Meetings, Time, and A New Student!!

Greetings Friends! Terrific Tuesday today! Our busy morning was full of literacy center work, reading groups, and independently catching up on our work board jobs. Our focus (while working independently) has been on making good book choices (what makes a good book choice), and writing complete sentences when responding to questions in writing!! Georga had a very busy day as she was both the morning meeting helper as well as the math meeting helper! Well done Georia! Busy meeting day for you, and what a great group of friends you had to work with today! Everyone participated in a very respectful, thoughtful way! Now THAT'S the way we like it!! In math we divided into two groups to continue our skills practice with telling time to the minute using important vocabulary (quarter to, quarter past, half past). Some friends played Quizmo! A board game reading digital times and matching the analog clock faces... while others worked on computers to hone their skills! We sorted our words taking care to listen to the long and short sounds our word study pattern (oo) makes. We also used dictionaries again, and looked at how one word can have more than one meaning! And, the BIG NEWS today... we will be joined by a new student, B.G.! We've already met B.G. and know what an awesome kid he is and what a wonderful addition to 2W he will make! We can't wait until he becomes a "full timer" in our class and wrote some very thoughtful letters in writing workshop today to make him feel welcome! Well done friends! We're only 2 days away from the 100th day of school (YIPPEE, and ALREADY??). We have some fun festive ways to support our learning on Thursday to celebrate 100!

V.I.P. Exclusive!! Abby Rocks!

Another great Friday made even better with some sunshine and one beautiful day! And if that wasn't good enough, it was our first day of V.I.P... Today's Very Important Person was Abby! And she rocked it! We learned about her musical interests, family trips, dogs and doggie competitions, horse riding, and great pictures that chronicle the life and times of Abby! Very cool. You could have heard a pin drop! Abby's (predictable) enthusiasm and expertise was compelling and entertaining... WONDERFUL might be an understatement! Her presentation was full of information, and thoughtful moments of inquiry from a very curious audience of second graders! Way to go Abby, and thank you for sharing your awesomeness!! In math we continued to practice telling time to the minute and learned some new words: quarter past, half past, and quarter to. YIKES! Quarter after is the same as 15 minutes after, and half past means 30 minutes past the hour??? So much language and numbers and clock hands to keep track of! With practice comes "perfect"! And practice we will continue as we take what we know about minutes, hours, clock hands and telling time to the next level! Marcus lead some great math meetings all week, and even started keeping track of the weather on the bar graphs, along with the pictographs! Very ambitious Marcus! Running math meetings all week is a lot of responsibility and you lead each and every meeting with precision! Well done! Happy weekend everyone! It's been a wacky weather week but full of fun and learning!

It's About Time!

Greetings Friends! Lots to catch up on in 2W! We've had a great week of math meetings lead by Marcus! Some equally great morning meetings lead by Abby and Deter, just to name a few! The new "presidential" work board is almost complete and catch up day is upon us! Students have worked independently on literacy jobs while readers meet in reading groups with teachers! Learning about Presidents Washington, Lincoln, and Obama while reading poems, working on puzzles and math jobs make good practice during a busy morning of reading groups! In math we've stretched our learning about measuring time to include time to the minute. Using our clocks to move the minute and hour hands on the clock help us recognize how important they both are, and what they represent when reading a clock! We'll continue to practice reading clocks, telling time, and thinking about how hands move on a clock! In writing we've continued our work on revising and editing our writing to make it better! Editing our writing is a very important skill to learn to make our stories ready for readers! We've also learned how to "show" instead of "tell" in our stories. While many stories will "tell" the reader what's happening, a truly wonderful story will "show" the reader what a story feels like, looks like, smells like. In spelling we've learned a lot about base words and have added endings to show plural, past tense and present tense (participle). Learning how words are structured help us see patterns in words and helps us become better spellers in our writing! The weather has been crazy, but we live in New England, so we adapted well like pros! Frigid, below zero temperatures to balmy rainy fog, to sunny skies followed by... snow? And that was just one day! Holy moly! No matter what the weather, the climate in 2W has been busy and full of fun and learning! Stay tuned!

Time Begins, and Writing and Revising!

Greetings Friends! Another bitter cold, chilly, frigid day today! That didn't stop recess, though! While we missed the great outdoors, there was plenty of puzzles, Uno, and snap cube creations for everyone!! We started with a brand new "presidential inspired" work board after quiet reading this morning! Poems, buddy reading, scholastic news, and classroom library jobs all inspired by Presidents Washington, Lincoln, and even Obama! In math we introduced a new unit telling time by reviewing parts of a clock and time to the hour and half hour. We will continue to stretch and practice what we learned in double digit addition and subtraction, but will also be learning about time and the importance behind knowing how to tell time. More to come! In writing workshop yesterday we worked on rereading, editing and revising! Today we continued our learning by examining some second grade writing written by real live 8 year old writers! We saw how they added detail to both text and illustrations with sensory words, dialogue, and subtle little "extra's" to their pictures! Next, we talked about how writers write about "what they know" and thought about our unique experiences. Living a writers life means taking those experiences and creating a story! Many writers went back to previous stories and added even MORE detail, action, characters and events to make their stories even better (well done Marcus)! Marcus shared his dragon story and showed everyone how your story can take an unexpected twist and send the reader into surprise!! We ended the day with PE with Ms. Gebo. Stay tuned for V.I.P. in 2W... a new way to highlight and learn even more about all our unique wonderful friends in 2W!!

2013!!! Blogging is BACK!!

Howdy Friends! Took a little blogging break... between holidays, oral surgery and blah blah blah... we're finally back! Let's get caught up on the learning and musings that make 2W!! First, we have a new fish! A real blue finned beta cutie we've decided to name Pebbles! There was voting and counting, and some very democratic fish naming protocol, and Pebbles it is (though Rocky was a close second)! We've been stretching our learning in place value and decomposing/expanding numbers into double digit addition and subtraction! YES indeed, we said double digit addition, with regrouping and carrying! Wow! Abby also lead a great math meeting and we've enjoyed many morning meetings lead by Alea, Madelene, and Trey, just to name a few! All full of music, games, messages, and greetings! We're learning about plurals and how to change a word to show "more than one" by adding s, or es. Of course, there's as many exceptions to the rule as there are actual plural nouns in the English language, or at least it feels like there are, but we're determined to know our plural nouns by the end of this week! In writing workshop we've practiced editing and revising our writing. Time and careful rereading go into crafting every piece of writing, and we are learning all the tricks of the trade!! In reading groups we've worked with a variety of genres to include historical fiction, folk and fairy tales, and nonfiction, research based reading (sharks, bats, marine mammals, just to name a few). As you can see, 2W is a busy, joyful place, and we can't wait to get our new year off and running! Stay tuned... our blog is back! Tomorrow is Thursday... PE (sneakers please) and library books!