Second Grade Friends!

Julienne's Meeting and Pocket Day!!

2012-02-10T18:29:00.013-05:00

Great Friday!! And Julienne got it all started with an enthusiastic meeting with This Land Is Your Land, cube greeting, and sparkle!!! Great job Julienne! After computers we reviewed what we've learned about writing letters, and took it a step further. We addressed envelopes and talked about what an address is, and how to properly address an envelope, so the letter can be delivered. Outstanding job, and very challenging, as an envelope is relatively small, compared to second grade writing paper, and still, we did a fabulous job! Nicely done! Next, it was on to our buddy test, and seeing whether we've really learned our new rule, long e vowel sound! Ther verdict... YES! Yes, we do, indeed know how to spell our long e vowel sound words, and should be able to transfer that into our writing!
We ended the morning with quiet reading, and shared with our new student teacher, Ms. Garrity, what quiet reading really looks like in second grade!
We started the afternoon with our math warm-up (math computation fluency practice) and many are noticing that their hard work, and practice is paying off! YEAH!! After that, it was Pocket Day!! Love, love, love Pocket Day! Together, we all tallied how many pockets we were wearing today, and then worked in small groups to add them all up using friendly numbers (numbers that are easy to work with... addends of ten, counting by 5's, and doubles)! I can't tell you how impressed I was by all your collaboration, communication, and creative ways to combine numbers and come up with an answer!! Today... in 2W... we were proudly adorned with 95 pockets all together! Now THAT was fun!! After math, Tia lead her last math meeting of the week and did a fantastic job! We were in good hands with Tia in charge of our math meetings, and next week, it's all up to Skyler! I can't wait Skyler, can you?? Ms. Shumacher read the final chapter of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in read aloud today, and we loved every minute of it. Now that we're done reading the story... Do you know what that means? WILLY WONKA DAY IN SECOND GRADE!!! What does that mean? What's the big deal?? I'll tell you!! Students will come dressed as their favorite character, and the day will be filled with Wonka-licious challenges in all curricular areas. reading, writing, and math. Let's just say, get ready for some "chocolaty surprises that await you!!! Have a great weekend everyone! Sleep, enjoy family and friends, and see you all bright and early for another great week in second grade!

Zenani's Meeting, Addition with Regrouping, and Full Moon!??

2012-02-09T21:37:00.016-05:00

Howdy Thursday Think-a-ma-jigs! Zenani started our day with the rhythm stick greeting, Oh, Susannah, and sparkle! Well done Zenani! After library with Mrs. Kidder, we were practicing writing with apostrophe's in handwriting with possessive nouns! Next it was on to word study and using rhyme to sort our long e vowel sounding words. Writing workshop was all about spelling words and sentences. Paying attention to the mechanics of our writing, what our sentences look like (capitals, punctuation, and spelling), while adding detail, wow words, and dialogue to our writing! In math we practiced what we learned yesterday when adding double digit numbers. We payed close attention to regrouping, and when you need to regroup numbers. Understanding place value is very important when learning to add 2 and 3 digit numbers, and we reviewed the rule (for pencil and paper addition)! First add the tens, and then, add the ones. A new skill, and so far, we're looking good! With just a little more practice, we'll have it LOCKED IN! Well done friends! Ms. Schumacher read from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory during read aloud today, and it looks like we may finish this incredible story tomorrow... and do you know what that means?? Willy Wonka Day in second grade is close at hand! Dressing as your favorite Wonka character, and a day full of Wonka inspired candy-licious surprises! Let's keep the "candy" part on the "down low"... Nurse Jeannie is busy enough, without worrying about our pearly whites, as it relates to Wonka Day. Let's all just promise to brush, really brush those pearly whites after Wonka Day, and everyone will be happy! Woohoo! Soon!
Pocket Day tomorrow! What will you wear??

Addition with Regrouping, and Julienne's Meeting!

2012-02-08T18:11:00.016-05:00

Greetings Wednesday Workers! Julienne got it all started with This Land Is Your Land, the cube greeting (whoa!!!), and sparkle! Love that game! Great Meeting Julienne! With lots of enthusiastic participation!! We practiced writing apostrophe words, courtesy of contractions, in handwriting, and then it was on to spelling! Sorting our long e vowel sound words and paying close attention to simile and context clues... well done friends! In writing workshop we used our prewriting from yesterday, and crafted summaries of a delightful story called Imogene's Antlers by David Small! Writers payed close attention to writing a beginning, middle, and ending to their summaries and did a wonderful job! In quiet reading many friends enjoyed all the new books around our presidential theme and learned a lot about Washington, Lincoln, and many more!
In math we were introduced to double digit addition with regrouping (carrying). When adding the ones column, the sum can often be a two digit number. Understanding how to regroup that "ten" and then add it to the tens column is important! Remembering to ALWAYS WRITE WHAT YOU CARRY is also important! Following the steps is very important, and we'll practice some more each day to improve our skills and speed! Another reason why knowing those math facts automatically is very important! Great work today! Tia ended math with another great math meeting complete with calendar, days in school, money, and weather graphing! Great day friends! Library tomorrow... library books please!

Jake's Meeting, Summaries, and Fact Families!!

2012-02-07T18:42:00.018-05:00

Howdy Friends! What a full productive Tuesday! Jake started it off with a new meeting song, Twist and Shout! After that we greeted each other as if we were circus animals... elephants, monkeys, bunnies, and more! The telephone game was also a huge hit! Well done Jake! In handwriting we worked on using the apostrophe with some contraction words. Word sstudy was all about phonetic substitutions and dictionaries! We moved ourselves into the cafeteria which proved to be a bright, sunny, lovely work space, and it was all about long e vowel sounding words! When we arrived back in the classroom it was time for some prewriting and Imogene's Antlers, a whimsical funny story about what it might be like to wake up with antlers on your head!! Clearly, Imogene made the most of this very serious situation, and we loved every minute of it! We will use our prewriting tomorrow to craft summaries in writing workshop. We ended the morning with quiet reading and enjoyed our new book theme.... US Presidents! In math today we used what we learned yesterday about equations and practiced fact families! Groups of numbers that always work together! You could have heard a pin drop today, and our focus was incredible! Well done! Being Tuesday, we had fluency practice in math with computers and played many addition, place value games, and added tens! Anytime you want to practice math fluency using the computer, remember, all the games are right there on the blog for you! Practice makes for a fast, fluent, automatic problem solver! Well done! Great day! PE tomorrow, sneakers please.

Tia's Meetings, Beans and Ballet!!

2012-02-06T19:18:00.018-05:00

What a wonderful Monday! The Pats may have lost, but WE were in "game shape" today in second grade, that's for sure! Tia started the morning with one great meeting and a new game, "It's a WHAT??" Well played Tia! Everyone loved it! Our new spelling rule is long e vowel sound, and ways to make the long e sound. It was off to boot camp, and we reviewed our chant: when two vowels stand side by side, the first one says it's name with pride! Catchy! and a great way to remember our vowel teams! Cali shared a book she made before quiet reading today, and then it was off to the ballet! That's right! We were treated to one of the most beautiful, magical, graceful shows we've ever seen! A Hadley ballet school brought 5 of their most amazing students to share the history, culture, and beautiful music and dance that they've been studying. Very impressive, and what an attentive, well mannered, respectful audience we were too! Nice! In math we used beans to calculate all the equations we could make with 15 beans, and what a great job we did! Again, I can't tell you how well we worked today! So focused, so productive, so organized, and the result was impressive! So proud! Great work! Tia ended our math block with one great math meeting. I mean, seriously, her first math meeting and she looked like she was BORN running math meetings! Poised, focused, and attentive! Nicely done Tia. You may have almost tied Owen for "most meetings lead by a second grader in one day" award! WOW! We LOVED listening to the spoiled, overindulgent Veruca Salt go down the incinerator chute today in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, compliments of some very insightful, talented squirrels! We ended our day on work board with catch up day as Ms. W. met with readers in groups for fluency practice and guided reading groups! What a day! Ballet, beans, games, reading, writing, and friends! Kinda makes me excited to see what tomorrow will bring! See you then!! PE on Tuesday, sneakers please!

Spirit Day! Go Team!!

2012-02-03T19:08:00.023-05:00

Greetings Fans! Today was spirit day at SES, and everyone showed up for the event!! After a week of anticipation, poster making, surveys, and data collection, spirit day was finally here, and student's represented their teams beautifully! Wow! Cali even represented both teams, Giants and Patriots with one of the coolest, creative, bi-partisan shirts we've ever seen! Awesome Cali! Loved it!! Danny started our day and our morning meeting with Black Socks (as in the song, not stinky socks), the "did you know" greeting, and sparkle! Excellent Danny! Way to start the day! Next it was on to word study and buddy test. We practiced one last time with our spelling words, tapping them out (on our arms while seeing and saying the words), and finished with our word hunt. After talking about making good learning choices (yesterday) it sure payed off today! Best buddy test ever! Students were able to concentrate and think about the spelling patterns and do their best work! Nice! Writing workshop was all about spelling words again, and using our words in context to create sentences. Everyone did an excellent job, and three friends shared some of their sentences with us at author's share. Quiet reading was quite relaxing and a supreme pleasure, with book choices like Roald Dahl (our new second grade addiction, and new scholastic book club books from our most recent book order! Well done!
In math, we practiced more double digit addition (the paper and pencil way) and reviewed the rule... first add the ones, then add the tens! Some of our sums even leaped into triple digit numbers, and we had to pay even closer attention to place value, neat columns when writing numbers, and adding, of course! We took some extra time today to finish our February calendars and February never looked better! WOW friends! Excellent work! We ended fun Friday with some time catching up on work board while readers met with Ms. W. I must say friends, when we bring our "A-game" we BRING IT!! I can't tell you how proud I was of how we completed our center work, quietly, cooperatively, creatively, and productively! I'm serious, when we apply effort and perseverance, confidence and creativity to our thinking, there's NOTHING we can't do! Well done friends! Great day! Enjoy your Super Bowl weekend with friends, food, fans, and fun! Not a football fan... read a book and bring it in to share on Monday morning! Go Readers!! Go Team!!

Brady's Meeting and Fabulous February Calendars!!

