Usually I update this blog on Friday or Saturday, but I struggled all weekend with what I should even write about. It seemed like there was so much to be said and yet at the same time, I wasn't sure what to say. After spending the past 2 days in our classroom with your children, I saw so many things that made me realize that there really is so much good in the world and I thought that would be appropriate to share with you this week.

1. Your children come to school each day with huge smiles, ready and excited to learn. They are SO excited to be in school.

2. They express concern about a friend who isn't feeling well and make a card or offer a pat on the back.

3. They radiate SO MUCH excitement about tomorrow's Winter Celebration and the upcoming holidays.

4. They help each other when someone falls or drops something. Immediately. Without having to be asked to do this. They just LOVE to help.

5. The simple fact that they can read excites them SO much and they love to share their reading with others.

6. They see the good in everyone.

7.  They are thinkers and problem solvers. They get so excited when they have the opportunity to share their knowledge with someone else.

8. They take such pride in a job well done.

9. They are creative. They write stories, poems, and plays. They draw. They invent their own recess games. Their minds are always working.

10. They feel content and safe, both at home and in school, and it shows in the way they approach every day.

Enjoy the upcoming week off with your children!

Wishing you a happy and merry everything!
Heidi Richard

On Being Present...

     The stretch between Thanksgiving and Christmas (Or if we're being really honest with ourselves, the stretch between Halloween and Christmas) is a tough time in the life of a second grader when it comes to fully paying attention. There are so many outside influences trying to temp their attention away. Candy! Parties! Gifts! Visits from friends and family! More gifts! More candy! All of these things make it really easy for young minds to wander during class. This week we read the book What Does it Mean to be Present? by Rana DiOrio and shared our text to self connections. We talked about listening with our whole bodies and really making sure that our brains were focused on what we were learning about at that moment. This is a great book because it talks about how just being in the classroom isn't enough, but that you actually have to be thinking about your learning and be engaged with the task at hand. This is something that we will be focusing on in the coming weeks as the noise of those holiday distractions becomes louder and louder in our minds.

    There were lots of awesome examples of students being fully present in their learning and friendships this week. I saw the whole class work together to write an incredible story about a snowman adventure (Be sure to check it out on the bulletin board across from our classroom if you're in the school this month!). I saw creativity shine as students created snowmen out of glue and shaving cream to go along with that story. There were students who put their heads together to solve a challenging math problem and others who noticed an error in that same problem and sat down with a friend to figure out where their computation went wrong. (Their excitement when they found and fixed their error was incredible!) There were kind friends who noticed a classmate having a bad day and took the time to write them an encouraging letter or to give them a pat on the back and invite them to play at recess. Everywhere you look in our school there are great examples of students being fully present and engaged in their learning. There are examples of students who are incredible friends and cheerleaders for their classmates. On any given day in our classroom and in our school there are lots of students who are fully present in the learning that they are doing, both academically and socially, and that, is simply amazing.

Introducing New Web Tools!

Today's kids are computer savvy from an early age.

Kids today are very comfortable with technology. They interact with it from a very early age and don't have the same degree of uncertainty when it comes to technology as many adults do. For kids, technology has always been a part of their lives. They don't know a life without it! This semester I am taking a graduate course on how to use new technologies in the classroom and I wanted to share a few of them with you.

Kid Blog:  Kid Blog is a great way for students to interact with one another around a given question or idea. When students log on to Kid Blog they are able to respond to a question posted by their teacher. This page is only viewable to those with passwords and all comments have to be approved by the teacher before they go live. These features help with the online safety of the site. We are using Kid Blog this year to have book discussions related to the comprehension strategies we are learning about in class. Since we are studying weather, we are also going to keep in touch with our classmate Saket, who is in India until January. He is going to keep us posted on the weather in India and we will tell him about the weather here in Massachusetts!

Ten Marks: In the coming weeks we will begin looking at an online program called Ten Marks. Ten Marks is a way to check in with students on skills we are learning in math class. Sometimes we will use Ten Marks in the classroom and sometimes I will send the link home as a homework assignment. This program will provide students with a series of 10-20 math questions and will be used to check in with students to see if they are able to independently apply the skills we are working on in class.

