Kaela's Morning Meeting and Odd/Even Numbers!

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!!

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!

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!!

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!

More Spooky Stories and Comparing Numbers!!

Greetings Friends! What a great day! We started with morning meeting and the singing was awesome! This Land Is Your Land was GREAT! The koosh greeting was also well done. There was quite a lot of "blurting", however (when everything that pops in your head pops out of your mouth... sometimes you just can't help yourself). But... since it was a meeting, we all agreed that we need to follow our meeting rules, and Brady will run another meeting in the morning. Way to be patient, Brady, we'll make it up to you tomorrow morning. WE CAN DO IT!
We listened to another spooky story: In A Dark Dark Room! We added more scary words to our word list, and writers were off and running! Kaela shared her spooky story, and allowed us to give her some amazing ideas for what could happen next! Wow! I sure hope she sticks with that story. Students are really enjoying writing spooky stories, and coming up with some really spine tingling adventures! Well done writers! You could have heard a pin drop in writing workshop (and no one wanted to stop... outstanding)!
Zenani ran another fabulous math meeting, and friends were very attentive and supportive with their participation! Now that's how a meeting should go! Great job! In math we took what we've learned about place value, and began to compare numbers! We learned and used the greater than sign >, and the less than sign <, to complete equations! Lots of mathematical thinking, comparisons, and number writing too! Great problem solving! And with some pretty thoughtful, challenging problems! Not easy second graders! Well done! We ended the day with work board and catch up day. Our next (Halloween themed) work board is ready to go! Can't wait to share it with you all friends!
Tomorrow is Thursday, Library day, return your books so you may borrow some new ones!

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

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!