Sturbridge Village in Pictures

Here are a few pictures from our recent class trip to Sturbridge Village! As you can see we had a great day! 

Baking cookies the way they did in the 1800s

Preparing the "receipt," which was what they called a recipe in the 1800s

Measuring the ingredients

Using a straw whisk to mix the eggs

The oven was very different from what we have at home!

Learning about life on a farm in the 1800s

Scooping out the dough

By the sawmill

Cookies are done!

Rotary Readers!

The second grade at Floral Street School was lucky enough to have community readers from the local Rotary International club come to our school yesterday! Each second grade class had a visit from a Rotary reader who read the class an award winning story. The reader also left our class with a gift of four award winning hardcover books! Our Rotary community reader was Mrs. Mills. We had a great time listening to the story Sleep Like a Tiger! Thank you, Mrs. Mills, for reading to our class yesterday!

We received these books from our Rotary reader!

Mrs. Mills, reading Sleep Like a Tiger to the class

Fall Festival and Harvest Hoedown!

We had a great time enjoying all things fall related this week in second grade! We created fall crafts and poetry at our fall festival, read fall stories, and danced at the Harvest Hoedown! Take a look at some of our adventures from this week!

Dancing at the Harvest Hoedown

Swing your partner!

We had so much fun square dancing!

Making leaf prints

Painting pumpkins for pumpkin globes

Creating fall cards with leaf printing

Artists at work!

Artist at work!

Using pointillism, an art form from the 1800's, to decorate trees

Working on an art project during fall festival 

Fall Festival!

Our Fall Festival will be on Wednesday, October 29th from 12:00-2:00. Please click on the link below to view the Sign Up Genius form for this event.

Click here to help out with our Fall Festival!

Also, Floral Street School will be holding our traditional Harvest Hoe Down on Friday, October 31st. Students will get the opportunity to show off the square dancing skills that they have been learning in music and phys. ed. classes! Students are encouraged to wear "western wear" that day. You do not have to buy anything new for this. Jeans and a plaid shirt work fine! Students could also wear overalls, a bandana around their neck like a cowboy, or cowboy hats. Due to parking constraints, this event is for students only. Thank you for understanding!

November 4th is Parent Conference Day!

Parent conference day will be held on Tuesday, November 4th this year. Please visit my Sign Up Genius page to sign up for a 15 minute parent conference. The conferences are scheduled 20 minutes apart to allow for transition time.

Click here to sign up for a conference!

I'm looking forward to seeing everyone on November 4th!

Curriculum Night

Thank you to everyone who came to curriculum night last night! It was great to meet you all! As I mentioned last night, information on how to access the Ten Marks math site will be sent home in today's purple folder. There is currently one activity set up for each student and I ask that this be completed by Friday. Information on accessing XtraMath will be sent home later this week.

If you were unable to attend curriculum night, we are sending home a copy of the power point presentation today, along with the second grade writing diamond, the second grade personal word wall, and an article on second graders and their skills in the classroom. It's a good idea to put the writing diamond and the word wall in the place where you do homework at home so that they are easily accessible when needed.

Additionally, be on the lookout for emails aboutsign ups for conferences (Conference day is November 4th) and sign ups for class volunteers. Both of these will be out in early October and sign ups for both will be done using the website Sign Up Genius. I will send a Power School email home when the sign up links are active.

Finally, a Scholastic book order is going home today alone with a note on how to order books if you are interested in doing so. Book orders will be due on Friday, September 26th and usually take 2-3 weeks to come in.

Have a great day!

The First Week of School

We hope that everyone had a great first week of school! We were busy here in room 205! Thank you to everyone who has already sent in socks to use as white board erasers in math! We could still use a few more, so if you have any socks without a pair at home, we would love it if you could send them in to class!

We had a great first week together in second grade! We spent a lot of time this week getting to know one another and learning about the routines and procedures that will make it possible for us to do our work and have fun in school this year

Cooperation looks and sounds like...

This week we learned about the first letter in CARES, which is part of Floral Street School's social curriculum. The C in CARES stands for cooperation. We read several stories about cooperation, including Swimmy and The Crayon Box that Talked. We brainstormed what it looked like and sounded like when a class was cooperating. Take a look at our list! Next we brainstormed examples of ways we could cooperate with one another and finally, we drew pictures depicting students cooperating that will be displayed in our classroom this year. Next week we will learn about the A in CARES, which stands for assertion. In this case, assertion means using your voice to communicate your needs and wants in a polite way.







While we were learning about cooperation, we read the book Whole Body Listening Larry at School. (There is another great book called Whole Body Listening Larry at Home.) We talked about what it means to listen with your whole body and how whole body listening will help us do our work this year. Ask your child to tell you what it means to listen with your whole body!

Whole Body Listening

We ended the week talking about our hopes and dreams for second grade. The students thought about what they hopes to learn more about, what skills they hoped to improve, and what they hoped to do in second grade. We created this list and next week we will use these ideas to create a display using pictures and sentences that will show our hopes and dreams to everyone who enters our room!

Our Hopes and Dreams

We hope that everyone has a wonderful weekend and has a chance to relax and recharge! We will see you again on Tuesday, September 2nd! 

