COTTONWOOD! Oh Yeah!!!

Thursday began with Mackenaie's wonderful morning meeting... hand holding twirling greeting, great song, and the "ZOOM!" game (by popular demand). Well done Mackenzie! We had a productive morning on work board while Ms. W. met with readers. This afternoon we learned a new energizer after Ethan's awesome math meeting... "double double this this, double double that that, double this, double that, double double this that!! What quick, agile learners you all are! FUN! We solved story problem this afternoon in math with POW, and showed our thinking using picture, words, numbers, and the answer!! Today we worked with subtraction problems, and remembered how important a clear, organized, accurate picture is when showing your thinking. Now while all that was going on, PTO was getting ready for the BIG EVENT OF TODAY! COTTONWOOD!! That's right, the band Cottonwood played live... at our school... while we were treated to delicious BBQ chicken, dogs, fresh veggies, home grown salads, watermelon, and snow cones!!!! OH MY, does it get any better than this?? Incredible live music, beautiful dancing smiling children, delicious BBQ, and sharing it with our whole Sunderland community??? Not sure it gets any better. Today, it was really all about the after school party! Great day friends! Fun Friday tomorrow!

Can You Say "Button Party" and More with Magnets!!

Howdy Friends! Tuesday started off with a rousing morning meeting hosted by Charlie! Well done Charlie! We stretched our learning and vocabulary with our magnet unit while watching a Unitedstreaming video. In writing workshop we put all that vocabulary to good use while writing "magnet facts". Writers shared some of their work and made even more connections! Charlie was our sharing friend today, and he wowed us with his coin collection and some rare pennies from the 1800's! Cool! In math today we worked with our 100's chart and noticed patterns while skip counting and paying close attention to place value!
You may have noticed our button jar is practically full! Not that you're surprised... after all, each and every button signifies an act of kindness, taking a risk, helping a friend, cooperative learning, or even an unsolicited positive comment (when you thought no one was noticing)! A lot of character is reflected in each and every button, and my guess, is that, our 2W button party is not far away!! Well done second graders!

Magnetic Monday!!

Greetings Friends! Another soggy Monday, but that didn't stop us from getting ready for a busy fun day (business as usual)! Lannashia started us off with an eye opening morning meeting! Chicken Lips song, koosh greeting, and clothespin game! Well done Lannashia. Right after that we integrated science and word study and began our magnet unit! We learned from Brainpop Jr. and generated an important (theme based) list of words we will all learn by Friday on magnets and magnetism! Writing in weekend journals felt comfortable and productive! Sharing personal narratives was wonderful, and many students shared their stories about the 5th Grade Play, baseball/softball games, and other important family/weekend events! In math we worked with our 100's board and recognized patterns and talked about place value! The highlight of our afternoon might have been the super-cute "Super-flex" readers theater we were invited to by our first grade neighbors. We learned (from them, yes, we, the second grade, learned from first graders...) the importance of having flexible thinking in social situations. We learned that you can even change the way you think/react by having positive thinking, and how being a "rock brain" (inflexible) never really works out for anyone! Well done first grade. And what a great audience second grade was! Such positive feedback, generous compliments, and tangible support for your first grade friends! So proud! Great day! Tomorrow, Tuesday, PE, sneakers please.

What A Show!!

OH MY!! What a show friends! Charlie Brown delivered! Our second grade birds were outstanding! Suppertime... amazing! Everyone in the show was awesome! How impressive that Ms. Lee (along with a posse of parents and friends) could pull off a show like this! Well done Sunderland, well done!

Fun Friday!!

What is that... that golden shiny orb glowing in the sky... could it actually be the SUN?? Holy cow, it DOES exist! Today Maya started our Friday with a great meeting and fun game of alibi! Well done detective Maya! Readers practiced fluency with our very own "Chickens" poem (inspired by Jack Prelutsky, of course). Reading together and out loud is a great way to work on expression and fluency, especially with poetry! Students thoughtfully read and reread the variety of poems they've been working on in our poetry unit. We finished editing our work and chose one final piece to publish. We illustrated each of our poems and will display our work in the Sunderland Public Library! Can't wait! Stay tuned for news about our gallery opening! Impressive second graders! Publishing poetry at the ripe old age of 7 and 8 years old! We ended our day with Peter's final math meeting and handed our "math meeting baton of brilliance" on to Ethan for next week! Looking forward to Saturday night and another wonderful performance by our 6th grade and many wonderful 2nd grade birds in "You're a Good Man Charlie Brown"!!! Have a great weekend friends!

Charlie Brown and Unroll A Square!