2012-02-02T19:52:00.008-05:00

Greetings Thursday Thinkers! Brady started our day with a great meeting! This Land is Your Land, cube greeting, and sparkle! Great job Brady! We used our long a spelling words to sort words according to spelling patterns and context clues! Well done! In writing workshop we relaxed with our dialogue journals, a private place to write thoughts, feelings, songs, stories, or what ever you choose! The only rule... writers must write! I think I saw some very impressive comic strips complete with word bubbles and seriously funny jokes (yes, I'm talking to you, Danny)!! Speaking of "Dannys" our other Danny treated us to a poem he and Mrs. Easton practiced in reading group (with his able bodied sidekick Alena) and it was fabulous! Well done Danny! Loved it! Keep up the good work!
We jumped into February yesterday, so today, on Groundhog Day, we jumped into calendar math in the afternoon! We talked about Leap year, month words, days of the week, and used our calendar to answer some questions about February! I must say that today, our calendars might have been the neatest ones yet this year! Neatness COUNTS, and it sure counted today in 2W during math! Outstanding! We were visited today by one of our favorite substitute teachers, Mrs. McGinn, and she read from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory during read aloud, and what a treat it was! We are so INTO this amazing story you can hear a pin drop during read aloud! Prepare for one amazing surprise when we approach the end of this remarkable story by one of our favorite authors, Roald Dahl!
We ended the day on work board (scholastic news, buddy reading, listening center, Ed Emberly, fiction writing, and ABC center, just to name a few). We have a bit of a challenge in our classroom remembering to make good choices for our learning. This is an independent work time where second graders are expected to get their center work done (and done well) on their own. As always, try again tomorrow, do better, and make improvements! I know we can do it, and we will! Having said that, many friends did some exceptional work today, and it shows!! Keep it up! Homework due tomorrow. Get ready for Fun Friday!

Double Digit Addition and All School Sing!!

2012-02-01T18:00:00.017-05:00

What a great day!! It all started with Juan's morning meeting and a new game "fruit basket"! What fun! Well done Juan! We were quickly off to PE this morning, and when we came back, it was time for more long a vowel sounding words! Students worked with antonyms (opposite words) and used context clues to complete the missing word in sentences! Many looked up more spelling words in the dictionary today as well! Nice work! We completed our writing prompt today: Write about someone special and a special moment you shared with that person. Someone who really matters to you. Well done friends! Many wrote about grandparents, some wrote about cousins and siblings, and a couple even wrote about teachers (we're talkin' about you, Mrs. Wells)!!! Nice job everyone! Writing to a prompt means following directions, and adding as much detail to your writing to really answer the question! In math we introduced double digit addition and it was a ONNNN!! Simple... double digit means two digits, and all you do is add! Just remember the secret... start with the ones, then the tens! Simple! After some more practice, we will introduce regrouping numbers (carrying) to our computation practice! For now, we'll lock in the rules, the protocol of how to add double digit numbers (the pencil and paper way). Great beginning! After math, Makayla ushered in a new month at her math meeting! Welcome February, already??? Yikes! We ended our day with one fantastic all school sing! Mr. Hines and his able bodied assistant Maddison guided us through Tingelayo, He's Got the Whole World In His Hands, and many more! Mr. Hines also announced the theme for Art's Night... Soul! I can't wait for another incredible evening if singing, dancing, and one of a kind entertainment... SES style!

Harrison's Meeting and Dictionaries!!

2012-01-31T17:46:00.011-05:00

Greetings Friends! Harry started our day with a rousing rendition of This Land Is Your Land, the cube greeting (rock and roll style, whisper style, army sargent style, and the newly popular bunny style)! What a great bunny-tastic way to start the day! In word study we used our long a vowel words to segment sounds, and worked with rhyming words too. It's always fun when we get to use dictionaries with our spelling words and that's exactly what we did! After putting words in ABC order, we used our dictionaries to double check! In writing workshop it was writing to a prompt (a special type of writing where we answer a question with lots of details). Today our prompt was to write about a special moment spent with someone special, important, someone who really matters to us. More writing tomorrow!
In math we took a close look at our learning about place value and triple digit numbers up to 1,000! WOW! We've really learned a lot, and will continue to practice adding ones, tens, and hundreds and (subtraction too)! After Makayla's math meeting we were off to computers to practice math computation fluency! We routinely start every day with 5 minutes of math fluency practice (math facts, fast and automatic), and we took advantage of practicing on computers instead! Computation fluency is only one part of math, but it's very important that we learn those math facts (up to 20) automatically (without even thinking about it) by the end of second grade! If you'd like to practice at home, remember, just scroll down the blog on the right hand side, and click on math games (under followers)! What a fun way to practice, learn, and master our math facts!
We ended the day in PE and worked up quite a sweat! What a work out! Just the way we like it! PE tomorrow as well, sneakers please.

Monday Meetings.... Owen and Makayla!!

2012-01-30T17:54:00.017-05:00

Howdy Monday Amigos! We got started today with Owen's morning meeting, Chicken Lips, ball toss greeting (tricky) and sparkle!!! Great meeting Owen! Our new spelling rule today was long a vowel sound (when a says it's name). We watched a quick video snippet called Boot Camp Long A and saw how long a says it's name when it's with silent e, or in front of another vowel (check the link on the right, and see for yourself)! It even gets a little help from Y (sometimes a vowel on it's own)!! After sorting our words, we were ready for writing workshop. Today is Monday, and that means weekend stories (personal narratives)! Today our focus was on WOW words and replacing "said" with some fancier words like "replied", "shouted", "whispered", and "yelled". Student authors Owen and Skyler shared their stories today at our author's share! Well done! Writing workshop could have gone on all morning, accept it was time for recess! Once back, after lunch and recess, it was time for more with place value and adding tens and hundreds! Makayla hosted her first math meeting, and I must say it was great! Calendar, days in school, counting money, and graphing the weather! Well done Makayla! We ended the day with work board, reading groups, and fluency practice, and everyone did their job! Job well done! Great Monday everyone! See you tomorrow... PE, sneakers please.

James, Makayla, and Someone Turns 50!!

2012-01-27T22:23:00.024-05:00

Fun Friday was exactly that!! Full of fun challenges and unexpected surprises! First, James started our morning meeting with Rockin' Robin and the koosh greeting! Clothespin game was a challenge, but we loved it! Our line plot graph data this morning was about siblings. How many brothers and sisters do you have? Buddy test went along without a hitch, and we are officially experts on digraphs sh, ch, wh, and th (rude brother and sister... the only time you may stick your tongue out at the teacher). We discovered it was Mr. Merritts 50th birthday today, and that was an occasion for a very special kind of writing, birthday card greetings! After generating some vocabulary and thinking about what we'd like to say to Mr. Merritt, we crafted some beautifully written cards and illustrated them with balloons, presents, cake, guitars, and even math problems!! Yeah! Mr. Merritt was truly touched, but we didn't stop there! Oh no! Indoor recess lead students to the snap cubes, where they crafted yet another birthday greeting out of colorful cubes! Outstanding and very creative! Well done! Kaela had her last math meeting of the week and Makayla's officially ready for that big job next week! Nice job Kaela! In math we reviewed our learning in place value and practiced more with expanded notation and adding hundreds and tens! Challenging! Work board went extremely well today too! Probably one of our most productive, thoughtful days ever! Well done friends! We ended the day with our VIP, Makayla! What a wonderful job she did sharing photos of her family, celebrations, events and silly moments! We are so lucky to have you in our class Makayla! Job well done! Next VIP will be Skyler! Can't wait! Have a great weekend everyone!

Yuni's Meeting and Fun Run!!!

2012-01-26T19:43:00.015-05:00

Greetings friends! What a busy Thursday! Yuni started with her morning meeting and Black Socks, a line plot graph, koosh greeting, and sparkle!! Nicely done Yuni! Spot on! We took some time to reflect on our second grade year of learning, and think about how "we", the students think it's going. An honest, thoughtful moment was taken to think about all we've learned so far, and what we still want to work on! Well done friends! This task required a mature, honest approach and that's exactly what we brought! Your student's reflections will accompany their report cards tomorrow. Speaking of report cards, there should be absolutely no surprises! If anyone has any questions on how to interpret the rubric and what the numbers mean... please, drop me a note, or call for some clarity if necessary! Bottom line... second grade is going GREAT! The expectations are high, the work is rigorous and require effort, thought, perseverance and creativity! Just the way we like it!!
In math we loved some extra computer time with place value games that really reinforced our learning about expanded notation (300+40+1), and standard form (341) of writing and understanding numbers and place value. These are all links on the blog (right column, scroll down, just below "followers" and you'll see "math games"). They are great games, visually appealing, and support our core concept learning in place value! PLAY THEM AT HOME!!
We ended the day with a fun run organized by Nurse Jeannie and Ms. Gebo! What luck we had with the weather! It was awesome! 3 laps amount to about one mile... and Nurse Jeannie told me that MANY second graders completed up to 6 or more laps! Impressive! WOW! That's what I call a healthy, happy, productive school day friends! A little singing, reading, writing, math, computers, running/walking, snacking, and friendship! Great day! Fun Friday tomorrow!!

Joe "Rocks" the Morning Meeting!!

2012-01-25T19:37:00.010-05:00

Great Wednesday Friends! Joe started us off with a "rocking" morning meeting, as in rock and roll greeting, This Land Is Your Land, and sparkle! Love that game!! Way to go Joe! We used context clues and synonyms to sort our spelling words in word study and played a fun phonics game with our digraph "ch"! Working in teams (with official super cool team names) we listened to our British friend from you tube recite a 40 second list of digraph words highlighting "ch". Then, working in teams, we tried to remember all the words and write them down together. Fun game!! When everybody plays... EVERYBODY WINS!!! At least in second grade they do! In writing workshop we practiced writing in our Monthly Writing Sample Journals where we are able to see (right in front of our own eyes) how our writing is getting better and better! This is an unassisted writing job each friend completes once a month for 20 minutes. Talking about "what good writers do" helped us get ready! Then it was all about writing! Nice job friends! In math, we reviewed our learning from yesterday about standard and expanded notation when writing numbers, and went a little further! Taking 3 digit numbers, we tried adding tens and hundreds, and then subtracted tens and hundreds! Challenging, fun, and very cool! After math Ms. W. was off to a meeting, but Mrs. C reported that the new work board went well! Lots of fun, new literacy centers to practice our reading, writing, listening, math, sequencing, and overall thinking skills! Well done friends! Great day! Tomorrow... a fun, computer-tastic, place value surprise! Can't wait! Think about your bed time. What is your bed time? Is bed time important? What happens to your body when you sleep? How much sleep do you get... do you need? We'll talk about sleep at tomorrow's morning meeting witha super cool line plot diagram! Nighty night! See you in the morning!

Kaela, Makayla, Meetings... Kaela, Makayla, Meetings...Say that three times fast!!

