Snapshots from Room 205

This past weekend I was cleaning out the pictures on my phone and stumbled across quite a few that gave a peek into what life has been like for the past month or so in room 205. We've been busy celebrating one another and the things that make us each special. We've welcomed new friends into our classroom. We've listened to new books read by a community reader. We've rejoiced at the coming of winter and the first ice sightings on our playground. We even became playground scientists and studied the places where the ice melted and where it stayed frozen so we could discover what caused this to happen. While all of this was going on, we've also strengthened our reading fluency and comprehension. We've worked hard on mastering our addition and subtraction facts. Some of us have even moved on to multiplication facts! We designed our own communities. We learned how the water cycle works and how it contributes to the weather here on earth. Yesterday, we learned how to be weather watchers and went outside to observe and record the day's weather. (Spoiler alert: It was INCREDIBLY cold!) It's been a busy few months in room 205. We can't wait to see what the new year has to offer!

Two friends showing their beautiful mehndi designs.

Teaching some friends Tamil at recess

Our class welcomed Prarthna in November!

Our community reader this year was a Shrewsbury police officer!

Here we are listening to our community reader.
One of our favorite books, A Little Peace, by Barbara Kerley is on the shelf behind our reader.

We discovered ice on the playground on morning!

It was cold to touch! Luckily we had mittens!

See you in 2017!!!

Celebrating fall!

This week in second grade we spent some time celebrating fall! We kicked off our celebration of this season on Wednesday with our Fall Festival. Students were able to spend some time working on making fall cards and leaf prints, creating seasonal trees using the art technique called pointillism, playing a fun game called "Roll a Pumpkin," and reading a variety of fall themed stories. There was a lot of creativity at work that morning in room 205!

Roll a Pumpkin

Max's Roll a Pumpkin drawing

We had so many fall books to read!

Creating seasonal trees using pointillism

Fall cards and leaf prints-messy, but fun!

We also got to join the rest of Floral Street School at the Harvest Hoedown on Friday. Our class has been practicing the square dances during phys. ed. classes over the past couple of weeks. Today we got the chance to show off our dance moves. We spent some time this morning dancing both alone and in groups. Everyone had a blast!

We were lucky to have Ms. Demoga, our school psychologist, visit our classroom after the hoedown. She read the story Room on the Broom and lead us through some Halloween yoga poses. Ask your child to show you the witch, cat, dog, half moon, frog, and mummy poses!

Have a great weekend!

Daily 5

We have been hard at work laying the foundation for our literacy block this year! For the past few weeks, we have been learning about three aspects of our Daily 5 time. These include read to self, read to someone, and work on writing. We have worked hard to develop lists of expected and unexpected behaviors for each activity and have then practiced those expected behaviors as we build our stamina in each area. We are now at the point where we can read to self for 20 minutes, work on writing for 15 minutes, and read to someone for 10 minutes. Our goal is to build our stamina to 20 minutes in all three areas. We are well on our way! It is important that we master these literacy activities because these will be our anchor activities during our literacy block for the entire school year. Students will rotate through the Daily 5 activities when they are not in a reading group with a teacher.

Take a look at read to self, read to someone, and work on writing in action! Ask your child to point out the expected behaviors in the pictures. (Faces have been covered by smiley faces to protect students' privacy.)

Work on Writing

Read to Someone

Read to Self

In the coming weeks, we will be introducing the last two parts of Daily 5-Listen to Reading and Word Work. A note went home in the green folder on Monday regarding headphones for Listen to Reading. Please let me know if you need another copy of this notice! We hope to begin Listen to Reading in early October.

Sign up for conference day!

Parent/teacher conference day is Tuesday, November 8th. Please click on the link below to sign up for a conference time for your second grader! Thank you!

Click here to sign up for a conference!

We wrote our class rules!!

