Heads or Tails and Yuni's Great Meeting!!

Wow! Yuni might have hosted one of the best morning meetings EVER!! The handshake greeting followed Rockin' Robin (great choice), and the clothespin game was awesome! In writing workshop we used our spelling words to "categorize" words, and talked about antonyms (opposites)! We talked about how "posters" are another special kind of writing, and what makes a good poster. We proofread a poster, made corrections, and even tried making our own poster (about the next all school sing... very exciting)! After quiet reading, we were ready for work board. We had a very productive day in literacy centers, writing mini-books, sorting words in ABC order, reading Scholastic News, and choosing our favorite character from Marc Brown stories! Well done second graders! And can we talk about "great work" for a moment. Tia's spooky story from our writing center was AMAZING! Tia... who knew??? This young writer turned a spooky story into one of the funniest stories we've ever, EVER read by a second grade author! Way to "GO FOR IT"! Well done Tia, that's what great writers do! Great work!
In math we learned a new game called "heads or tails" where we counted dimes and pennies (can you say base-10... money style?)! Great practice not only in counting money, but in organizing our work space/counting coins, turn taking, and cooperative learning! Well done friends! Our magic number today was 7, and WOW... we made 7 in OH SO MANY WAYS!!! Outstanding friends! Truly impressive!
Tomorrow... homework due, computers in the morning, see you then!

Makayla's Meeting and Danny's VIP!!!

Greetings All! Another busy day starting with equation review! We went over yesterday's question: if 6 plus (triangle) equals 6 plus (hexagon)... what do we know about triangle and hexagon? Very thoughtful question. We visualized the question and many came to an understanding that triangle and hexagon have to be the same! Tricky!
Makayla hosted her first morning meeting, and we all agreed on one thing. She should have another meeting as we can do much better at following her lead and remembering our meeting rules. While having a lot to say is usually a good thing, If we all say whatever pops in our head during a meeting, well, we're not really having a meeting. Makayla was incredibly understanding, and we will give her another opportunity on Tuesday so we can "fix it up" with her and help her have the best meeting ever! That's what good friends do! Support each other, especially when they have a very important job leading the class! Writing workshop was busy with letters and writing to our SES PTO! We talked about Open House, and thought about all the wonderful enrichment opportunities PTO brings to our school, and decided to thank them directly! Very thoughtful letters, friends, and clearly Henry the Juggler was a huge hit!! Not to mention a tasty free delicious potato dinner for EVERYONE who came! WOW!
In math we reviewed equations with unifix cubes and actually built number sentences, while our partner wrote the equation! So fun, concrete, hands-on learning to reinforce all our work with equations! Way to go Juan and Owen, you're equations were truly amazing!!
Brian, our Frontier student athlete came for another visit and informed us that the Red Hawks won their game last Friday!!! Go Brian! He helped us appreciate different "points of view" when it comes to Christopher Columbus. Ms. Worthley read Jane Yolen's version of Columbus's story, and Brian read Jean Marzollo's version of his story. We noticed that the stories were about the same person and historical events, but with clearly two different points of view. Interesting. Even the illustrations conveyed different emotion and feeling! Well done second grade! We ended our afternoon with Danny's VIP! What a full, exciting life Danny has! Great job on the survey Danny! You make one good lookin' Buzz Lightyear!
Have a wonderful fall weekend with family and friends everyone! See you bright and early Tuesday morning!

Paragraphs, Proofreading, and Equations!!

Greetings Friends!! To all who came to Open House... THANK YOU!! How nice it was to meet you all and put names and faces together! A special thanks to our amazing SES PTO for a great free tasty seasonal dinner, and for Henry the Juggler to entertain students while parents listened to teacher's presenta- tions! Our PTO is the BEST!!
So, Thursday! We began our day with a new greeting, the "Did you know..." greeting and practiced posing questions as part of our greeting! We rocked out to "Rockin' Robin" and played the clothespin game! Way to start the day second graders! In writing workshop we worked on proof- reading and paragraph writing (with our spelling words). I must say, last week we learned this for the first time, and today, we were professional paragraph writers!! WOW! Great work Kaela and Makayla.... and EVERYONE! Very impressive! We started day 2 of our first work board, and reading groups met with Ms. Worthley. I must say, work board was much more quiet and productive today! Well done 2W! In math we reviewed what we know about equations and the equals sign. Then we really ROCKED some amazing equations paying close attention to the equals sign. Remember, equals simply means everything on the left side, and everything on the right side of the equals sign has to be the same. Simple... right... well, we put this to the test today, and had a lot of fun too! Our new October author under study is Leo Lionni, and today we read two of his stories, Alexander and the Wind Up Mouse, and Swimmy. Wow... Leo sure does like to write stories with reptiles, fish and little furry creatures (usually with a heartwarming theme, love, friendship, and "be unique", be yourself)! We loved Marc Brown, but we sure do love Leo Lionni so far too!! We ended the day with picture day, and YES... second grade had to go ALL DAY before getting our pictures taken, and , boy, did we LOOK GOOD!! Our 10 minute afternoon break was full of sunshine and fresh air outside! And... one great soccer game! Lola, Brady, Julienne, and Ms. Worthley took on Jake, Danny P., Danny G., Joe and Tia. What a game! Best 10 minutes of soccer I've had in a long time! After our afternoon break, we came back to class for some interesting conversation about Mr. Christopher Columbus. Jake lead one rousing game of Zelda to end our day, way to go Jake! Great day friends, loved every minute! Tomorrow: Homework and computers!

Leo Leonni, Weekend Stories, and Julienne's Math Meeting!

Well, today, was a very busy, chatty, interesting day,, no doubt about it! We're still learning new routines and how to do things "the second grade way", and boy, does that take a lot of energy and concentration. Never the less, we stayed the course, and began with handwriting followed by art. In our morning meeting we used our rhythm thick to greet each other, and sang One Bottle Of Pop! We watched as Ms. Worthley modeled what writers do during writing workshop (weekend journals). We reviewed how to use the word wall to help with our writing, and reviewed how to stretch out words, listening for the sounds) the way good writers do! NO WORD is too big, or too tricky to put in your story if you can stretch it out, and listen for the sounds!! Zenani bravely shared her writing after, at our author's share (though just about everyone was willing to share, and will have their turn soon, too). We read "A Color Of His Own" by our new author under study, Leo Leonni and loved it! We will soon make text to text connections after reading a few more of his wonderful stories and even compare his style with what we've already learned about Marc Brown's style!
In math Julienne ran his first math meeting! GREAT job Julienne, and what an incredible weather question you posed! We had to use our bar graph to look back and reflect on September weather! Wow! I couldn't have crafted a better question myself! We finished illustrating our Doubles Riddle Book, and can't wait to share our great work with you tomorrow night at Open House! PTO will host dinner for everyone! Baked potato with lots of great "fix-ins"!! After dinner (at 5:00) parents are invited to join teachers in the classrooms (at 6:00) and students are welcome to join in the gym with some special treats PTO has planned. So, yah, I'm just gonna take a minute and say OUR PTO ROCKS!! Thanks to all the parents and helpers who help make this one of many fabulous evenings for everyone in our school community! Tomorrow night, 5:00 dinner, 6:00 presentations in classrooms for parents! See you then! Tomorrow is PE, sneakers please!