XtraMath and Fact Dash:  Both of these sites are great ways to practice your math facts. Math fact automaticity is incredibly important as we move towards solving larger addition and subtraction problems, and later as students move on to large multiplication and division problems. Students who have mastered their math facts have a much easier time with these skills. Some students dislike XtraMath because of the timer feature. If this describes your child, check out Fact Dash. In Fact Dash you have the option to turn the timer on or off, which makes it more comfortable for many students.

All of these sites are linked on the side of this blog. Please don't hesitate to let me know if you are having trouble logging into or using any of these sites and I'll be happy to help you out with it. Be on the lookout for login information for Ten Marks, which will be coming home with your student in about a week! Enjoy!

We are Thankful...

Our "thankful" Feathers

     On Tuesday, I asked the students to share what it was they were thankful for this year. We wrote our names and what we were thankful for on feathers and then shared them at morning meeting. The responses were varied and heartfelt. Keep reading to find out what the students of room 205 are thankful for this year!

Annabell is thankful for her family.

Jenna Claire is thankful for family.

Caitlyn is thankful for food.

Ranjani is thankful for everything.

Caelyn is thankful for her food, water, and family.

Olivia says that "The Pilgrims were thankful for Squanto and his tribe."

Lexi is thankful for everything she has now.

Ishan is thankful for family.

Acram is thankful for mom and dad.

Bennett is thankful for everything!!

Anthony is thankful for having school.

John is thankful for friends and family.

Carter is thankful for his family and cousins.

Jazie is thankful for her family, friends, and teachers.

Arushi is thankful for her family.

Sameer is thankful for everything!

Saket is thankful for having a family.

Sarayu is thankful for everything and family!

Vikram is thankful for the Native Americans.

Madison is thankful for her mom, her dad, and her sisters.

Mary-Katherine is thankful for family and food.

Jenna is thankful for food.

Furwa is thankful for her family.

Mrs. Richard is thankful for friends and family.

We hope that everyone has a very happy Thanksgiving!

Mrs. Richard and the Students of Room 205

Conference Day

I've been thinking a lot about parent/teacher conferences this week. Mainly because I was able to meet with all of you this past Tuesday, but also because on Friday this week I had my first experience on the "other side" of the conference table when I went to my daughter Aili's first parent/teacher conference. It was an interesting experience to be the parent rather than the teacher and it made me realize just how important it is that parents and teachers work together to help our children grow and learn. I often think that I have the best job ever because I get to spend my days with these amazing little people who keep things so interesting and exciting. I absolutely love their enthusiasm for learning and after meeting with all of you on Tuesday it's easy to see where that enthusiasm comes from. These are children who are loved beyond words and supported both at home and at school. While each conference on Tuesday was different, there were a couple of common themes which I thought I'd address here.

XtraMath: I learned on Tuesday that a lot of second graders are not big fans of XtraMath and after talking to some other second grade teachers, I discovered that this was a common sentiment across the grade level. The main challenge with XtraMath seems to be the timer feature. A lot of students feel "stressed out" by this timer, which is causing them to avoid practicing their facts. If XtraMath works for your child then definitely keep using it! As a teacher, I like it because I can see how often students are accessing the program and can track their progress. However, if your child is avoiding practicing his or her facts because of the timer feature on XtraMath, check out Fact Dash at http://www.mhschool.com/math/2009/ca/assets/factdash.html. In Fact Dash you can turn the timer on or off and you can also print out a list of the facts you got wrong. I will add Fact Dash to the list of math links on the side of our blog so you can always access it easily there.

Reading at Home: A number of families expressed concern that their children were either not reading at home or were often choosing to read books that were either too hard or too easy. If your child is having difficulty finding "just right" books to read at home, please do not hesitate to let me know. I can either send you a list of books you can find at the library that are at your child's independent reading level or I can set up a book borrowing system between home and school using our classroom library. If you are finding that your child is tired on some nights, it is definitely okay to read aloud to them instead of having them read a book on their own. Listening to text read aloud by an adult exposes children to good oral reading fluency and also exposes them to vocabulary that may not be found in text at their just right level.

Enjoy your long weekend! Spend some time practicing math facts and reading, but also just spend some time enjoying your children. They are all awesome kids.

