Magnanimous Monday!!

Malawi Project Launch!! Here We Go!

What a week! We've accomplished a lot! Getting our Malawi service project started, learning a new spelling rule, and learning double digit subtraction with borrowing/regrouping, just to name a few! Wow! The new work board has been well received, and friends have worked very hard independently, and cooperatively! We've had some wonderful sharing with beautiful Russian dolls and intricate complex lego creations. Owen has lead many wonderful math meetings this week, focusing on calendar questions, money, weather graphing, and "today's magic number"! Well done Owen! Matilda, by Roald Dahl, has provided many captivating read-aloud moments for us all! Who knew a little girl could be so brilliant? Especially with such boorish, mean spirited parents!!! Listening to how Matilda exerts her power and revenge on her parents has provided a lot of comedic fodder and entertainment during read loud. For sure! Learning double digit subtraction with regrouping/borrowing is one of the most abstract and tricky skills we learn in second grade! Following the rules, paying attention to place value, and understanding that "borrowing 10" simply redistributes the number is tricky! I must say, however, we have impressed Mrs. Williams (our substitute teacher- former fourth grade teacher) with our skills! Let's see what happens on Monday! Well done friends! More work on the play and practicing our parts, as well as writing jobs (posters, invitations, and press releases) along with public speaking on behalf of getting the word our about our service project. Are you excited? You should be! Here we go! Have a great weekend! Rest, play, read, and come back Monday ready for learning friends!

HOUSTON!!! WE'RE BACK!!!

OK... So it's not exactly "rocket science", or NASA, our little blog... but it's nice to be back! Special shout out to Ms. Nowak for finding the digital camera... and thus allowing us the spotlight on second grade musings, learning, and unexpected surprises! Getting back into the swing of "school" after spring vacation went very well! Students arrived ready and full of effort and energy! Our new spelling rule, contractions, is helping us learn how to shrink 2 words into one with an apostrophe! Using correct spelling really counts with contractions, and we're working hard to learn as many contraction patterns as we can! In writing, we've begun our Malawi service project, and are on the cusp of deciding what our project will be, and how to proceed (what will we need, how will we get the word out, what's the value of what we're offering...) So many questions and lots to think about! And... we LOVE it! So many great ideas to choose from! In the end, everybody wins when we're able to help our pen pals in Malawi Africa! So proud of this class and these students! Their hearts are so pure and full of love, and ready to use all their skills for this project! Impressive! Sharing continues and we've gotten to learn even more about our second grade friends (super cool 4-leaf clover, awesome lego sculpture... WOW!!). I'll be out tomorrow, but our "FAV" Ms. McGinn will be in. Have a great day friends!

Monday's Meetings!!

Greetings Friends! Not only has Ms. W's camera lost it's mojo, now... it's just plain ol' LOST!! Yikes! We had a busy productive day with or without film!! We started word study with our new spelling rule: homophones! Words that sound the same, but look different and have different meanings! Vocabulary and meaning will have a HEAVY HAND in our spelling work this week! We worked on weekend stories, and many friends had some great Easter moments to share in their writing! Nice job writers! Alena shared her writing in our author's share, especially her use of the word wall (for spelling) and rereading skills! You can really tell when a second grade writer is reading their story carefully when they make revisions and correct as they go! Awesome Alena!! We caught up in work board and literacy activities while Ms. W and Ms. C met with readers in groups. In math, we reviewed and practiced triple digit addition, paying close attention to our number writing with 4 digit numbers! Writing numbers to the thousands place requires one carefully placed comma! Wow! Even numbers have punctuation!! Cool! Well done friends!
Our parting shot goes out to Mrs. Cialek today! Our truly wonderful, amazing, supremely caring and illustrious teaching assistant will be out for a couple of weeks. She'll be back soon with a new knee as well as a spring in her step to match that huge (fully functioning) heart and never-ending smile she brings to our class every day! We'll be thinking about her, missing her, and doing great work in her absence. Take care Mrs. Cialek, and take care of that knee! We'll see you soon!

Howdy Friends! Forgive my lack of entries this week, seems my profoundly impaired digital camera has completely lost it's mojo! Working on it, though... so keep tuning in!! In the mean time, we've had a full busy week, half days and all! Without afternoons filled with math thinking and problem solving, we've instilled one of our favorite second grade traditions... POWER MATH!! A short pop of math review and skills practice! This week our focus was on time, money and fractions! Writers have been working on personal narratives this week with weekend stories (complete with think sheets, helping organize our ideas). Sharing friends have impressed as well this week, with their great choices (special books, incredible rubber band balls, porcelain kitties, and more)! Art's Night will be here before you know it... Thursday night to be exact! 5:30 will begin the art viewing, and 6:30 is show time! A soul inspired, slightly Motown feel is inevitable once you hear our young singers (backed up by the SES LIVE house band! One of my favorite nights, bar NONE! If you love adorable children, live music, and the innocence of children's singing mixed with the swagger of some seriously rockin' tunes, then this night is FOR YOU! Bring tissues, it will be a packed house, that's for sure! Can't wait! Thanks to all who have come in for conferences this week! I've loved having the opportunity to share your student's progress with each and every one of you! What a truly special, enthusiastic, caring, thoughtful, hard working group we have! Keep up the good work second grade!

April... Already??

Great Monday Friends! And a busy one too! Lot's of catching up, both in math and literacy! Harry and Joe did some great sharing too! Danny got our week off to a great start with one great math meeting! Well done boys! We'll keep up the great work tomorrow! Get a good night's sleep everyone! SLEEP MAKES YOU SMART!!!