Second Grade Supply List

SECOND GRADE SUPPLY LIST 2013/2014

**If you are participating in the Floral PTO Supplies

program – please ignore**

All items are for community use – no names on any materials.

• #2 pencils, 2-24 packs, SHARPENED
  
• 3 black marble composition notebooks
  
• erasers - unscented, white magic rub-type
  
• 9-12 glue sticks (please, no generic brand, Elmer’s works
  best)
  
• colored pencils (24 pack) Crayola-type
  
• washable markers (8 pack)
  
• crayons (24 pack) Crayola-type
  
• 1 hand pencil sharpener, with cover
  
• Expo-type, low-odor markers, 2-8 packs - thick) BLACK
  ONLY
  
• 2 yellow highlighters
  
• 4 packages - square (3x3) sticky notes
  
• 4 pocket folders with prongs, solid colors only, no designs
  please 
  
  
  Also, we will be using old (clean) socks to erase our white boards in math this year. Each student will need to bring in an old, but clean sock to use for this purpose! Finally, a use for all of those socks with missing pairs! :) 
  

Summer Learning

Many families wonder how they can keep their child's academic skills sharp over the summer. The letter below will give you some ideas about how to identify books that are just right for your child's independent reading level. RAZ Kids, XtraMath, and Ten Marks should also stay active until at least August. These are great tools for practicing reading fluency, comprehension, and math. Don't forget that there are a number of academic links on the right hand side of our class blog too! Summer reading logs will be sent home in the final report card on the last day of school.

Dear Room 205 Families,

Your child’s independent reading level (the # and letter), based on the DRA (Developmental Reading Assessment) system used by the Shrewsbury Public Schools, is going to be on the final report card.

While your child may already have ideas about the books he or she likes to read, I am providing a list of websites you may find helpful in identifying appropriate books.

It’s important for your child to continue practicing at his or her independent reading level to maintain the skills - comprehension, accuracy, fluency, and expanding vocabulary -that we have been practicing all year long.

Use the Advanced Search feature on this site . . . http://www.scholastic.com/parents/books-and-reading/book-search/

http://home.comcast.net/~ngiansante/

http://www.bookadventure.com/Home.aspx

For information regarding Summer Reading expectations, please visit . . .

http://schools.shrewsbury-ma.gov/egov/docs/1401827326494.htm

I have also included the URL to our class website that has LOTS of links to some great websites that support the learning across the curriculum that your child has done.

http://mrsrichardgrade2.blogspot.com

Happy Reading!

Nice Weather = Happy Students

We are enjoying the wonderful spring days here at Floral Street School. As a class, we have been working on improving our transitions so that they are quick and quiet. This has allowed us to get our work done on time and has left us some time to get outdoors and enjoy the nice days! Today was one of those days. We had a great morning starting our new math unit on telling time (Math assessments from the previous unit will be going home later this week. Be on the lookout!). Most students remembered a lot of what they learned about telling time in first grade. You can help at home by asking your child to look at an analog clock and telling you what time it is showing or by using time when you are talking to your child. ("We will be eating dinner at 6 o'clock.") Our goal in second grade is to be able to accurately tell time to the hour and half hour using an analog clock.

We've included a picture of our class coming in from today's recess. We are all smiles because a number of students in the class had a great time playing basketball together, while others chose to play wall ball or chat with friends

We hope you are all enjoying the spring too!

Playground....Under Construction

Yesterday classes at Floral Street School had the opportunity to help prepare our playground for reopening after April vacation week. Over the winter, the mulch gets packed down by the snow and ice. Before the playground can reopen in the spring, the mulch has to be turned over and raked smooth so that it becomes a softer surface to protect us if we fall. Classes were able to work out on the playground for 20-30 minutes each, turning over and raking the mulch. Everyone worked hard to get our section of the playground done. Working together as a school community on getting the playground ready to open teaches students the importance of taking care of their school environment. They were so proud and excited to be able to help!

Science Researchers at Work

Today we started a science research project on dangerous weather. Students were able to choose a type of potentially dangerous weather that interested them. This included tornados, hurricanes, blizzards, heat waves, droughts, floods, and thunder/lightning storms. Each student received a note-taking sheet and each group received a set of books on their topic. After a quick discussion about how we could use non-fiction text features to find information in our books, students set off to search for answers to the following questions:

Everyone worked hard in their groups or on their own to find the answers to these questions. There was a lot of reading and writing going on in the classroom as students enjoyed learning more about their storm of choice.

Later this week, we will be taking our notes and using them to create posters that teach others about the storms that we studied. Be on the lookout for the final projects!

Valentine's Day

I hope that everyone is enjoying their vacation week! I wanted to send along a few pictures from our Valentine's Day celebration so you can see what we were up to! (You've probably already seen the finished products come home!) Celebrating Valentine's Day in an elementary school is one of my favorite things to do! The kids get so excited about giving and receiving cards. They enjoy making little cards for one another. If you want to see friendship at its finest, head to an elementary school on Valentine's Day next year. I promise, you won't be disappointed! Friendship is everywhere!

Enjoy the rest of your week!