - complete with palm trees, and alligator in the front lawn, a clock tower, and bright colorful murals. His neighbors are not too happy. But after speaking to Mr. Plumbean about their own dreams, they decide to create their own dream homes. By the end the neighbors all agree that having different homes that reflect their individuality is better than all of the homes being all the same.

We talked a lot about this story. What is the author trying to say? Why did the author write this book? We will continue discussing this story this coming week as well as we create our classroom community.

We then created our own dream homes and wrote about them. Here are our dream homes:

It's Friday!

This week went by so quickly!  Today was another busy day in second grade.  We started with our morning meeting, during which we finished writing our classroom rules.  We have 8 rules that we all agreed upon based on all of the brainstorming we had done all week.

After that, we got into our Hopes and Dreams project.  We reviewed our plans and then created a reminder for the school year.  This reminder has both our hope and dream written out in words and in a picture.  Ask your child what his/her goal is for the year and how they plan to achieve it.  Here are our reminders above the classroom library:

 Then we went into the reading workshop.  We wrote about the book we are reading aloud together to keep track of the plot and the characters before going into our book baggies to read independently.  Book baggies may go home - but we use them every day at school, so please make sure they come back each morning as well.  After reading, we went back into our math books to continue our pattern block work from yesterday.

Then it was time for lunch and recess.  After that we had our first singing class with Bradley!  We have singing every Friday afternoon to learn songs for Town Meetings, learn about famous song-writers, and have fun!  Then we celebrated a class birthday together.  Finally, though, it was time for Choice Time!  Choice Time is every Friday (when clubs are not in session) and is a time for children to explore areas of interest as well as learn to independently problem-solve and interact socially with one another.  We built with blocks, drew beautiful pictures, wrote in our journals, read great books, and used pattern blocks to make patterns and designs today.  It was a lot of fun!  We ended the week with some reflective journal writing before packing up to go home.

Have a great weekend!

- Liz

A Hot Day 3

Since it's Wednesday, we started with an art class with Maggie.  After art, we started our day together in room 402 for the third day of second grade!  We had a morning meeting that included a new game called Changes.  It was a lot of fun.  Then we reviewed the classroom rules we had brainstormed on Tuesday and added more to the list.  Tomorrow we will start finding the right words for these ideas to make a permanent list of classroom rules.  After our morning meeting, we opened up our classroom library for the first time.  We learned about the organization of the books, how to choose a just-right book, and where to keep our books between reading workshops.  We explored where we wanted to sit during the reading workshop and what the room should look like, sound like, and feel like during that time.  We all agreed that it should be quiet, calm, and full of still bodies focused on our own books.

After reading workshop, we started a discussion about our Hopes and Dreams for the school year.  Every class at EVCS is hard at work brainstorming hopes for the year, as well as an action plan to accomplish it.  We then read a great book, Big Al by Andrew Clements.  It tells the story of big, scary-looking fish who hopes and dreams to make friends.  He tries over and over to make friends, but it just never works. Finally, though, he achieves his goal by doing something great for the other fish.  We will be using this story throughout the next week to create our own Hopes and Dreams.  We will then hang them in the classroom to reflect on throughout the year.  After that, we read the next chapter from The Twits, our daily chapter book and then headed to recess and lunch.  Then came Quiet Time - but this time the library was open too!  Now we can read, write, draw or rest during Quiet Time.

Then we started our first math unit.  We use Terc Investigations as our main math curriculum.  This unit it about numbers 0-10 and the fluency of adding and subtracting numbers within 10.  We used a new math tool today: connecting cubes.  We first explored and built with the cubes to get used to them.  Then we used them to add numbers.  We saw that two towers of 4 cubes plus one tower of 2 cubes equaled ten - yet so did two towers of 5, and so did  three towers of 3 plus one tower of 1!  We wrote equations for the towers we built and for the towers other people built.

Here are 5 different ways to show the number 10
Red shows 7 + 3 = 10
Purple shows 9 + 1 = 10
Yellow shows 10 + 0 = 10
Orange shows 6 + 4 = 10
Green shows 8 + 2 = 10

Even in the heat, we kept on working.  We then moved back into our journals to either write something new or to add more to our writing from yesterday.  It was a calm and reflective way to end our day.

Last, we played a quick game together and then headed home.  What a busy, busy day!


FYI:  On Wednesdays we have art with Maggie first period.  This is the only day of the week that this occurs, but if your child is running late or we have a rainy-day arrival, please send them to the art studio with their things.

Day Two

Today was somehow busier than yesterday!  We began our day with another Morning Meeting.  We also introduced jobs to our classroom community.  We now have students helping pass out papers, hold the doors, and lots more.  We are really taking care of one another.  This conversation then led us to begin our rule-making process.  EVCS has three rules:

We take care of ourselves

We take care of each other

We take care of our environment

We began brainstorming rules that we think we need in our classroom community.  From keeping our hands to ourselves to being quiet in the halls to using materials safely, we came up with lots of rules.  This week we'll continue brainstorming, changing, and rewriting our rules.  By Friday, we will have an agreed-upon list of rules to help us take care of ourselves, each other, and our environment.

We then started the writing workshop.  Today we talked about our daily journals and came up with a list of things to write about.  We had lots of ideas!  Then we got right to it.  Our journal is a great place to write any kind of writing we want and to get our thoughts out of our heads and onto paper.  We worked really hard this morning.

After that, we went to the art studio with Maggie.  It was our first day there and we had a great time!  Then we started a new chapter book together: The Twits by Roald Dahl.  It's a really funny book and our student teacher, Jessica, had us giggling in our seats.  We can't wait to keep reading it tomorrow!  Next, we headed downstairs for recess and lunch with all of the students in grades 2, 3, 4, and 5.  After lunch was Quiet Time again.  We now have the option of writing more in our journals during Quiet Time, in addition to resting, drawing, or writing a letter.  I wonder what we'll add tomorrow...  We then had a practice Fire Drill.  We practiced lining up quickly and quietly, and walking in one long line out of our classroom, down the correct stairwell, out the front doors, and across the street to our waiting spot.  We will be really prepared for our first all-school fire drill later this month.  

Then we did a new art project.  This project had us using lots of scraps of paper to create beautiful window decorations for our classroom.  We discussed the importance of using scraps to save paper and use our classroom resources wisely.  We practiced sharing group materials, using scissors safely, talking to one another at a work-appropriate volume, and of course cleaning up.  We did excellently and our windows look fantastic!

After that, we played a new game and then celebrated a class birthday before heading home.  Another great day in second grade!

- Liz