2012-01-24T19:10:00.014-05:00

Well howdy friends! Like I said, Kaela and Makyla were our meeting helpers today, and what smashing jobs they did!! First, Makayla started the day with our morning meeting, and we loved singing Oh Susana... or was that Oh Makayla?? The koosh greeting was great, and love, love, love the sparkle game! Well done Makayla! Way to start the day! In word study we stretched our learning about our digraphs of the week, ch and wh, and sorted words according to sounds! Next it was on to using our dictionaries for ABC order and looked up spelling words! Excellent job friends! We had just enough time left for quiet reading, due to the delay, and the morning went by very quickly! In math this afternoon, we stretched what we've learned about place value and three digit numbers, and learned about writing numbers. We learned the difference between expanded form, and standard form of writing numbers, and reinforced our concrete understanding of hundreds, tens, and ones. When things expand... they get bigger! That's exactly what happened when we wrote numbers using the expanded form. Good practice and job well done friends! I thought the crayon box problem would be a serious challenge, but we GOT IT!!!! Seriously great thinking and perseverance in problem solving friends! Outstanding job (and fun too)!! Kaela ran another great math meeting with lots of enthusiastic participation and support! Great job everyone! Well done Kaela! We ended the day in PE with Ms. Gebo. Great day friends! More PE tomorrow (sneakers please) and remember, snow pants and boots if you want to play in the snow (if there's any snow left tomorrow)! Fun Run on Thursday! Feel free to join us, sneakers please!!

Skyler's Meeting and The Wonder Ball!!

2012-01-19T21:23:00.007-05:00

What a Thursday, Friends! Skyler got us started with a fantastic mornong meeting, and taught us a new game (familiar to some, and new to others). The Wonder Ball Game! What a smashing success, Skyler! Everyone loved it, including Ms. W!! After that we used our spelling words to practice simile, synonyms, and used context clues to complete spelling sentences! Nice job friends! "OW" never sounded so good! We got a jump start on work board today, and finished all our "catch up" jobs on the work board while Mrs. Cialek and Ms. Worthley met with readers in reading groups and fluency practice. Well done! In math we practiced adding 10's, but with bigger numbers. Students used the 100's board to add 10's, and tens sticks to show what they know about adding tens! Read aloud was as good as it was yesterday, and we're about half way through Charlie and the Chocolate Factory! Finally... Charlie finds the fifth golden ticket, and joins the other 4 lucky winners for a trip to the chocolate factory! Wow! How much do we love Roald Dahl??? TOO much!!! By the way, NEVER, have a group of second graders made me feel so special and appreciated on my birthday! Thank you, each and every one of you, for every beautiful drawing, thoughtful card, and most endearing, touching birthday wish! Now you know why I LOVE GOING TO WORK on by birthday! Thank you friends! Fun Friday tomorrow! See you bright and early!

Cali and JAKE Run the Show!!

2012-01-18T19:16:00.016-05:00

Great day friends! We started with a great morning meeting thanks to Cali! Chicken Lips sounded awesome, great message, game and greeting! Nice Cali! We had a "down and dirty POWER MATH" lesson this morning on equations! Not only do we love solving equations, but we LOVE it when addends are MISSING and we have to solve... like a puzzle! And though it BLOWS OUR MINDS when the sum (the answer) comes first in the equation, it's still an equation, plain and simple. Still a good old number sentence! That was one fun equation party friends! Woohoo!! By the way, with Yuni as our pencil sharpener this week, we will clearly NEVER WANT for a sharp pencil! That girl was all over that job! Completely on the ball Yuni! Well done! After PE we jumped into spelling with our new rule OW! Or OUCH! Depending on the word... but the sound is the same! We looked up our spelling words in the dictionary too! Well done second graders! And it must be noted that we had some of the neatest handwriting Ms. W. has EVER seen in word study this morning! WOW! Outstanding! We learned about a new work board center in writing workshop called listening center! It's like having a story come to LIFE with music, dynamic reading, and friends to share it with! Today we listened to Amazing Grace, the story about a young imaginative, story loving girl who decides to try our for the lead in her school play. She meets some obstacles, by way of friends who feel she's not quite right for the part of Peter Pan (she's a girl... she's black...). Grace perseveres, and in the end, after she reads her part in the play, there's NO DOUBT who should play Peter Pan! Everyone agrees! Great story!
In math, we hit it with POW!! Solving story problems taking care to show all our thinking, with pictures, words, numbers, and of course, the answer (in a complete sentence)! Impressive friends! Today's problem was NOT an easy one, but you all nailed it!! We ended math with one fantastic math meeting, compliments of Jake (who was BORN to run math meetings, believe you me!!). Nice job Jake! In read aloud we could have stayed on that rug, and listened to that story ALL DAY! Roald Dahl seriously knew what he was doing when he wrote Charlie and the Chocolate Factory! Next it was on to work board and catch up day. Learning how to complete our work independently, making good choices for our learning, and caring about neat, complete work is important! Well done. Library tomorrow, remember your books please, so you can check out new ones!

M.L.K.

2012-01-16T08:48:00.004-05:00

Martin Luther King Day! Remember the dream!

Danny's Meeting and Lola's a WELDER!!!

2012-01-13T18:15:00.018-05:00

Greetings friends! Let's just start by saying... MUCH BETTER work board today! Students were focused, productive, and independent, which means Ms. Worthley gets to read with many reading groups! What an improvement! More on that later...
Danny started our Friday with a snappy morning meeting! Rockin' Robin was great, along with the ball toss greeting (seriously good motor skills, friends), and the clothespin game! Then, we were off to buddy test, and "th" never looked better! Well done! With the 2 hour delay, our morning was shorter than usual, and quiet reading rounded out the morning. Students enjoyed more M.L.K. books, along with Arthur, Magic Tree House, and Dr. Seuss! In math, it was all about 14! Sums to 14 with our beans! Students used beans (concrete) to sort through all the equations we could make for the sum 14! Friends made some very wise predictions about how many equations we'd eventually come up with, and after sorting through them all... we reviewed them together! Nice work! Indeed, there are 15 equations for the sum 14! James ended math today with his last math meeting of the week. Great job James! Very thoughtful, well planned weather question! Instead of read aloud, we watched a short brain pop video on Dr. Martin Luther King, and talked about the impact he had in our country. Words like protest, segregation, civil disobedience, non-violent, boycott, and sit in, were all part of our discussion. Very thoughtful friends. Second graders are very clear on the injustice of being judged by the color of one's skin (instead of the content of their character)! Nice! We ended the day on work board, and as I said before, HUGE IMPROVEMENT!! Let's keep up the good work next week friends! Last, but certainly NOT least it was time for Lola's VIP celebration! Lola shared a very special horse she WELDED (yup, I said welded), with her grandfather, along with other keepsakes from family members. We all loved how Lola looks up to her Dad. Well done Lola! Think a little about MLK this weekend, as you enjoy your Monday Holiday. See you all on Tuesday!

Thursday Summaries!!

2012-01-12T18:37:00.004-05:00

Greetings Friends! Since I was out (math curriculum meeting) I don't have pictures for the blog tonight, but I got word from Mrs. Cialek that our summaries were fantastic! Prewriting really helps the writing process! And with a story like King Bidgood, how could they NOT be great summaries! Sequencing the summary (short version of the story) with a beginning, middle, and end is very important! Well done friends! Can't wait for Fun Friday tomorrow.

Julienne's Morning Meeting Goes to the Zoo!!

2012-01-11T18:28:00.017-05:00

What a rousing morning meeting! Julienne really got this day started with a trip to the zoo! Singing Daddy's Taking Us To the Zoo, but with friends acting out the characters... elephants (Jake NEVER disappoints), monkeys (uh, shout out to Brady, best monkey EVER), seals (well done Skyler, very convincing), bears (Makayla was a huffing and a puffing), and sleepy friends in the car (yes Danny, we're talking to you, did you actually, truly, FALL ASLEEP, because it looked like you did)!! What a great idea, Julienne! Everyone loved this morning's meeting. Well done! Next, we practiced handwriting with our spelling rule, digraph th and reviewed our learning about they're, there, and their. Tricky. Next, it was on to a great story by Don and Audrey Wood, King Bidgood's In the Bathtub. Love this whimsical caldecott winning story! Tomorrow, writing summaries using all our pre-writing
from today!
In math we did our last "web" (winter assessment) and after that, it was all about money, coins and our favorite game, Heads or Tails! Students reviewed what we've learned about counting coins, practiced counting quarters, and added quarters to our game! Wow! Well done friends, and good practice! James ended math with another great math meeting! Nice James! Great weather question!
Ms. Schumacher read from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and this story keeps getting better and better! Thanks Ms. Schumacher!
We ended the day with work board, and had a candid, honest, thoughtful discussion about what quiet, careful workers look like, and what it means to be independent and pay attention to your work (yes, a very chatty unproductive day on work board today). Staying focused on your job (rather than chatting with friends) is how you learn and grow in second grade. And that's what we will work on tomorrow. I know we can do it! We've done "great work" on work board a ton of times, and we will do it again! Library tomorrow... bring back books so you can borrow more new ones!

Jame's Math Meeting and Julienne's VIP!!

2012-01-09T19:05:00.015-05:00

What a Monday friends! We launched right into handwriting with the letter t (review), because our spelling rule is a new digraph... th! After writing our amazingly perfect t's, we worked with th and payed close attention to where the th falls in our words (beginning, middle or end). After getting our homework squared away, we watched a 5 minute "brain pop" on the digraph th, and answered some questions on the smart board (well done James)! Writing workshop was busy with personal narratives (weekend stories style), and Ms. Worthley modeled one of her weekend stories too. Soon after that, it was all about writing, think sheets, organizing and crafting our weekend stories! Friends shared their weekends with us, and Brady showed us how the think sheet helped him organize the details in his story! Well done boys! Students made excellent quiet reading choices today as well, thanks to some very popular browsing boxes (Arthur, Magic Treehouse, M.L.K., and of course Dr. Seuss!) In math we reviewed fractions and practiced some more with halves, thirds, and fourths. We took some very special time to welcome and get to know our SES's new math coach, Mrs. Wickline, and talked with her about why we like math so much, and what we're still learning! Welcome to 2W Mrs. Wickline! We started a new read aloud story today as well... brace yourself, this is going to be good... ready? Charlie and the Chocolate Factory! YEAH!!!!! Love Roald Dahl (tells a story like NO OTHER), and this is one of our favorites! More on Willy Wonka later! James shared his first of many math meetings this week and did a fabulous job with calendar, money, days in school, and weather graphing! Well done James! We ended with a new M.L.K. inspired socially conscious work board, but not before Julienne's VIP!! Finally! We've been waiting forever for this big moment, and TODAY... it CAME!!!! Well done Julienne, I can tell, you must be the best-ever big brother! Thanks for sharing your family, special moments, and important keepsakes with us! No surprise... Julienne is supremely kind, sweet, awesome, and one of the most caring friends anyone in 2W could ever ask for. Nice!

