Comparing Coins, Halloween and Welcome Kate!

Happy Halloween Friends! Today was Myong's last day in 2W as our wonderful ELL teacher! congratulations to her as she takes on new professional challenges with her new job in Boston. We will miss her gentle style and sparkling smile! Good luck Myong! In her place we welcomed a new teacher, and Myong's daughter Kate! Welcome to 2W Kate! We had another half day of learning, but we packed it full with work board, math, meetings, and spelling games! Readers met in reading groups as we continued our work on the spooky Halloween work board. In math we stretched our learning about counting coins and compared the value of coins using greater than, less than, and equal signs. Katie shared some Halloween treats with every friend today during snack! Thanks Katie! David lead one supremely awesome morning meeting that finished with a rousing game of sparkle! What a great opportunity to review and practice last week's spelling rule _all and _alk... and the perfect segue into spelling and our new spelling principle, consonant blends! Paying attention to the sounds of consonants and blending them together to make words make us better readers, writers, and spellers! Well done everyone. With a little time left we recited our word study words with flair... opera style, rock star style, Army Sargent style, and, of course "angry parent" style! Well done friends! We ended the day with Mr. Jarzembowski as he read Arthur's Halloween. We also took some time to talk about safety tips for trick or treating tonight! Have fun everyone, and stay safe! BOO!

Sandy's Gone... And We're BACK!!

Howdy Friends! An unexpected 3 day weekend for many of us in the valley... and with that, I hope you and your loved ones are safe and dry after Sandy's fury! We were spared, here in the valley, and for that we are truly grateful!! A typical Tuesday was had by many today in second grade! Work board was productive and readers met with teachers and in reading groups! In math, we reviewed what we've learned about counting coins, their value, and how to write money. Then, we stretched our learning and wrote coins in value from greatest to least, and practiced "counting up" our money (and writing it the second grade way). Great practice and a lot to learn! We only had a half day of learning today so after math it was on to word study and our new spelling principle, consonant blends! When you blend consonants in words, you hear each sound, and can use what you hear to help you spell words! Speaking of spelling, we've added a new job to our weekly homework practice and that is "Word Hunt"! Using what we know about our spelling rule, we will hunt for words in text and write them according to their spelling pattern. Like all homework, it will be turned in on Friday with reading and math. Deter lead a wonderful morning meeting with the koosh greeting, and sparkle! One of our favorite games, and a great opportunity to review last weeks spelling rule (_all, and _alk). Like I said, it was a half day, a short day, and we enjoyed every minute of it! Another half day tomorrow! Looking forward to conferences with everyone!

Outstanding Thursday... Thinkers!

Howdy friends! What a great day! Gotta get to class, but will post all our awesome discoveries and today's events later on! Stay tuned!!

Race to 50 and Jeopardy!

Wednesday was full of games, meetings, and A LOT OF ENERGY!!! We started with our last catching up day before starting our new spooky Halloween work board tomorrow! In math we stretched our learning about coins and their value and learned how to make trades with coins. Looking at several coins, and trading up... with our new game "race to 50"... as in cents! Using what we know about pennies, nickels and dimes, we rolled the dice, counted our money, and tried to make equal trades from pennies to nickels to dimes to quarters! Excellent coin counting practice. And nice cooperation, turn taking, and game playing! Well done! Ethan lead a fabulous morning meeting and ended it with the game sparkle! A perfect transition to word study and spelling! Since it's Wednesday, you KNOW spelling will be one awesome word game, and today it was jeopardy!! Using our spelling patterns, rhyme, meaning, context clues, and working together, teams played one rousing game of jeopardy! Thanks Ms. McCarthy! We love Wednesdays and especially love when you're here! Awesome! Deter lead another great math meeting followed by writing workshop, where we reminded ourselves what respectful, caring, working friends look like and sound like, and then wrote about it. Looking forward to seeing every friend tomorrow, and it will be Thursday, library books and sneakers for PE please!

Counting Coins and Big Band Swing!!

What a Tuesday!! We started the day with some super cool big band swing music in Cafe Sun! What a feast for the ears and our whole school was jamming to the rhythm and sounds of this amazing swing band! Check the link and see how channel 22 news thought it was worth mentioning on their broadcast! After all that music, we jumped right into math and counting coins. Skip counting is an important skill (and holding on to numbers in your head while you skip count) when you count coins. You also have to know the value of each coin too, and today we counted pennies, nickels, and dimes! Remembering to use the cents sign is also important! We will practice counting coins all week, while learning how to write about money, and deepen our understanding of coins and their value! In writing workshop we continued our work on spooky stories and used spooky words and ideas! We were inspired after reading "In A Dark Dark Room", and then it was off to crafting our own haunted, scary, frightening tales! We took some time to talk about how it's fun... even exciting... to be scared just a little bit by a well written story when there's nothing to fear! We also reminded ourselves that our stories, while putting a chill in our bones, are all actually fiction, so... nothing to worry about! Justin shared one of his stories at the end of writing workshop so other writers could give him some ideas for his spooky story! After very careful listening to the beginning and middle of one truly great story, Justin got 5-6 great ideas of where his story could possibly go! Excellent collaboration and cooperation friends! Writing workshop could not possibly be any better than it is in 2W!!

Monday... Money and Weekend Stories!

Greetings Friends! What a productive Monday it was! Work board was busy and focused! After work board we started a coin unit with dimes and pennies and a new game called "heads or tails"! Using coins we were introduced to counting money as well as noticing parts of the coin, skip counting, and keeping track of our counting! We had awesome partners, and skilled coin counters today! Well done! Deter lead his first math meeting this week, and Fernando lead us in morning meeting too! Excellent job boys! In word study we introduced a new word study principle: all and alk... where the a really sounds like a short O!! Crazy! Noticing, practicing, and learning this spelling pattern will help us become better spellers, readers, and writers! This afternoon Mr. Jarzembowski lead us in writing workshop and showed us how to include a beginning, middle and ending in our stories! He shared his weekend story, and reinforced how good writers carry an idea, a theme, throughout their story. The idea or theme has a beginning, the story builds in the middle, and finally, the idea comes to a conclusion in the ending! We had several writers enthusiastically share at the end of writing workshop today! Great job everyone!! PE tomorrow... sneakers please!