While we have been diving into our second grade curriculum, we have also been taking time to establish rules and classroom procedures that will help us achieve our hopes and dreams for this school year. After spending time thinking about what we hoped to accomplish this school year, we took these hopes and dreams public by posting our sentences and drawings about them on our classroom wall. Some of our hopes and dreams for this year are as follows:

"I hope to learn science."

"I hope to read more books than ever before."

"I hope to learn more about writing."

"I hope to learn division."

"I hope to learn the names of everyone in the class and make new friends."

Ask your child about his or her hope and dream for the school year!

After we decided upon our hopes and dreams, we thought about what had to happen in our classroom in order for these dreams to be achieved. We brainstormed a list of ideas. Many of these things ended up being stated in the negative. For example, "Don't talk during work time" or "Don't rush through your work." Instead of focusing on what we shouldn't do, we decided to focus on what we should do. Groups of students worked together to change the ideas that were stated in the negative (Don't do something...) into the positive, so students would know what they should be doing.

At this point, we realized that we had way too many rules! There was no way we could remember them all! We also noticed that many of them said the same ideas, but in different ways. Our next step was to combine our similar rules and come up with a way to state them as one single rule.

Finally, we had our completed set of class rules! Everyone "owns" our rules because we wrote them together. Letters stating our class rules went home to families earlier this week so that everyone knows what we have been doing as we work to build our classroom community!

We are currently working on making posters that illustrate our class rules so that visitors to our classroom understand the expectations for working in room 205. We strive to be a respectful community that works together!

It's time for science!

This week, we officially kicked off our science work for the year by introducing the 8 science and engineering practices. We learned how to develop and use models while using the skills of observation and critiquing.

We started off our study with the a look at the human life cycle. The students were told that all living things have a life cycle and that their job would be to use what they already know to create a scientific model (a chart or drawing) that shows their current thinking about the life cycle of a frog.

Each group was given a large piece of paper and went to work. We worked on practicing our cooperation skills while making the posters so that everyone's voice was heard by their group.

The following day we were ready to learn more about the life cycle of the frog. It was time to observe tadpoles!

Later on, after we learn a lot more about the frog's life cycle, we are going to have a chance to revise our thinking on our original models. Today we had the chance to look at a few of the models while we discussed the frog's life cycle. When it was their turn to share their thinking, students could choose to state a new idea about that particular poster, add on to an idea that was already stated by someone else, or repeat an idea that someone else said in their own words.

We can't wait to revisit the tadpoles later next week and add our new knowledge to our scientific models!

Happy First Day of School!

We had a great first day here in room 205 at Floral Street School! We spent a lot of time today getting to know one another better and learning the expectations for students at Floral Street School! We started our day with Morning Meeting and Calendar Math, which are two routines we will use throughout the year. After that we worked on making t-shirts that show our favorite place, something we like to do, a person who taught us something, and a happy memory. We will use these to get to know one another better. If you come into room 205 in the coming weeks, look for them on a "clothesline" hanging in our classroom!

After learning about how the cafeteria works and taking a tour of the space where we would be eating lunch, we wrote letters to our future selves about our hopes and dreams for second grade. We will get these letters back to read on the last day of school!

 

This afternoon we used dot cards in math to learn the "turn and talk" routine. Ask your child to tell you about dot cards and how we used them to find the math!

Today we discussed treating people the way we want to be treated and the importance of cooperation by reading two books, Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes, and The Crayon Box that Talked by Shane DeRolf. We loved both books! Ask your child to tell you about these stories!

Today your child will be bringing home their green communication folder. Please return this folder to school with your child tomorrow. Anything in the "keep at home" pocket should remain at home. Anything in the "return to school" pocket should come back to school. There are some forms in there for parents to fill out, as well as an "artifact bag" for your child. (Due on Thursday) We talked about ideas for this bag at the end of the day today. If your child has not yet brought in a family photograph or drawing, they should do this by tomorrow because we will be sharing them with each other at Morning Meeting!

I hope that everyone has a great night! I'm looking forward to a great second day tomorrow!