Modern Dance and Nurse Jeannie!!

2012-01-06T20:22:00.020-05:00

Wow!! So busy! Let's talk about fun Friday! Where do we begin? Great meeting Kaela! I think sparkle might be my all time FAVORITE meeting game! Buddy test went well, and we are now all experts on the digraph "sh"... next week, another popular digraph "th". Nurse Jeannie stopped in to share a super cool experiment highlighting the importance of fluoride! We swirl with fluoride every Thursday... but why? Well, as Nurse Jeannie clearly showed us (with the help of her handy dandy sidekick, the hard boiled egg, fluoride makes calcium STRONG!! Without it... our teeth would just, sort of, flake away! Fluoride makes teeth strong, and proper oral hygiene make for a happy, healthy mouth!! GO TEETH!! Thanks Nurse Jeannie! Great lesson!
After talking about good book choices in quiet reading, we were off to a special event... modern dance! And the dancers were students! Boys and girls just like us! The music and choreography was very cool! Every eye was glued to every dancer, as they skipped and danced through the gym! Thanks PTO! Another special treat to enrich our learning experience in the arts!!
In math, we learned more about fractions and compared parts. Is one third more or less than one fourth? Would you rather have one third of a piece of pie, or one fourth, and why? After creating our apple pies, we made careful observations about what the pieces looked like, and how they all go together to make one whole pie! Using language to explain our math thinking can be challenging, but that's why we do it! Well done friends! We ended math with Juan's last math meeting of the week, and it was the best one yet! Well done Juan! Next week, James takes over that very important job in the classroom! We ended the day with work board and catching up on all our unfinished business! Students worked very independently and thoroughly this afternoon! New work board Monday! New centers, can't wait! Have a great weekend friends!

Jake's Meeting and Martin's Big Words!

2012-01-05T17:19:00.017-05:00

Howdy Thursday Thinkers! Nice one Jake... and way to start the day with a great morning meeting! Greeting friends with "cranky old man" voice, and army sergeant voice was exciting! The new guess who game was also great! Next, it was on to word study and working with our digraph sh. Using context clues we sorted our words and paid close attention to where in the word the "sh" was located! Next, it was on to writing workshop with Martin's Big Words. A wonderful story highlighting the power of our words, and how words can trigger certain responses! Try love over hate, peace over war, and freedom over segregation! Well said! After that we chose certain words for our word art project with craypas and water color paints! Great work everyone! We enjoyed two new sports related browsing boxes at quiet reading time today, which were very well received by many second grade readers! About time, eh Jake??? Finally!! Yay!
In math we reviewed our learning about halves, thirds and fourths and equal parts. Using a variety of shapes we expressed what we learned by dividing shapes while matching important vocabulary with pictures. Thinking, thinking, and even more thinking!! Juan ran another stellar math meeting, complete with money, calendar, weather graph, and "days in school"! Nice Juan!
We ended the day with work board and put the final touches on our word art with bright colorful water color paints! What a great day! Fun (finish-up) Friday tomorrow! Can't wait!

Tia's Meeting and Writing Paragraphs... M.L.K. Style!!!

2012-01-04T17:25:00.020-05:00

Greetings Friends! Second grade sure was busy today! Tia started us off with a very "sparkley" morning meeting! Well done Tia! We used our spelling words to sort all our "sh" words and used dictionaries to find meaning in our bonus word, the "sh" rule breaker, compassion. Well done! In writing workshop we read more about the life of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, and used our learning to write paragraphs. A very special kind of writing where all the sentences support a topic. We had many wonderfully crafted paragraphs, and some amazing topic sentences, right Danny?! Our sharers today were Tia and Kaela, though we had many eager, willing volunteers! More writing tomorrow, with a special project too!
In quiet reading we enjoyed more age appropriate biographical stories about the civil rights movement and Dr. King, along with other great second grade book choices (Arthur, Beverly Cleary, Andrew Clement, and many more)!
In math we introduced fractions with some very important vocabulary (halves, two, thirds, three, fourths, four, whole, and equal parts)! Students practiced what they learned about equal on the smart board today, and we will stretch our learning even more tomorrow! We ended the day talking about what a "good friend" would do when another needs help cleaning up. Very thoughtful discussion, and issues of fairness, choices, and friendship were discussed. So... next time it's indoor recess, and you have a choice to help a friend clean up some blocks, or.... wait in line assuring your "first in line" status, I wonder what you will choose? Hmmmmm. Very tricky, but productive dialogue! Well done friends. It's truly clear how much everyone in 2W cares about each other. Impressive! Tomorrow, library, remember to bring books in from home so you can get more!

Welcome Back... 2012!!

2012-01-03T17:49:00.014-05:00

First day back to school, first day together this year, and first meetings of the year for Danny and Juan! What a great beginning friends! Danny started our day off with one very efficient, early morning meeting! Nice job Danny... I could tell right then and there that it was going to be a great day! We introduced our new word study principle, digraph sh, and generated word lists, paying close attention to where the "sh" was within the word (beginning, middle, or end)! Well done friends! In writing workshop we learned how to use think sheets (graphic organizers) to help organize our writing. Especially handy when you're not sure what you even want to write about! Also great to help remember all the important parts of a particular story (sequencing events and including important details)! Many used think sheets today, and used them well! Ms. Worthley pointed out the difference between the kind of writing on a think sheet (ideas, thoughts, perhaps incomplete sentences), and the kind of writing in a story (complete sentences with capitals and punctuation)! Well done writers, especially those who used your think sheets today!
We checked out our new book display, full of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stories, and enjoyed reading many of these books today! Quiet reading went very well, and while there were few reading groups today, we did make sure to enjoy our quiet reading time (even if we had to tuck it in this afternoon)! In math we reviewed place value and practiced our High, Low, Middle game with playing cards! Students first worked alone (good practice) then partnered and worked cooperatively with peers! I must say, for our first day back, we were remarkably focused and on task! Now THAT'S how you start a new year of learning, with effort, and focus! Well done! Juan ended our math block with his first math meeting of the year and it was great! Well done Juan, paying close attention to every detail... days in school, calendar (yes, he even remembered to say 2012), money and weather graph! Nice job Juan!
We ended our day with an All School Sing in the cafeteria hosted by Mr. Hines! It was sort of like a "dance-sing", really. Starting with the Macarana, we followed with Yellow Submarine (a favorite) and many more! Great day friends! Keep up the good work tomorrow! Solid start for 2012 second graders!

Harry's Meeting and a Holiday Concert!

2011-12-20T18:29:00.016-05:00

Way to get the day started Harrison! His meeting started by singing Daddy's Takin' Us to the Zoo, and the koosh toss greeting! Nice Harry! We sorted our high frequency spelling words, along with silent e words in spelling today. We also used our dictionary to find our bonus word: generous. Writing workshop was our monthly "check-in" with our Monthly Writing Sample journals. This is a special kind of writing where we actually SEE how our writing gets better... improves... each month! The only rule is, no help from teachers... all independent writing (YIKES)! Good practice, and very validating, seeing our writing improve, right before our very eyes!! Wow!
In math, we worked with numbers again (I mean, that's why they call it math...) and using three digit numbers, practiced writing numbers before, after, and in between! Not so easy when the number shown is 329. What's next? Keep all those digits in the right place, what changes, what is one more? Lots of thinking, mental math, and organizing!
We ended the day in the gym with a room full of SES musicians! Trumpeters, violinists, cellists, singers, and more! We ended our music assembly with a song, a round, with everyone! Couldn't help but notice Julienne and his sweet singing voice as he sang along with the 4th, 5th and 6th graders! His singing just about stopped us in our tracks! Beautiful Julienne. Great way to end the day! Tomorrow... PE and work board! Bring your brain, your curiosity, your questions, and your gusto for knowledge, because we have two more awesome days to go in second grade! Can't wait!

Meetings! Owen's Morning, and Cali's Math!

2011-12-19T17:10:00.019-05:00

Well what a busy Monday folks! Owen got us started with his morning meeting and it was a doosey! Great singing, ball greeting, and sparkle! Love that game! Next we used our high frequency words to collect spelling words a new way. We used folder words that we are still learning, and will work with those (high frequency) words all week! We had some review of silent e (or super-e). We watched a short video where Super-e changed the vowel sounds to long vowels (when they say their name). We even watched a one minute video of Ninja-e!! Another name for silent e! Either way, Super-e, or Ninja-e, that vowel sound is long, and the e is silent! Great review! Makayla gave us some helpful tips for quiet reading today. She explained how you can take more than one book, a few, just as she did on Friday! Not only was she a quiet reader the entire 20 minutes, she wasn't walking around or talking to friends! Well done Makayla! What a fabulous tip!! Like Kaela says... "Read a lot, it will make you smart!" Got that right Kaela! We read a Hanukkah story today and learned about the miracle of the oil lasting for 8 days! Wow! We also noticed how 5 friends in 2W celebrate both Christmas and Hanukkah! Wow! Who knew? Pretty cool when you get to celebrate two holidays at the same time! Neat!
In math we practiced more with place value and used our learning to skip count... but with 3 digit numbers!! We picked up the patterns pretty quickly too (even Ms. Worthley was surprised at the pace of our learning today)!! Next, we practiced writing the numbers ourselves. Again, fantastic job friends! Excellent! Cali ran her first math meeting and did a great job with the calendar, money, "days in school", and weather graphing. Great job Cali! And what a supportive, attentive, respectful audience we had too!
We ended our afternoon with work board jobs while Ms. W. met with reading groups! Very productive day friends, how about another one tomorrow! Tomorrow there will be a music performance with young musicians from Sunderland Elementary School! Can't wait! See you then!

Yuni's Meeting and Harry's VIP!!

