Fun Friday!

Howdy Friends! Our first fun Friday was exactly that!! We started with our essentials block in the computer lab with Ms. Kidder and rolled right into our morning meeting after that. We rocked out to "Rockin' Robin" and learned another new greeting while tossing our Earth ball. We finished writing all our high frequency words and will be ready to build our word wall on Monday! In writing workshop we learned about our Monthly Writing Sample Journals. A special kind of writing where we get to write about anything we want (fiction, personal narratives, thoughts, feelings). What's unique about these journals is that they allow us to see a progression of writing throughout the year. We actually can see ourselves becoming better writers! The evidence is right in front of us! Cool! Quiet reading went extremely well! Many friends chose to read about our first author under study, Marc Brown! Who doesn't love a good Arthur book? A great second grade reading choice... every time! We finished our projects on summer reading (and other reading) and it's on display right outside our classroom! Well done second graders. Check it out for yourselves!
In math we reviewed fact families, and what makes a fact family. New vocabulary included words like equation, number sentence, sum and difference. We will write about fact families on Monday! We had a super math meeting as well (thanks to those awesome meeting rules) and Jake stepped up as math meeting helper! Well done Jake. The good news is that EVERYONE will eventually have a turn to be math meeting helper, and just about everyone is ready for the job! Nice work everyone! Ms. Worthley modeled our first VIP Friday. A special moment in second grade where each friend will tell us all about themselves, what makes them special. It's a time to share a special talent, pictures, stories, anything that helps us really get to know you. Remember, if you can fit it in the VIP Top Secret brief case, and it helps us learn more about you, then BRING IT!! Have a great weekend everyone!

Thursday... It Stopped Raining!!!

Greetings Thursday Thinkers! We started our day in Library with Ms. Kidder and had a book treasure hunt to help us learn where certain books are stored in our library! Ms. Kidder spent most of her summer reorganizing our library-media center... and we are grateful!! After that we started our morning meeting with Rockin' Robin and the "shoulder-touch" greeting! Well done friends! We played the clothespin game for the first time, and our birthday girl, Alena gave us a run for our money! We all finally located the cleverly hidden clothespin and loved the game! We wrote more words in writing work shop, and did some writing about ourselves too! Quiet reading went well also! We talked about how some friends find it very easy (even enjoyable) to cuddle up with a book and quietly read... and for some, it's a skill we're still working on. Lucky for us we have 176 days left to enjoy quiet reading in second grade! In math we did a great job with math warm up (5 minutes of computation practice) and learned about how to care for cards in second grade (storing them, using them, putting them away). We used our cards to review our math facts to 10 playing 10's Go Fish! Fun! Owen fearlessly volunteered to be math meeting helper today (with no practice) and did a fantastic job! Well done Owen! Soon, we'll outline all our classroom jobs, and everyone (whose ready) will have a turn to be the math meeting helper. One very big and important job in 2W!
We also finalized our meeting rules, and BOY did they WORK! We all agreed on 4 rules to help our meetings feel successful so everyone can participate, lead, and enjoy! Well done friends! This was a big and very important job! Insuring we can have meetings to help our learning! Finally, we have talked briefly about buttons. Many seem to already know what buttons mean in 2W. We've already earned several buttons (key word... earned)! More on buttons later. We were grateful (and needed) some outdoor recess time today... YAY!

WET Wednesday!

Howdy Friends! Today was a wet and watery day, to say the least! But we made the most of it, as we usually do! We started our day with PE and Ms. Gebo (just the way we like it)!! At morning meeting we sang Oh Susanna, and tried a new greeting, pinky handshake! Well done second graders! We quickly moved on to more writing... we're almost done writing our high frequency words, and will soon move on to writing personal narratives (OUR OWN STORIES)!! In math we talked about meeting rules, and how meeting rules can help everyone enjoy being together to talk about math! Students had some great ideas about listening, and cooperating so everyone feels involved and important! We also finished our glyphs today and can't wait to share them with you at Open House! Very impressive.... clearly Mrs. Wells and all her art projects in first grade have paid off, because our glyphs are AWESOME! We also talked about jobs in our classroom, and how to take proper care of our tools, our space, and each other... more on that tomorrow. Hoping the weather allows us some outside time tomorrow, because we'll need it! Thursday is a library day with Ms. Kidder. See you all then!

Terrific Tuesday!!

Greetings Friends! No pictures tonight as I'm still dealing with some technical difficulties (but Best Buy promises I'll be ready in 5-7 days... let's hope they mean it!) What a great day back after a long weekend with family and friends! We had our first all school sing in Cafe Sun this morning! What a way to start the day!! We followed with our own morning meeting and a new "koosh" greeting and a new game (familiar to some) "say your name"! Well done second graders! We wrote more words in writing workshop (high frequency words, to be exact), so Ms. Worthley can learn about words we know, and words we're still learning! We reviewed "quiet reading" the second grade way and followed with 10 "pin-drop-quiet" minutes of just that! I was so pleased to learn that many friend know the difference between quiet reading, and quiet "looking at a book". BIG DIFFERENCE! We will learn how to make good book choices, though today, our author under study, Marc Brown provided many great second grade book choices with our Arthur books! We also did math "warm-up" (5 uninterrupted minutes of math fact practice) and had another math meeting! Today's magic number.... 6! We reviewed the jobs of math meeting helper (the MOST super-awesome second grade job) including calendar, days in school, money, and weather graph!! We ended our day with Ms. Gebo in PE. We briefly talked about classroom rules (rules... do we need them, what are they good for, how do rules help us)?
Tomorrow... classroom jobs, new energizers ("candy"... thanks James), classroom rules, and HOMEWORK! Booyah! It's good to be in second grade!
PE tomorrow, sneakers please.

Day One... And Done!!

Wow second grade friends... not sure I've ever seen a first day of school run so smoothly!! You are one of the most helpful, caring, thoughtful group of friends I think I've ever met! We had a very busy day learning new routines, how we care for our class, each other, and our learning tools! Tomorrow we will learn even more! I know I promised I'd have your pictures on the blog tonight, but I've had some technical difficulties at home that I was unable to fix on my own. I promise, I will still get our "first day" pictures on our blog... just not tonight (BOO!)! Sorry friends. I can't wait to see you all tomorrow for day 2! Feels pretty good to be in second grade already!

On Your Mark... Get Set ...

Go Time!! Greetings and welcome to all our new second grade friends! I'm so glad I got to visit with Jake and James before school started! How do we look boys? I can't wait to meet you all and share our new classroom with you! Ms. Cialek and I have made some minor changes hoping to make our work space flow easily and help everyone do their best work in second grade! Check out some new pictures of where you'll check in for lunch, get your mail, sit at desks, and V.I.P!!! More on that later! Second grade is full of exciting challenges and a place where students move toward becoming self-governed, independent learners! When you arrive, Ms. Worthley, or Ms. Cialek may greet you, and show you to your cubby spot (some are in our room, and some are next door). Can't wait to see you! The only thing missing is YOU!! Get to bed early Wednesday, have a good breakfast, and we'll see you bright and early Thursday morning!