Howdy Friends! We managed to stay mostly dry and even get outdoors for some well deserved fresh air today at recess! YIPPEE!! We had a bit of an unusual day, but certainly enjoyed every minute of it! With so many friends out due to the play performance, we were a small group, so we invited 2Z to join us for morning meeting! Mary was more than willing to run the meeting, and it was so nice to be all together for singing, greeting, and games! Nice job second grade! And way to run a such a big meeting Mary... very efficient! After meeting, we were off to the gym for the play performance "You're A Good Man Charlie Brown". As usual, Cathy Lee, our art teacher and the entire 6th grade impressed us with their talent, their singing and dancing, and spectacular costumes! What fun! 2W's very own Ethan, Olivia, Mackenzie, Maya, and Olivia were features as some very stunning birds! Awesome job friends! Come see it for yourself this weekend! This afternoon we began a new read aloud "The Chocolate Touch" and loved it! In math we stretched our thinking with the 100's chart and played Unroll a square. Kind of like yesterday's Roll a square, but a little more challenging! Well done second graders! Great team work, calculating chunks of tens and hundreds, and turn taking! Seriously fun math gaming was had by all this afternoon! Great day! Homework due tomorrow, and LIBRARY BOOKS as well! See you then. Hasta manana amigos!

Roll A Square and Limerick Style Poetry!

Wet Wednesday Friends! We started the day with a great morning meeting! Well done Adan! Writing workshop continues on with poetry, and today it was all about the limerick! Some say too tricky, too challenging for second graders to write a clever limerick. To them we say: "check out our Maya limerick"!!!
Maya
There once was a student named Maya,
Whose body was catching on fire,
So she jumped in a pool,
And got nice and cool,
Then after she ate some papaya!
Thanks for offering yourself for the cause Maya! Well done second grade writers! It was Olivia's sharing day, and she impressed us with some of her own poetry writing in her very special poetry journal! That's what I call a great end to a writing workshop on poetry! Well done! This afternoon we continued our work with 100's and played "Roll A Square"! Answering questions, solving equations, challenging our knowledge about tens (and bundling numbers... mentally) is what this game is all about! Great concrete AND mental math friends! Fun and well done! Tomorrow we're in for a real treat... Special assembly in the morning: the sixth grade play, You're A Good Man Charlie Brown! We can't wait! And we even have 5 friends performing tomorrow too! Break a leg friends! Can't wait for Thursday!

Haiku!!!! (God bless you... thank you... you're welcome)

Greetings Friends! Today was our Morning Meeting helpers birthday, and what a day it was! Great meeting Olivia, everyone loved the "cool-dude" greeting! We played a birthday style game of telephone, and quickly began our morning challenges! Poetry was the theme of writing workshop, and haiku was our new format. Haiku is a wonderful way to play with syllables in words to create a feeling or a picture of a particular topic. 3 lines, 5 syllables, 7syllables, 5 syllables. Today's haiku: School Lunch. We agreed, this topic could go one of two ways, and I was glad to see that second graders took the high road, and paid proper homage to a well done school lunch (today happened to be hot dogs and beans... here's our first haiku):
School Lunch
Today it's hot dogs.
Ketchup, mustard relish, BUNS!
Milk is fifty cents.
Well done friends, our first try at haiku was wonderful, lyrical, slightly silly, and full of alliteration! In math we visited our magic number (15) again, and expressed 15 in a variety of questions (addition, subtraction) using equations! Fun! Well done friends! Great day! Forgot the camera in school (dang) will add pictures tomorrow! Wednesday, PE, sneakers please!

Mondays Magic Number 15!

Monday morning...rain is falling... What's your prediction for indoor recess? Many students clearly thought it would be highly likely we'd spend recess inside, so when time came, and we went outside, we were a bit surprised! Until 2 minutes later... when it started to rain, and we came in. Oh well, how bad can it be if it's called recess, anyway? We began our day with Rebecca's morning meeting, well done Rebecca! We learned a new word study principle courtesy of the letters g and c. They both (all by themselves, without any extra help) have the power to make different sounds! After choosing and writing our spelling words in our best handwriting, we ventured to computers. Ms. Kidder shared how to download and store photos we had taken at our previous session and will be teaching us how to use the pictures in a variety of ways! We started a new work board today, and reviewed ways second graders can complete their work independently during our literacy block! Choose a good work spot (Peter). Focus on what you're doing (Mary). Don't sit next to a "talking" friend, unless you're buddy reading (Rebecca)! Great advice friends! Peter was our math meeting helper and he kicked off the afternoon with order and precision! Nicely done Peter! In math today we reviewed fact families, but with a variety of numbers, and even made some families of our own! Our magic number was 15, and students shared many different ways to make 15, along with what they know about 15! Excellent thinking, talking, sharing, and learning!! We had a little extra time today (very unusual!!) so we made math related theme based word searches for our friends! Harder than it seems... generating a word list specific to a particular theme (time, money, ordinal numbers...) spell all the words correctly, and create a word search! I must say, I was impressed! I'm not sure which was more fun, making the puzzles or solving the puzzles! WOW! Great way to start the week friends! Tomorrow, PE, sneakers please.