2011-12-16T20:46:00.011-05:00

What a Friday, friends! Yuni started us off with a great morning meeting! Everyone participated and supported every part of our meeting, the greeting, the song (beautiful), and the game! Very well done Yuni! I agree, it was, indeed, a 5 (on a scale of 1-5, that is). Dialogue journals was the focus of writing workshop after our spelling test. Students wrote in their private journals (stories, thoughts, feelings, events, and even songs), and you could have heard a pin drop during writing workshop. At first, dialogue journals was such an open ended kind of writing, that it was challenging. Now... we are experts (and you know who I'm talkin' about)!! Well done! We enjoyed a new story gifted to our classromm from the wonderful Mrs. Cialek called The Gingerbread Girl Goes Animal Crackers, and it was hilarious! We've been making lots of text to text connections with our many gingerbread boy stories, and loving every minute of it! In math we reviewed place value and comparing numbers, and showed off all our learning! Brady finished the week with another great math meeting! Finally, Harrison shared his VIP (and yes, that's Very Important Person, or course) to a very attentive audience of new second grade friends! He shared his grandmother, his sailing experiences, cool ribbons, and you could literally hear an audible gasp when he shared his ticket from the Polar express... GASP!!!! Very well done, Harry! How nice it was to learn even more about how special you are! We are truly lucky you have joined our 2W family of 2nd grade friends! Have a great weekend everyone.

Jame's Morning Meeting and Quiet Readers!

2011-12-15T16:56:00.007-05:00

Howdy Folks! What a busy productive Thursday! James started us off with a great morning meeting! The Chicken Lips song (ewww!), the Sponge Bob greeting, and the clothespin game! Well done James! We reviewed our spelling rule... silent e, and sorted our words according to vowel sounds, and meaning! Next we used our spelling words in writing workshop to craft some exciting sentences! Taking care to begin with capital letters, use proper punctuation, and correct spelling, of course! Quiet reading was very well done today. We especially enjoyed Jan Brett's new book Home For Christmas thanks to Mrs. Cialek and her generous gift of several new books she offered to our class (thanks Mrs. Cialek)!! In math, we took what we've learned about place value and comparing numbers and tried story problems! Math was definitely full of many reading jobs, as well as number value (place value), writing numbers, and ordinal numbers! Brady knocked out another fantastic math meeting too! Great job Brady!
Work board couldn't have gone any better. Students worked cooperatively and independently on literacy activities while other met in reading groups with Ms. Worthley! Very well done! Very proud of everyone, and your work showed the kind of effort and care you brought today! Very well done indeed! Tomorrow... Harry's VIP (can't wait) and homework is due!
On another note to parents, we just ran out of extra (classroom) back up snack and would love a donation of some simpe pretzels or crackers please! Thanks!!

Tamales, Summaries, and Algebraic Equations!!

2011-12-14T18:44:00.005-05:00

Greetings Friends! Another busy day, but Ms. Worthley forgot the camera in school (DANG!), so will post pictures tomorrow! Pictures or not, it was a busy day in second grade! Students used their pre-writing from yesterday's writing workshop and crafted summaries of a wonderful story called Too Many Tamales. Students payed attention to write events in our summary in sequence with the events as they occurred in the story! Lots of concentration and thoughtful effort goes into a well written summary! Authors shared afterward, and gosh, was it hard to choose ONLY 2 summaries, there were so MANY!!!! And they were SO WONDERFUL!! WOW! Next it was on to quiet reading, and reviewing what makes a a good book choice for 15-20 minutes of sustained, quiet reading. Holiday books are still a very popular choice, and I have some super secret surprises in store for quiet reading tomorrow! Can't wait to share some of the fabulous reading gifts donated to our classroom by our very own Mrs. Cialek! Thank you Mrs. Cialek, for your generosity and kindness! Happy reading! Today was Cafe Sun day, and Tia treated us to a beautiful song in both German and English! Well done Tia, now that takes courage, practice, and talent!
In math we took what we've learned about place value and comparing numbers in equations to the next level!! Using symbols to compare equations... not just numbers! Equations take on many looks in second grade, and learning about it all is our goal! We looked at and solved equations with 2 or more addends on each side, and had to determine the missing symbol (<. >. or =). Lots of mathematical thinking and holding on to information (mental math)! Well done! Brady ushered in another wonderful math meeting, and then it was on to a brand new work board! Woohoo! The new work board is full of holiday inspired literacy challenges! Can't wait to get back to work tomorrow! Thursday is a library day, so bring in library books so you can borrow more tomorrow!

Dictionaries, Summaries, and Comparing Numbers!!

2011-12-13T17:45:00.015-05:00

Greetings Friends! Joe got our day started with the Sandwiches song, ball behind the back greeting, and the teeny weeny double clothespin game. Well done Joe! In word study we reviewed our spelling rule, silent e, and how silent e changes short vowel sounds, and makes them long ("say their name")!! We practiced rhyme, phonics, and used our dictionaries to look up words! In writing workshop we worked with a wonderful story called Too Many Tamales to do some prewriting for tomorrow! Students listened to how Maria's family made tamales for their Christmas celebration, and how she's forced into a difficult confession about her mother's diamond ring. We used our story maps to help connect with the story, and will use our prewriting from today, to write our summaries tomorrow! Nice!!
In math, we reviewed place value with base 10 blocks and talked about the greater than (>), less than (<), and equal sign (=) to compare 3 digit numbers. Annie and Moby (brain pop) helped us remember to look at the digit in the highest place first when comparing numbers to help us with our thinking. After some practice it was time to get to work! After math Brady lead another super math meeting with money counting, calendar, weather graphing, and counting the days in school! Well done Brady! According to Brady, on a scale of 1-5 (5 being pretty great) it was another 5!! Way to go friends! Tomorrow is Wednesday, PE, sneakers please!

Silent e, and Weekend Stories!!

2011-12-12T18:35:00.006-05:00

Welcome back from the weekend! Time to get busy! Makayla started us off with a great morning meeting! We sang Mister Sun, greeted friends with he koosh, and played the double clothespin game (quite a challenge today)!! Well done Makayla! Nest, it was off to spelling and word study with our new rule, silent e!! So powerful it can change vowel sounds just by hanging out at the end of words!! We sorted words according to their long vowel sound, while paying close attention to the silent e (and even used word wall words today too)! Cool!
Writing workshop was all about personal narratives... we call them "weekend stories" in second grade! Even though some friends thought they had "nothing to write about" they used effort, fortitude, and determination, to wring a story out of an uneventful weekend. After all, we write every day because research shows that (like with reading), practicing writing, every day, makes you a BETTER WRITER! So... we write! Good job friends!
In math we too what we've learned about place value, and 3 digit numbers, and compared numbers to each other using the greater than (>), less than (<), and equals (=) signs. We reviewed base 10 blocks to begin our thinking, and moved on to short notation of numbers to compare! In read aloud we read a new book donated to our class by Mrs. Cialek called The Snow Must Go ON! We talked about the play on words, and enjoyed this sweet story about the south pole (yes, equally as cold as the north pole, but with out all the "holiday" glory) and their effort to get some ATTENTION! Thank you Mrs. Cialek for giving us such a wonderful book! Great Monday friends! Tomorrow, PE... sneakers please!

FRIDAY... And It Was A Good One!!

2011-12-09T19:01:00.016-05:00

Way to get the day started Lola! Oh Susana song was great (though I'm working on Rudolph), with the koosh greeting! Nice job! We did a great job on our buddy test in spelling, and it was on to writing workshop and dialogue journals. A unique way to use our writing to express thoughts, ideas, feelings, frustration, or even stories! Ms. W. modeled how writers participate in writing workshop, even when they think they don't have anything to write about. Writing every day is important practice, and will make every friend a better writer! Quiet reading was full of holiday stories, Harrison's browsing box books, and library books! Well done second grade! In math today we reviewed place value with 3 digit numbers. Using base 10 blocks, we wrote numbers up to 3 digits, and even stretched our thinking to write the number that would be next! Challenging! We will continue to practice place value, as this kind of practice is all about NUMBERS... thinking about numbers, how they work, and noticing patterns!
We finished Frindle today, and loved the ending! Nick Allen leaves one million dollars in a scholarship fund, and Mrs. Granger turns out to be super nice???? Who knew?! Great story!
Jake was our VIP today, and we ended the day with stories and memories that helped us learn even more about our awesome friend! No one tells a story with more enthusiasm or expression than Jake, and we loved every minute of pictures and listening to important moments in his life (and important people as well)! I don't know about you, but I could listen to Jake ALL DAY, and still WANT MORE!! Well done Jake! You are one very special kid. They broke the mold after you, my friend!
We wished our UMass student teacher well today, as she is off to bigger challenges in the graduate world of becoming a student and teacher! We loved having her, and students shared some thoughtful memories, and appreciation with Katelyn at the end of our day. Happy weekend! Sleep, rest, heal, and have some fun!!

What's Your Super Hero Power??

2011-12-08T19:40:00.010-05:00

Excellent, rigorous, and productive day friends! Skyler started us off with the koosh toss greeting, Chicken Lips song, and teeny weeny double clothespin game! Great meeting Skyler! Very well done! Next we worked with our spelling rule, digraph (ng) and consonant blend (nk) and sorted our words according to meaning, context, and rhyming patterns! Next it was on to the word hunt! Teams of students read text to hunt for hidden digraph and consonant blend words, and it wasn't easy to find all those words! Quite a challenge! More with that tomorrow!
Writing workshop was quite exciting! Today our writing was to a prompt. Students learned how to respond to a prompt and how to stretch your writing into a story! The prompt asked.... what is your hidden super hero power, and what would you do with your special powers? Wow! We had some incredibly creative responses and very imaginative stories to share (thanks Joe and Tia)! Everyone was so involved with their writing, they were a little irritated when writing workshop ended (and that's the way we like it)!! Next, we were in for a treat at quiet reading time... our new friend Harrison chose to bring in some books to share with his friends at school. Not just any books, but the MOST PERFECT second grade book choices a kid could have! Thanks Harrison! A mix of holiday stories, Henry and Mudge, Magic Tree House, and Walter Wick... just to name a few! Outstanding!
In math we practiced story problems with another POW (problem of the week)!! Today it was all about 13 (of course) but students had to problem solve with 2 variables. There were many ways to solve our problem today, and friends worked it one, two, and sometimes even three different ways! WOW! So smart!!
We almost finished Frindle today, and pretty much agreed that main character Nick Allen is NOT a trouble maker, just a smart kid with lots of great ideas!! Even his teacher, Ms. Granger took the time to make sure Nick knows what a cool kid he is! Wow, teachers can be strict, and hard sometimes, and still even be... well... nice? Way to go Ms. Granger! Our story ends tomorrow with one very BIG surprise at the end!
Work board was great today, and meeting with reading groups went better than usual! Remember, it's very important to make good choices for your learning, EVEN when a teacher is not looking! Feed your brain with lots of thinking and challenge! Your brain will thank you back!! Great day! Fun Friday tomorrow... homework due.

Thank You Russell Family and Mark Snow!