Fall Festival

We had a great time at our Fall Festival last week! Thank you so much to everyone who helped us out!  In fifteen years of teaching, I have never seen a class that was more focused on their projects during Fall Festival. Everyone used their self-control and we had a really fun and successful day! 

We started our day by reading the book Lindora's Leaf Monster. After reading the story we created our own leaf monsters. Everyone came up with very creative ideas! After lunch the students read fall stories, designed seed mosaics, created leaf print cards, made candy corn magnets, and played the game "Roll a Pumpkin." Everyone enjoyed some fall snacks after lunch. It was an awesome afternoon.

We also enjoyed the Harvest Hoedown on Wednesday! There were lots of laughs and smiles as we square-danced our way around the gym! We ended the hoedown by singing some of our favorite fall songs, including "Apple on a Stick."

Don't forget that there is no school on Tuesday, November 6th for parent/teacher conference day! If you have misplaced your pre-conference worksheet, please make sure that you let me know your academic and social hopes for your child this year as soon as possible so I can make sure our conference time addresses any concerns you may have. Also, if you are unsure of your conference time, please email me by Monday. I have a very tight schedule on conference day and will have limited access to email.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Sturbridge Village

Barn at Sturbridge Village

Yesterday we had our field trip to Sturbridge Village! We were lucky that the rain held out until we were on the bus driving home. We had a great day exploring a typical New England village from the 1800s. During our trip we worked on completing a scavenger hunt. We were looking for examples of goods, services, shelter, and transportation. Today in school we used that information to create Sturbridge Village brochures.

We were very surprised at how different life was in this area in the 1800s! The students got the chance to help some farmers pick potatoes. We also worked on projects in small groups. Some groups made small wooden houses, another group made cookies, and another group used feather pens to create some artwork. We loved exploring the houses from that time period. The different trade shops were also a favorite. We saw the cooper making barrels, the sawmill cutting boards, the gristmill, the shoemaker making leather shoes (Did you know they didn't have left and right shoes back then? Shoes were made straight and you could put them on either foot!), and the carding mill where sheep's wool was made into fabric.

Here's a little peek into our day...

Making Cookies with a Whisk Made from a Bundle of Sticks

Creating Wooden Houses

Picking Potatoes!

Picking Potatoes with the Farmers

These potatoes will be used to feed the livestock during the winter.

Trying out the Stilts in the Schoolyard

All ready for school!

Thank you to all of the parents who helped us with our trip! We had a wonderful time and learned a lot!

Coming soon to a field trip near you!

Map of Old Sturbridge Village

     This Wednesday, October 24th, our class will have our long-awaited field trip to Sturbridge Village! We are leaving school promptly at 9am, so please be sure to be on time for school that day! We will return to school by 2:45, so students will be in time for the afternoon busses.

     An email went home to parents last week outlining the "must knows" for this trip and a hard copy of that same email will be sent home in Monday's communication folder. Please be sure that your child dresses appropriately for the weather on Wednesday. This trip is rain or shine and we will be spending a lot of time outdoors. Lunches should be entirely disposable (i.e. no lunch boxes or plastic containers) and please do not send any glass bottles with your child. Electronic devices are not allowed on this trip.

     While we are at Sturbridge Village, we hope to see how a community functioned long ago and compare it to how our community functions today. We also hope to see goods and services in action! Talk to your child about what they hope to see on the trip! We have looked at maps of Sturbridge Village in social studies, so the children have some ideas of what we will see there. You can also check out their website at www.osv.org to see pictures of the village, a calendar of events, and take a virtual tour.

   Be on the lookout next week for a post containing picture of our trip! We are excited to learn about how a community works together!

Listen to Reading

“Children are made readers on the laps of their parents.”

~~ Emilie Buchwald

    That above quote is SO true. Our children's first experience with books often comes from sitting on a parent's or grandparent's lap, listening to our favorite stories being read to us. It is through this experience that we learn what fluent reading should sound like. It exposes us to new vocabulary, ideas, and genres. Being read to can often help start a life-long love of reading. One of my favorite memories is of my mom reading me a chapter from Stuart Little every night at bedtime when I was about five. To this day I still love that book, and more importantly, I love to read.

