Willy Wonka Day!!

So, Where do we begin??? Since today was Willy Wonka Day students (and teachers) arrived in character and ready for some Wonka-licious FUN! Veruca, some Violets, a few Charlie's and Mike TVs, Willy Wonka himself, a couple of Grandmas, and even one over-sized Oompa Loompa! Wow! Our morning started with literacy, as usual, reading groups, readers theaters, research writing, the usual. After that, math was anything BUT the usual, as a chocolate river was streaming it's way through our meeting area full of chocolatey treats to sort, count, and graph! After graphing our sweet tasty treats it was on to more Wonka-mania in writing workshop. First, we needed some inspiration... and we found that inspiration inside a chocolate bar! A GOLDEN TICKET!! Every friend searched the school for their delicious Wonka Scrumpdittly-Umptious Bars and found a golden ticket in each one! What would you do if you went to Willy Wonka's factory? Who would you bring? What would you do with a life time supply of chocolate??? And... let the writing BEGIN!! Now that's what I call some sweet tasty inspiration! Ms. Nelms lead read aloud and continued with stories that celebrate our country's African American heroes with a story about Rosa Parks! Since it was Thursday, we also visited Ms. Kidder in the library, and ended the day in PE with Ms. Gebo! Now that's what I call one delicious day of learning!

Snow Day???

Snow day?? On Willy Wonka Day? Wha'?? Never, in the history of snow days, has there been a collective audible gasp over a Wednesday off, than there was today, on Willy Wonka Day!! But don't worry, even Mother Nature (as wondrous as she is) can't stop Willy Wonka Day! We will just postpone it to Thursday, TOMORROW!! That's right, tomorrow is Willy Wonka Day in 2W, so keep those costumes ready and the tingly, exciting anticipation of sweet things to come! Willy Wonka Day, Thursday, February 28... what a way to end the last day of the month! See you then!

Fact Families and Riddles!

Howdy Friends! Fantastic Tuesday today! We caught up on our literacy jobs on work board while reading groups worked on readers theaters and research in reading groups! Great way to start the day! In math we stretched our learning about 15 to include fact families! Thinking about number patterns and how they help make equations easy and fun... and fast! Speaking of fast, we had our first official "math fact race" today. That's right, Ms. W. dared any and every second grader to race through their math warm up sheet as fast as they can and try and beat her! In fairness... Ms. W. did pick the hardest sheet, and was the first to cross the finish line, a close second was Katie, followed by Marcus, Deter, Justin, Georgia and BG... just to name a few! Holy cow! What a blast! In fairness to the integrity of the competition, we must note that Ms. W actually made 2 errors, in her haste (though that's the whole point... fast facts), and we crowned Katie the winner! Well done everyone! We continued to read stories that celebrate the strength and courage of our African Americans and read about Harriet Tubman today. I must say, I do believe this may be the most insightful, thoughtful, empathetic group of second graders I've ever read to! February is a month to celebrate African American History, and celebrate we did, while learning about the struggle and character of those who supported the slave's escape! Niko had another fantastic math meeting and Madelene lead a wonderful morning meeting as well! We ended the day in writing workshop writing riddles about the characters we would dress up as for Willy Wonka Day tomorrow! Next it was fun to share our riddles and guess who will be arriving (in character) at school tomorrow as we prepare to celebrate Willy Wonka Day! Can't wait!!

Welcome Back Friends!

What a great first day back after the winter vacation! Our day got started with work board and our new word study pattern: contractions! Learning how to use contractions and apostrophes will help us be better writers! We also practiced our math facts to 15 with beans... and recognized another pattern... facts to 15 means 16 math facts! Way to go Deter! We talked about Willy Wonka Day on Wednesday, and we CAN'T WAIT!! In writing workshop we reviewed how adjectives are special words that describe nouns, and make our stories more interesting! We started our "WOW" words today too, substituting some "WOW" words to use, instead of the word "fun" in our writing! Well done writers! We also talked about our "goals" for last week and friends who met their goals (achievements, things they worked on while they had last week off) shared their accomplishments! Outstanding friends! So glad to be back in action and working hard in our second grade classroom... together! Just the way we like it!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Howdy Heartbreakers! What a lovely day! Today we started the day with our Valentine's inspired work board full literacy jobs reflecting friendship! We finished our time unit today, and got to show and share how much we've learned! Well done time keepers! Mid-day we stopped to decorate envelopes and delivered our valentines to friends! Very exciting! Justin had one fantastic morning meeting and Georgia ran another great math meeting too! We decorated bookmarks in library with Ms. Kidder while returning and taking out new books. In the afternoon we reviewed our spelling pattern using ow and ou to make the OW sound. Listening to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in read aloud was just amazing! That wonderful feeling you get when your in the middle of reading a story you hope will never end... but knowing when you do, it's Willy Wonka Day!! Can't wait! Wednesday after vacation we will launch Willly Wonka Day in 2W, so you have plenty of time to think about which character to dress up as when you arrive in school! Miss Nelms, our student teacher from Mt. Holyoke College has spent her first week with us, and likes what she sees so far! So glad to have you on board Miss Nelms! No school next week. School is closed for winter vacation. See you tomorrow for fun Friday!!