2011-12-07T16:07:00.021-05:00

How do you thank Lola's grandfather and local business owner Mark Snow for their exceedingly generous donation to Sunderland Elementary School in support of keeping the arts in school??? At an All School Sing, of course! Our generous benefactors hosted one fantastic golf tournament and donated all the proceeds to our little elementary school! WOW! Outstanding! Our deepest thanks and gratitude to not only our generous hosts, but to all who participated in what hopes to become an annual event! We are grateful, indeed, and believe in your support of art and music as an essential part of every student's education!! Next it was on to Cali's morning meeting! She helped us compare characters Paul and Prudence (from the story Don't Call Me Pruneface!) using a venn diagram! Two very different characters in many ways, though similar as well. Well done Cali! Great preparation for our work in writing workshop later when we craft our summaries! And that's exactly what we did! Using our pre-writing story maps from yesterday, we reviewed this very entertaining story, and wrote in our reading logs! So many students wrote such thoughtful summaries that it was hard to narrow down who would share at authors share today! In the end, four friends shared their work and talked about how pre-writing really helped us prepare for the work and thought needed for summary writing today! Very hard work friends, and very well done!!
The Holiday Books made their appearance today during quiet reading, and certainly peaked the interest of many readers! We talked about how different cultures share so many wonderful celebrations at this time of year, and can't wait to read about it!
In math, it was pocket day, and that's exactly what we did, but with a new twist! After recording the number of pockets and making our pocket-total predictions, it was up to us, to make friendly numbers and show our thinking! Students worked in teams to show how they added so many numbers, and how they made their adding easier with friendly numbers (numbers that work together). After all that work, we were ready to go back to our predictions and assess which prediction was closest! Lot's of work and mathematical thinking! Great teamwork as well! Another great day friends!
Library tomorrow... library books please!

Meetings, Dictionaries, and More Summaries!!!

2011-12-06T18:09:00.014-05:00

What a GREAT DAY! Second grade is back on the map, for sure!!! Full of meetings, games, dictionaries, and math challenges! Let's start with Danny's awesome morning meeting! We enthusiastically sang Rockin' Robin, greeted friends with the koosh, and played the clothespin game! Fun! We also learned a new game called Sparkle! It's a spelling game where we work together to spell words and help each other out with lifelines, when the spelling gets a little tricky! A true team building, spelling, and listening game! In the end, one friend is left standing... as a result of everyone working together (go Zenani!!). We practiced our spelling words by sorting them according to blends (nk) and digraphs (ng). We used dictionaries (YAY!!! LOVE IT!) to look up spelling words with partners, and reviewed what guide words are, and how abc order and dictionaries help us with words (meaning, pronunciation, tenses, and word structure). I can't tell if we like working with dictionaries more, or working in teams more? Either way, I'll take it! Well done! We have a new book theme on display this week, Holiday stories! Kwaanza, Christmas, Hanukkah, Divali, and New Years, just to name a few! The new books have really sparked some great "text to self" connections! Happy reading for second graders in December!
In writing workshop we read a new story called "Don't Call Me Pruneface" to help us craft summaries. We listened carefully to this story of an unlikely friendship that blossoms by the end, with some very compelling characters and their pets! We focused on the beginning, middle, and end of the story, and practiced our writing using a story map. More with summaries and Pruneface tomorrow!
In math we continued working with lucky number 13 and practiced fact families! Important vocabulary included words like equation, addition, sum, subtraction, difference, and turn around fact! We wrote all our fact families today, and you could have heard a pin drop! Wow, the concentration was amazing! Every friend learned their fact families for 13 today! Well done! We talked about doubles as well, and wondered if 13 would have any "double" facts. After some practice and thinking Owen shared his discovery that 13 does NOT have any doubles facts because it's an odd number! Wow! That's what I call mathematical thinking at it's best! Yuni hosted a wonderful math meeting, full of lots of participation, eager contributors, and very good manners! I agree Yuni, on a scale of 1-5 (1, not good, 5 GREAT) your meeting was indeed, a 5! Great job friends!

James!!!!! Our VIP!!

2011-12-06T17:56:00.006-05:00

Catching everyone up on our little blog... and this time, James is the star! James shared special family memories and showed us how he was in the news when he went to NYC! Pretty cool James! Well done James! Our new VIP next week will be Jake! Can't WAIT for that one!! We also talked about how good readers make book choices, and what a book feels like when it's "just right". After some review and peer recommendations we all picked new "quiet reading spots" in the classroom that will encourage quiet focused reading, and what an improvement! Hard work, and learning takes effort and concentration, fortitude and endurance, and we're working hard in second grade on making the best choices for our learning! Remember, when you're DONE or when you're always right, you're not really thinking or learning! When you're thinking (even when you're wrong) you're learning! Keep up the good wwork second graders!

Welcome December!!

2011-12-01T17:51:00.004-05:00

Very interesting Thursday, to say the least! There is one serious (take no prisoners) kind of a stomach bug going around, and we had a revolving door full of action with Nurse Jeannie today! Whoah! Take care, get lots of sleep, and WASH HANDS!!!! One reason part of our checking into school routine is hand washing! Very important!
So, on to our Thursday... Zenani started our day with This Land Is Your Land, the Earth toss greeting, and the clothespin game (of course)! Well done Zenani! We used our spelling words to stretch our thinking with synonyms, and used what we learned about consonant blends to find and sort words! Writing workshop was all about the paragraph! A special kind of writing where we choose a topic, and write details about that topic. Students practiced writing a topic sentence, three supporting details, and a concluding sentence! Several friends shared at the end of writing workshop during author's share! Hard work, and we'll practice writing paragraphs often in second grade!
We ushered in December (though it felt more like September), so it was the perfect time to create our December calendars! We reviewed days of the week, and months of the year, and made our very own calendars, an important tool to keep track of important birth dates, events, holidays, and play dates, of course!
Ms. Shumacher read from Frindle today and we continue to form (and even change) our opinions about both Nick and Ms. Granger!
We did have a few serious moments today where we talked about making good choices for our learning in second grade. Students were asked to reflect on our day today, and use words or pictures to think of how tomorrow could be a better day. Feel free to talk with your student, if you'd like, about making good choices for learning in second grade. I'm sure we can do better, and can't wait to give it a try tomorrow! Get ready... it's time for fun Friday!

Writing Summaries and Place Value!

2011-11-30T17:05:00.012-05:00

Greetings Friends! What an energetic Wednesday it was today! Wow! Kaela started our day with the koosh toss greeting, the Chicken Lips song, and the clothespin game (doubles, our new favorite way to play)! Great job Kaela! We used our spelling words to reinforce our word study principle: consonant blends. We stretched our learning to include context (meaning), antonyms (opposites), and categorizing. We also took turns reading our spelling words in character (rock star, opera singer, army Sargent, angry parent, winy baby, you get it). FUN! In writing we read a very compelling story called Yo! Yes? by Chris Raschka. We talked about the elements in the story (character, setting, plot, ending) and payed close attention to the two characters. We tried writing our very own summaries today, a first time for many. We all agreed, that we did a pretty good job for our first try, and will have a lot more practice writing summaries in second grade. Well done writers!
In the afternoon, we learned a new place value game called High, Low, Middle! Taking 3 cards from the deck, we arranged them in different places (yes, we put the "place" in place value) to make the highest number and the lowest number. We also stretched our thinking to come up with numbers in the middle... sometimes more than one, or two, or even 3 numbers were possible! Great mathematical thinking along with number sense and great practice! We'll do much more with place value and play many more games to reinforce our learning! Well done friends! We read the next chapter in Frindle and learned about a new character in the story, Mrs. Granger. We're not quite sure how we feel about her yet. We all agree she's strict (which can be good for helping you learn, according to Harrison), but she might seem a little mean (according to Julienne). We'll learn more tomorrow, as Mrs. Granger and Nick Allen get to know each other in class.
Our afternoon on work board was a little frenetic and maybe even chatty. We all agreed that we will put in more effort and try harder tomorrow, not only doing our work, but keeping our classroom a quiet, productive work place! Library tomorrow, remember to bring in your books so you can check out new ones!

Dictionaries and Place Value with Money!!

2011-11-29T18:04:00.022-05:00

Greetings "Tuesday Tacklers"! Jake started our day with the "Did you know?" greeting, This Little Light of Mine, and the double clothespin game! Great start Jake! Well done! Dictionaries dominated most of our word study fun today, and we looked up our spelling words, while practicing phonetic substitutions, and following (listening carefully) to our consonant blends to sort spelling words! Nice job, and great cooperative learning! We used our spelling words to practice writing some amazing 2nd grade sentences and had three friends share their work at the end of writing workshop. Lot's of "great work" from everyone today, well done writers! We studied Jan Brett books during reading, and talked about her very unique style when it comes to illustrating! Impressive!
In math we talked about adding tens, and took what we learned to play a new place value game using money! Partners dumped cups of dimes and pennies to add up numbers. After counting all the tens and ones, we stretched our learning to add 100, and take away 10! WOW! As if that wasn't enough, we finished it all off by sharing whether our number was odd or even! I must say, this new game even "blew Ms. Weinberger's socks off"! Outstanding job! We also took a moment to reflect on learning, and what learning truly looks like in second grade! Remember, you're NOT learning when you are always right, or when you're done. You ARE learning when you THINK, and make mistakes (and especially when your thinking helps you correct mistakes)! Now that's what I really call LEARNING!
We also started a new story in read aloud called Frindle by Andrew Clements. We're still split on whether we think main character Nick is a "trouble maker" or simply full of ideas... I guess we'll learn more, and form stronger opinions tomorrow. Can't wait!

Author's Tea and Welcome Harrison!

2011-11-28T12:18:00.022-05:00

Thanks to all the parents and friends who joined us for our first Author's Tea (spooky stories). Students bravely stood in front a a full house and read stories they wrote during writers workshop in October. After proofing, editing, illustrating, we were prepared and ready for our audience! Well done second graders! After our celebration, we gathered in the classroom for some delicious light refreshments. Thanks parents, for all you're support and tasty treats! It's truly very validating when you show up in support of all our learning! Well done!
We also welcomed a new student into our classroom community, Harrison! Students wrote some very thoughtful empathetic letters to welcome our new friend to Sunderland. Can't wait to share this great class with you, Harrison! If you love to think, read, play, write, help, sing, and have fun, then you're definitely in the right class!

Feasting... Remembering and Celebrating American History!!

2011-11-27T19:44:00.017-05:00

We set, we sang, we gathered with friends! We wished our feast would never end. Wonderful celebration, gathering together and remembering how we survived our first winter in New Plymouth. Much to give thanks for!

