Harry's Meeting and a Holiday Concert!

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!

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!!

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!

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!!