   Because of the power of being read to, this past week we introduced the fourth of our daily literacy activities-"Listen to Reading." Listen to reading involves using books on tape or CD and following along with the text while hearing the story read through our headphones.  We have 2 listening centers and each week there are two books at each to listen to. One is a "must read" book, so that we can all experience and discuss the same text, and the other is a choice book. Some weeks there are comprehension activities to go long with the stories and some weeks we listen just for the pure joy of being read to. We spent time as a class discussing the purpose for Listen to Reading  and we came up with the following ideas:

• We can learn new words.
• We can hear good fluency.
• We can practice our comprehension.
• We can hear stories that aren't "just right" books for us to read alone.
• Hearing lots of stories can help us with our writing. (by being exposed to new vocabulary and writing styles)
• It's fun!

  This year we will also be using parent volunteers during our literacy block to read aloud to students one on one, as we work to create literacy-rich environments for all of our students. We can definitely use your help! If you are interested in coming in to read to individual students during our literacy blocks, reading out loud to the entire class as a "guest reader," or if you have children's books on tape or CD that you'd be willing to let us borrow for a week or two-we'd really appreciate the help!

   Keep reading aloud to your children! It is such a powerful tool!

Meet our Pen Pal, Danielle!

Danielle and 3 of her students

Our class has a pen pal this year! Her name is Danielle and she is a Peace Corps volunteer in Cambodia. Danielle is originally from Massachusetts and has been teaching in Cambodia and working in an orphanage. We've been sending letters and pictures back and forth and so far we've learned about the weather in Cambodia, transportation in Cambodia, schools in Cambodia, what houses are like in Cambodia, and we even saw a picture of an elephant that walked through Danielle's village!

Last week our class worked together in groups of two or three students to write a paragraph in a letter to Danielle and create an illustration to go with that paragraph. We wrote about our specials, recess, our classroom, our teachers, and what lunch is like in our school.  Here are a couple of the pictures we sent Danielle:

The blacktop and playground at Floral Street School.

Media time with Mrs. Andreano.

We will share some other pictures that we drew with you later!

The Daily 5

This is how we decide if a book is "just right" for us.

We are slowly, but surely getting our Daily 5 literacy routines into our muscle memory! We work hard to establish routines and expectations for our literacy block at the start of the school year, so that we are able to achieve all of our reading goals as the year goes on.  We started this year with learning how to choose a book that is "just right" for us. A just right book is a book that we can read and comprehend independently.  We use the "I Pick" strategy to choose books for our book boxes and books that we would like to read at home.

After we learned how to pick just right books and filled our book boxes with books we couldn't wait to get our hands on, we learned the routine for Read to Self.  Read to Self is a time when students can choose a just right book from their book box to enjoy independently. Ask your child what it means to "sit EEKK style!"

Now that we were well on our way towards building our reading stamina, we decided it was time to build our writing stamina as well. Enter Work on Writing! Work on Writing is a time during our literacy block when students can write in their writing journals. Each student has a list of writing ideas that are special to them at the front of their notebook and students are encouraged to write stories in any genre that they choose. So far we've written and shared character/problem/solution stories, fairy tales, personal narratives, poetry, songs, and mystery stories!

After we had mastered Read to Self and Work on Writing, we learned how to Read to Someone. Read to Someone is a way to practice both reading comprehension and fluency with a partner. When students choose a parter to read with, they decide if they are going to work on comprehension or fluency. If they choose comprehension, each partner checks for understanding after their partner reads aloud to them by saying ,"I heard you say..." and then describing the text that was just read aloud. If partners decide to work on fluency, they use a strategy called "I Read, You Read." Ask your child to show you how to do I Read, You Read at home!

Read to Someone Coaching Sheet

It was really hard to build our stamina for Read to Someone! There was SO much that we had to remember to do. From practicing fluency and comprehension to working cooperatively with a peer, Read to Someone can be a lot of work! Once we were able to Read to Someone for 10 minutes without a break, we added in an activity called "Coaching or Time." The listening student learned how to use a check list to help their reading partner when the partner got stuck on a tough word.

You might be saying, "Wait?! She said 'Daily 5.' I only heard about 3 different activities: Read to Self, Work on Writing, and Read to Someone!" Daily 5 is still a work in progress for us. Next week we'll learn about Listen to Reading and then the following week we'll learn how to do Word Work. Once we have all 5 parts of the Daily 5 up and running, our literacy block will run smoothly and we will be free to work together in small guided reading groups to read books at our instructional level with the support of a teacher.