Feast 2011!! Preparing our Thanksgiving Meal!

2011-11-27T19:17:00.034-05:00

Peel, wash, cut, dice! Our Thanksgiving meal looks mighty NICE!!

Look Who's Cooking and Kitchen Math!!

2011-11-21T17:23:00.023-05:00

What a special Monday! Student's were buzzing with excitement the minute they walked in! "When will we make the pie?"... "When are we cooking soup?"... "When can I help?" Talk about enthusiasm! We started the morning in Art, and quickly followed with Juan's morning meeting. Juan chose This Land Is Your Land, and we never sounded better! We played the clothespin game, which was very entertaining to watch, as Ms. W. had NO IDEA she was wearing the clothespin! After snack students began work board literacy based jobs, while friends were called over in groups to prepare our feast! Some gathered at the apple pie table, some gathered at the soup table, and some even worked a little at both! We peeled, cut, washed, filled, and crimped our way toward one very special meal which we will share together tomorrow. Can't wait! We started our afternoon with kitchen math and used what we learned about doubles to "double" our cranberry bread recipe! Using cups and spoons to keep a concrete perspective, we took our recipe and worked in small groups to double all the amounts. Very practical experience and another reason why math is SO IMPORTANT IN REAL LIFE!! Using what we learned in math, we were now ready to get to work on our bread! Ms. Schumacher read about the Mayflower journey (from the perspective of a boy and girl just like us) while small groups helped prepare the cranberry bread! Ms. Cialek was our official sous chef, and helped guide everyone with both the pie, and the bread, while Ms. Worthley lead the soup brigade of helpers! Danny lead his very first math meeting and did a great job! So many ways to make our money counting interesting and challenging! Well done Danny! Great job! We ended the day with a virtual trip to Plymouth Plantation courtesy of Scholastic.com. After visiting the Fort, Meeting House, a typical home, gardens, and seeing how tools are used, we really felt the difference between our lives today, and the lives of the Pilgrims. Even the way they spoke was different (and kinda cool)! Very interesting!
Tomorrow we will partake in our version of a Thanksgiving feast! We also have PE, sneakers please.
Reminder: our Author's Tea begins promptly at 10 am in the library. We will try and record the event as well. We will gather for light refreshments following the reading in 2W. Looking forward to seeing you, and celebrating these hard working authors!

Owen's Busy Day and Yuni Turns 8!!

2011-11-18T19:34:00.020-05:00

Happy Friday Friends! And a busy one at that! Here we go... Owen started our day with a great morning meeting! Chicken Lips, the clothespin game, and a new greeting!!! "Did you know?"... loved it Owen! Yuni turned 8 today, and brought in cupcakes, and egg rolls to share for snack! Yummy!
We had our buddy test, and will always remember that when al is together (like in all, ball, talk, chalk) it makes the short o vowel sound, but it's al!!!! Well done! We practiced writing paragraphs in handwriting, and later in writing workshop. After learning how paragraphs have a theme, or topic, we wrote our own topic sentence together... and what better topic than our Thanksgiving Feast?? Friends brainstormed sentences with supporting details (well done Brady, Zenani, and Tia) and we closed our paragraph with "feeling words". We will write more paragraphs next week, and throughout the year!! As always, we loved seeing Annie and Moby share their ideas about writing on brainpop jr!
In quiet reading we practiced reading our spooky stories to help ready us for our Author's Tea on Wednesday, after all, practice makes perfect. Friends offered helpful, thoughtful advice, and we can't wait to see you on Wednesday!! In math we played another fun money game... race to 50!! Cents that is. We reviewed coin value, and watched as Zenani and Ms. W. modeled this cool coin counting game. It was finally game time, and friends were off, rolling money cubes, collecting coins, and making trades! Nice job friends! Our Umass practicum student Katelyn read from Cranberry's Thanksgiving at read aloud. After that, Brian, our awesome Frontier student athlete joined us just in time to show off his Mohawk hairdo (and YES, in the spirit of tradition, and all things football, Brian, indeed, had some SERIOUS "Mohawk hair"). Now that's commitment to team, and tradition, Brian!! Well done! It was also Brian's last visit this season, and we made sure he knew how much we would miss his presence. Many thanks to Scott Dredge for organizing this great connection highlighting community service and for bringing all these student athletes to our little school! Great program! And, when I say it was a busy day for Owen... that's NO JOKE! He was not only the morning meeting helper, the math meeting helper, but the V.I.P. as well! Talk about endurance and stamina, for one school day! We loved listening to Owen tell about his trip to Haiti, his dogs, his sister and family, and his heroes, his Mom and Dad! My favorite might have been that picture with his chicken! Yup, that was pretty cool! Well done Owen!
Next week... very busy! Students will bring in apples and vegetables for our feast (in celebration of all our learning about the first Thanksgiving). And... we can't wait to share our first Author's Tea and show you what the writing process looks like in second grade! See you there! Wednesday will be a half day (no lunch), noon pick-up. Have a great weekend with family, friends, and maybe even some Frontier Football on Friday night! Go Red Hawks!

Obstacle Course, Counting Coins and Yuni's Meeting!!

2011-11-16T18:02:00.021-05:00

Greetings friends! Our day started with Ms. Gebo and Obstacle Course in P.E. and it was AWESOME!! Students challenged their bodies, coordination, footwork, and upper body strength while completing physical challenges (with embedded curriculum). Skip counting by 5's while on the trampoline... like I said, AWESOME! Thanks Ms. Gebo! We loved it!
Next, Yuni started our morning with a fabulous morning meeting (Rockin' Robin, koosh toss greeting, and clothespin game "doubles")! Well done Yuni! We sorted our spelling words using analogies, and vocabulary, and then used our spelling words to write sentences in writing workshop (the second grade way). Very impressive friends! Students focused on using capitals when writing proper nouns, and double checked for punctuation and spelling (of course). We shared another Thanksgiving story about how a boy imagines he's a pilgrim boy, rather than a present day boy. He (we) made comparisons throughout the story about what's the "same" and what's "different" about the first Thanksgiving, and how we celebrate this holiday today. We all agreed, there's a big difference in how the Pilgrims put food on the table, and how we get food today. It was a great story, and a very thoughtful discussion followed, as we get ready to have our very own Thanksgiving Feast in 2W. This is one of many 2nd grade traditions, and as always, ownership for many of the decisions will lie with our students. More on that to come!
In math we played Heads or Tails and practiced counting coins! Students reviewed the value of coins and partnered up for some money counting fun! Well done and great practice! Ms. Schumacher read from Fantastic Mr. Fox again today, and we loved it! That Roald Dahl sure tells it like it is.... strong language, full of emotion! Wow! Library tomorrow... remember to return books in order to borrow new ones please.

Tuesday Tacklers.... Well Done Joe!!

2011-11-15T17:57:00.012-05:00

Greetings Tuesday Tacklers! Joe ran a great morning meeting with This Land Is Your Land, the koosh greeting, and the clothespin game! Great start to our day. We reviewed and practiced using our word study principle (all, alk) and sorted our words based on the amount of syllables in the word. We used dictionaries and looked up spelling words and payed close attention to guide words, meaning, vocabulary, and phonics (sounds in words)! We LOVE using our dictionaries, and teams of students worked together to make it fun and full of learning! We wrote in our Monthly Writing Sample Journals, as well. This is a kind of writing we do completely on our own, independently, sounding out words, and choosing a topic to write about. Using these journals, we are able to see how our writing grows and progresses. A very concrete example of how our writing is getting better and better! In math we practiced fact families up to 12! We used our fact family triangles to help organize our thinking, and even made some fact families of our own! Very impressive friends!! Owen ran a very efficient math meeting, complete with calender math, weather, and "days in school" in money. Great job Owen! Ms. Schumacher read from Fantastic Mr. Fox today, and we loved it!! Thanks Ms. Schumacher!! Great day friends!

Monday.... Pocket Day!!

2011-11-14T18:42:00.003-05:00

Monday! And Makayla ran one super fine, efficient morning meeting! We loved singing Chicken Lips (I mean, what second grader doesn't love singing about camel rears and toe nail pie... ewwwww. Exactly!!) Well done Makayla! Writing workshop was all about personal narratives courtesy of our weekend stories! Danny G. and Owen shared some great writing at our author's share, helping us learn about what to do when we have too many "ands" in our writing. Well done boys! Great writing workshop! In math it was all about pocket day, and it was AWESOME!!!!! First, we counted our pockets (and some friends were very, VERY well prepared for pocket day). Yes, I'm talking to you... Mr. 10 pockets!! After recording all our numbers, we had to add and make "friendly" combinations of numbers that would make our adding easier! Great work second graders, and some amazingly close predictions!!! That was one impressive pocket day... can't wait for another one soon!
Our UMass student teacher Katelyn, read from Roald Dahl's The Fantastic Mr. Fox and we loved it! We ended the day catching up on work board while enjoying a new book display featuring the historical events surrounding the first Thanksgiving! Another great Monday friends! PE tomorrow, sneakers please.

Veteran's Day and Danny's VIP!!

2011-11-14T17:58:00.017-05:00

The weather was forgiving (finally) and conditions were perfect for our short journey to the Sunderland Veteran's Memorial! We walked together as a school and relied on the safety support offered by our very own first responders, local Sunderland Police as well as Mass State Police.... IMPRESSIVE!! Once we arrived we walked past service members representing different branches of our military and got an "up close" look at their impressive uniforms and kind faces. Their disciplined posture, and attention to detail was palpable, and we quietly followed suit and found our positions among the benches quietly and reverently. We listened to words of appreciation, letters from former SES students (now serving), and of course, the beautiful voices of our SES students singing God Bless America, and This Land Is Your Land. Overall, the event was beautiful, meaningful, and very developmentally appropriate. Best yet! Once back, we did some "catching up" on work board while Ms. Worthley met with readers, and counted beans in math! 12, to be exact, while recording equations and paying close attention to fact families as well! We ended the day with Danny's VIP! Wow! Does Danny know a lot about coins and collecting! He shared a variety of cool coins from all over the globe! We also noticed Danny is quite a fisherman, or pretty lucky... catching the first fish and only fish on a trip with his Dad! Well done Danny! Great day to be in second grade in Sunderland today, no doubt about it!

Cali's Morning Meeting and Owen's Math Challenge!!