Getting Into the Swing of Things!

     This past Thursday we welcomed our parents into our school for curriculum night!  It was great to see so many faces. We hope you enjoyed getting a peek at what life in second grade is like! As I mentioned that night, if you are interested in having your email address shared with the other families in the class, you can either leave a comment on this blog post or send me an email to let me know. I will send out an updated address list later this week. Also, the book order you received at curriculum night is due this Friday. There will be a new book order sent home every other month.
     This week we really started getting into the swing of things! We have most of our routines and procedures down and are now working on mastering them. We are well into our Everyday Math curriculum and started our nightly math Home Links on Wednesday night. Information on practicing Xtra Math at home was in the folder you received on curriculum night.  Yesterday we had our first lesson on answering math open response questions. Everyone did a great job as we worked through two problems together. We learned to read the entire problem first, highlight the question being asked, underline the key words, choose the appropriate strategy for solving the problem, actually solve the problem, record our answer, explain our thinking, and check our work. Next Friday students will work on a similar problem more independently. We also began our addition fact quizzes this week and will be working on practicing our addition facts in class.
     We are nearly done with our reading assessments and will be starting our guided reading groups shortly. The students are working on mastering our Daily 5 literacy routines. Right now we are working to build our stamina as we read to self, work on writing, and read to someone. We will be adding in listen to reading later this week. The final part of Daily 5 is word work and that will begin the first week in October.  This past week we focused on learning the expectations for all written work in second grade. You received a copy of these expectations and a copy of our personal word wall in your folder from curriculum night. The reading log that we discussed Thursday night will go home for the first time on Monday! Be sure to keep this in a safe place and return it to school on Friday.
    I hope that everyone has a wonderful week! I will be contacting those who expressed interest in volunteering later this week!

Smile! It's school picture day!

     Smile! Today was school picture day! Everyone was so excited and brought their best smiles!  Mrs. Rimkus and I had such a great time watching everyone proudly smile for the photographer. You could tell by the looks on everyone's faces that this was a REALLY important moment in the life of a second grader. We can't wait until the pictures go home so you can see them too! You are going to LOVE them!

    This has been a busy week for us in second grade! We have continued to learn about the routines and procedures for our literacy block. This week we continued to practice read to self. We also introduced read to someone and learned how to use this strategy to practice both our reading fluency and comprehension. Ask your child to tell you about how we check for understanding and how we practice fluency with a partner. (We call this "I read, you read.")  We learned more about the life cycle of the frog this week in science and in math we worked on telling time, counting coins, and finding equivalent names for numbers.  We also worked on super silent and speedy transitions this week! Ask your child to tell you why it is important that we transition quickly and quietly from one activity to another.

     Next week we will be learning about second grade writing expectations. We will be learning the expectations for spelling, punctuation, organization, and capitals in our writing. In science we will be learning how to tell the difference between frogs and toads. In math we will be learning more about equivalent names for numbers and working with base-10 blocks and dominoes! Curriculum night for second grade is on Thursday, September 20 from 6:45-8:00 PM. We hope to see many of you there! Please let me know if you cannot make it so I can send home the materials with your child. I will be handing out information on second grade in general, volunteering in our classroom, and the November conference day.

Have a great week!

The Second Week of Second Grade!

The Life Cycle of a Frog

     Here we are at the end of the second week of second grade! The time is flying by already! We had lots of excitement in our class this week! We traded in the desks we were borrowing for tables! We welcomed a new student, Acram, into our class! We celebrated Saket's birthday by singing him our new birthday song and signing a card for him! We also started learning about the life cycle of a frog! We read a big book about a frog's life cycle that had AWESOME photographs of frogs in different stages. Then we started working on creating our own frog life cycle books. We plan to finish these in school on Friday!

     We started Everyday Math this week! We have been learning about our daily math routines like math journals, homework folders, and mini white boards. We've worked on problems related to money and time. We also learned a fun new math game called Number Line Squeeze! Ask your child to tell you about this fun game!

    This week we also finished illustrating and writing about our hopes and dreams for the school year. (You can check them out on the board by my desk when you visit our classroom.) We then used these hopes and dreams to brainstorm rules that we would need this year if we wanted our hopes and dreams to come true. We started out with 16 rules, but decided that 16 was WAY too many to remember! Today we narrowed them down to our 5 final class rules. They are:

• Be polite.
• Be focused.
• Use self-control.
• Share (but not your food!)
• Have a positive attitude.

We are now working on group posters that illustrate our rules so that visitors to our classroom will know the expectations for working and learning in room 205!

    In reading this week we worked on building our stamina for Read to Self! We are now up to reading silently on our own for 6 minutes at a time. I wanted to try for 8 minutes tomorrow, but the class convinced me that they were ready to go for 10 minutes of silent reading! They love reading!

     Finally, we wrote our first story of the year this week! We wrote about a favorite summer activity. Students wrote about trips to the beach, amusement parks, playing at Dean Park, swimming, climbing through caves, playing sports, and so much more! It sounds like everyone had a great summer!

    We hope that everyone has a great Friday and a wonderful weekend!

The First Week of School!

     Can you believe that we have almost finished the first week of second grade?! We have had a great week getting to know one another and learning about the routines and expectations in second grade!

    This week we have read the following books together: Frog and Toad are Friends, Frog and Toad Together, Brave Little Monster, The Crayon Box that Talked, Chrysanthemum, The Important Book, Froggy Goes to School, and The Pain and the Great One. Ask your child to tell you about their favorite book from this week!

     We did a lot of work in school this week! We wrote friendly letters to Frog from Toad (or to Toad from Frog) and wrote conversations between Frog and Toad. We designed t-shirts that taught our classmates about ourselves and drew pictures of what we thought a scientist did. (We even met the ULTIMATE scientist! Ask you child to tell you about this fabulous person!) We designed bathing suits for toad (or frog) and illustrated a picture of our special reading space. We started talking and thinking about our hopes and dreams for the school year. We wrote pages for our own class important books. We also took a reading survey that asked us to think about what we liked and didn't like about reading. As you can see, we have had a VERY busy week! Has anyone had a tired second grader at home each night?!

     Tomorrow we will be sharing our artifact bags! We will also be writing captions for our scientist pictures. Tomorrow is our first school meeting! All of the first and second grade classes will meet with Mrs. McCubrey and Ms. Day as we work on building our school community.

     Have a restful and rejuvenating weekend!

It's Almost Time...

 It's almost time to go back to school and I can't wait to meet all of you! I have been busy buying new supplies and books for our classroom and I plan on spending this week at school getting everything ready for your first day of 2nd grade on August 28th!  It is so exciting to set up a classroom for the new school year! New school supplies are one of my favorite things! I hope you are getting excited for school to start too! We are going to have the best school year EVER!

I can't wait to hear about all of the fun things you did this summer! I just came back from a trip with my family. We went to the beach in New Jersey where we rented bikes to ride on the boardwalk and to Baltimore, Maryland to see the Red Sox play the Orioles. It was the first time I took Aili and Liija to a major league baseball game! They lasted 4 innings before we left our seats to go play on the playground they had at the ballpark! Unfortunately, the Red Sox lost. 

Moms and Dads: I plan on using this blog throughout the school year for two purposes. First, I will post here to keep you informed about any upcoming projects/events/homework assignments. I will also let you know when forms, such as report cards slips or field trip permission slips, are due. Secondly, I will update this blog each week to let you know what we have been doing in school. (I know from my own daughter that often, when I ask her what she did in school that day, she will reply, "Oh, nothing." I know that can't possibly be true, so I hope to use this blog to give you a little window into our daily activities.) From time to time that may include pictures of the students in our class working and playing together. Please let me know if you do not want pictures of your child included on our classroom blog. You can either leave a comment on this post to let me know or email me at hrichard@shrewsbury.k12.ma.us

Enjoy the rest of your summer! If you haven't already, you should be receiving a letter from me in the mail early this week!

Summer Fun

I hope that everyone is having an AWESOME summer!  I am really looking forward to starting the new school year together! Don't forget to read every day over the summer! You should also make sure to practice your math facts. I've included a link to a website where you can play some fun math games that will help you get ready for school to start! I can't wait to meet all of you! We are going to have a fantastic year together!  www.aplusmath.com