2011-11-07T18:37:00.010-05:00

Greetings, and good to be back, after a week without power!! My apologies for leaving our daily blog for so long, but we're back, and ready for action!! Monday! Cali started the day with a great morning meeting complete with Sandwiches, a great greeting (full of silly witch and rock and roll voices), and the clothespin game (quite a favorite)!! Well done Cali! Our morning began with word study and a review of short vowel sounds. And I'm talkin' ALL the vowels! Listening carefully to the sounds in words can help us know how to spell words properly! Vowel sounds aren't as easy as they seem, but after this week, we should have enough practice to know our vowel sounds, and add the correct vowel when spelling words! Along with practicing rhyme and meaning with words!
In writing workshop we finalized the last piece of our Spooky Story Publishing Project by adding an "about the author" page to our stories. We read and learned about how many famous authors chose to write about themselves (John Lithgow, Roald Dahl) and tried this kind of writing ourselves! An author's share is in the works very soon... so stay tuned! In math we reviewed what we learned about odd and even numbers, along with place value, and played "guess my secret number"! Harder than you think, but a lot of fun if you like thinking about math, and about numbers! Owen ran a great math meeting and is ready for tomorrow's challenge... "days in school... in money"! Can't wait Owen! We ended the day with work board and catch up day, working on many literacy jobs while Ms. Worthley meets with readers.
Another great day friends!
No School tomorrow (in service day for teachers), and half day on Wednesday. Hoping I will see everyone who missed their conference due to school cancellation last Wednesday. If not, no worries, we will reschedule. Second grade got off to a great start and is really humming along! See you all Wednesday morning, ready to roll!

Kaela's Morning Meeting and Odd/Even Numbers!

2011-10-26T18:45:00.014-04:00

Way to get our Wednesday started Kaela! Great morning meeting. We tried our hand at tossing the red squishy ball with our greeting, and sang Sandwiches (and sounded awesome) then played one very tricky round of the clothespin game! So tricky even Ms. Worthley couldn't find it! Great job Makayla... and Kaela! We practiced u in handwriting, and worked with short u vowel sound in word study! First, we had to think about synonyms, and words that have the same or similar meaning as our spelling words! We also had to choose words based on meaning (vocabulary) and complete spelling sentences! Well done friends!
Immediately after word study it was ON to our new addiction... writing, composing, and revising SPOOKY STORIES!! Today we were inspired by "The Spider That Saved Halloween"! Next we reviewed our spooky word list, and Yuni, BRAVELY, offered her story to share to help our learning! After reading Yuni's story about monsters and pumpkins, and things "rumbling under beds" (YIKES), we helped her craft an ending to her story with our suggestions! And talk about good suggestions, WOW! I can't wait to see how she decided to end her story tomorrow when we revise and illustrate our stories! This has been one exciting, productive, and impressive writing workshop theme! Well done spooky story writers!
In math we learned about odd and even numbers and what makes a number either odd, or even. Every single number is one, or the other, and learning about odd and even numbers help us think about and understand numbers in more creative ways!
Danny ended the day with yet another fabulous math meeting! We took some time out to talk about "full body listening" and truly showed Danny how great we are at listening and participating in a meeting! Well done everyone! Library tomorrow.... remember to bring your library books to school please, so you can borrow some new ones!

Jake's Morning Meeting and Dictionaries!!

2011-10-25T19:29:00.009-04:00

Greetings Everyone! Jake got our day started with one super morning meeting! The cube greeting was full of clever voices... rock and roll, under water, and a new one, cowboy style! Nice Jake! The clothespin game was equally awesome, and I think everyone loved singing Chicken Lips! Well done Jake! We practiced lots of phonetic substitutions in spelling with our spelling words, and used dictionaries to find spelling words too! We all agreed, using dictionaries is something we hope to do a lot more often! Spooky story writing was another success, and students worked on favorite stories, or started new spooky stories. We will choose our favorite story on Thursday, and "revise" it to get it ready for readers! More on "revising" later. Looking forward to our spooky story sharing time on Monday... Halloween! Ooooooo!
In math we reviewed all our math facts to 11, and jumped right into fact families! Three numbers that always go together to make math fact families, like 11, 5, and 6! Or 11, 7, and 4! Even 11, 10, and 1... you get the idea! Knowing our fact families will help us with math computation fluency, and helps us understand how numbers work together!
We learned a new center for work board today called too-ba-loo, and we can't wait to get started! Our new Halloween work board is ready to roll tomorrow, so get a good sleep, and see you in the morning! Hoping Tia's feeling better... you were missed today! PE tomorrow, sneakers please!

Tia and Danny and 2 FANTASTIC Meetings!

2011-10-24T19:44:00.015-04:00

Hope you all had a great weekend! We were ready for action today, and Tia started us off with one terrific meeting! Rockin' Robin, Ms. Marbles, and a great message! We jumped right into a new spelling principle after snack... short u vowel sound! Using our words we practiced rhyme and spelling patterns in words (with short u, of course)! Writing workshop was full of weekend stories. We reviewed using dialogue in our stories, and strategies using dialogue to make our stories more interesting! Jake and Juan shared 2 great stories, one with lots of dialogue, and one with every word wall word spelled properly! Well done writers! We've been inspired by many of our spooky stories, our spooky word wall, and by each others amazing spooky, creepy stories!!!
In math, Danny starred in one of the best math meetings EVER! Seriously, Ms. Worthley could have taken the day off, no need for adult supervision! Danny P is IN THE HOUSE!! Well done Danny, and your weather question... outstanding! To answer the question, friends had to use both the bar graph, and the pictograph to form their answer! Way to go Zenanai! Math was all about beans, and facts to 11! We read 12 Ways To Get To 11, and worked on all our equations using beans! We started a new work board, Halloween style! OOoooooooo! We also learned a new ABC center job called "word art". Using our spelling words to write letters, spelling words (and spell the words properly, of course) in artistic, creative, colorful ways! FUN!
We ended the day with a mini presentation by our 6th grade friend Nina, who is sponsoring a food drive to help the Foodbank of Western MA! She taught us what non-perishable food is, and talked about what it might feel like to be hungry, and not have enough food to nourish your body. Perhaps those who are able might offer some canned goods, or nonperishable items, peanut butter, or even cans of tuna! All great choices! Thanks Nina, for inspiring us to contribute!
Tomorrow, PE, sneakers please.

Brady's Meeting and Adding Tens!!

2011-10-20T21:37:00.004-04:00

Greetings Friends! Brady started our busy day with a great morning meeting! Sandwiches was music to our ears! The koosh greeting and message went equally well! Awesome job everyone, way to start the day Brady! Well done! We continued writing, what has officially become our new addiction... SPOOKY STORIES!! I can't wait for you to read some of these incredible, suspenseful, dark and scary stories! WOW! Impressive writers! In math we learned how to organize our thinking (and counting) with an organized list! When adding tens to make 100, how can you be organized? How can you make sure you include all the combinations of tens that make 100? I'll tell you how, you organize your work, organize your thinking! We had the option of using our super cool neon orange tens sticks, and everyone made quick work of organizing their tens... and their work! Work board went well, and we'll be ready for a new work board on Monday! Halloween work board! Ooooooo... can't wait! Cali will share her V.I.P. tomorrow, and I can't wait to listen and learn about this very special friend! Fun Friday tomorrow! See you bright and early!

Monday and Tuesday!! Owen and Zenani's Meetings and More With Place Value!

2011-10-18T18:02:00.019-04:00

Our week is off to a great start! Monday Owen ran his first morning meeting and it was awesome! Everyone else following the meeting did an exceptional job, as well, paying attention and supporting every part of our meeting (song, greeting, message, and game)! Now that's how you start the work week! We worked with a new word study principle, short o vowel sound, and worked with a new word list (sorting, categorizing, vocabulary, rhyme, and phonetic substitutions)! We learned what dialogue is, and how to put talking into your story to make it more interesting! Friends experimented with this new writing strategy, and we came up with a lot of great stories, with a lot of dialogue! Well done writers!
Zenani ran her very first math meeting this week, complete with calendar math, today's date in money, and the weather graph! Outstanding Zenani! After that, we worked more with place value and "built numbers" paying close attention to where each digit is in the number! We retired our author under study, Leo, Lionni, to a browsing box, and have filled our bookshelf with spooky stories, just in time for Halloween! We're just about done with our first work board, and students are really getting the hang of completing work independently and thoroughly! Ms. Worthley is always looking for "great work" to show off, especially when the work is neat, complete, and full of detail!
Tuesday was an equally great day! Juan was our morning meeting helper and started us off with "This Land Is Your Land", and the koosh greeting! We played the clothespin game, and were all surprised that even Jake was unaware he was hiding the clothespin on his shorts! CRAZY, but fun!! We continued our interest in spooky stories, and carried it right into writing workshop! After careful listening to "The Ghosteye Tree" we talked about spooky words, and what makes a story feel scary or suspenseful! We tried our hand at writing some of our very own spooky stories today with great success! Many stories even had dialogue! WOW! Well done writers! I can't wait to read and write more spooky stories tomorrow! Well done!
In math we stretched our learning about place value, and practiced writing our numbers with words, and digits/numerals! Hard work, and very rewarding! We read another spooky story this afternoon called Cranberry's Halloween! The scariest part of that story was the "bad guy" Mr. Grape! Yikes! More spooky stories tomorrow, and fun with equations in math... just the way we like it!

Jame's Morning Meeting and Juan's V.I.P!!

2011-10-14T22:32:00.015-04:00

Fun Friday was a little soggy, but that didn't dampen our day! James began the day with the jellyfish greeting, Rockin' Robin, and a twist on Mrs. Marbles (as in Mr. Marbles)! Well done James! We reviewed equations in the morning with a little help from our friends! Remembering, simply, that both sides of the equals sign off the equation must be the same, or equal! We drew pictures to show our thinking, and volunteers solved the missing addend in many equations! Well done second grade! We loved our "buddy" work with our spelling packets (short i vowel sound) and included meaning, word families, rhyme, antonyms and synonyms in our work! What would you do if you were principal for a day? That's what writing workshop was all about today. What would your day look like? Would you make any changes? What would you like to see happen? Students shared their stories (as always) at our authors share afterward today. Everyone agreed, we ought to share them with Mr. Merritt as well, just in case he needs a little "back-up" while he's away from school! In math we talked about place value. First, we talked about one digit and two digit numbers (and what a digit is)!! Then, we bundled groups of tens, and wrote those numbers paying close attention to counting (precision matters)! Our student athlete, Brian, joined us this afternoon for some work board, and even participated in the literacy activities himself! Thanks Brian (GO Red Hawks)!!
We ended the day with Juan's VIP! Juan shared some beautiful family photos and explained important memories, helping us all get to know him a little bit more! Well done Juan! We had a wonderful Friday! See you all rested and ready for Monday!