Gallery Opening at Sunderland Public Library... WOW!!

What a full fun Friday friends! It all started with Kirsten's morning meeting, and I've never heard us sing This Land Is Your Land any better! WOW! After a bit of practice reading our poems we were ready for the event of the day... the second grade Gallery Opening at Sunderland's Public Library! Special thanks to head librarian, Sheila, who was ready and waiting for our arrival, along with parents, friends, and poetry lovers! We celebrated our learning and even sang a song for our invited guests ('cause that's what WE DO!!). After brief introductions, each amazing student read their poem and shared their original artwork.... very impressive! Our thoughtful audience added comments and questions, and even a compliment or two!! A feeling of accomplishment and pride filled the library today, amidst a background admiring fans and some beautiful artwork and writing (haiku, limerick, cinquain, and even acrostic style). Well done second graders! You've earned your weekend! See you Monday!

Wild Weather and TJ's Meeting!

Buenos dias amigos! TJ started our day with a great morning meeting! We sang Sandwiches, greeted friends "twirling-style" and played a rousing game of alibi. Well done TJ! Weather was on everyone's mind this morning, so our handwriting theme had to be: "weather words". Students then wrote some weather stories, some true, some from yesterday, and some from calmer memories of fishing on a beautiful sunny day! Our authors Maya and TJ shared their stories to a captive audience today. After practicing our spelling words (look, say, cover, write, check style) we went right to our poetry packets and became word detectives! Our detective-objective... find words that follow our rule: long vowel sounds! Charlie finished word study in style by reading one of Robert Frost's poems out loud, while we counted all the words with long vowel sounds! Well done Charlie! Friends also took some time to practice reading our poems as a way to prepare for our Gallery Opening tomorrow afternoon. We listened to "helpful, thoughtful" advice from listeners and built our confidence as readers! Well done second grade, I think we might just be ready for our very first gallery opening at the Sunderland Public Library! Remember, we begin at 1:00 so be on time and be ready for some surprises, as these young poets have some very special pieces to share! This afternoon we worked and stretched our learning with patterns and used number lines, number grids, and even number ladders to create and extend patterns with skip counting. Not as easy as it sounds, when the number pattern is add 1, subtract 5, add 1, subtract 5... Students had to really think about how the secret codes to each pattern! Tricky! Well done friends! Get a good night's sleep! Can't wait to hear our poems being read at the library tomorrow! Big day!! (Speaking of library... tomorrow is also our library day so please RETURN ALL SES LIBRARY BOOKS YOU MAY HAVE AT HOME)! Thanks! See you all tomorrow afternoon at the Sunderland Public Library at 1:00!

COTTONWOOD! Oh Yeah!!!

Thursday began with Mackenaie's wonderful morning meeting... hand holding twirling greeting, great song, and the "ZOOM!" game (by popular demand). Well done Mackenzie! We had a productive morning on work board while Ms. W. met with readers. This afternoon we learned a new energizer after Ethan's awesome math meeting... "double double this this, double double that that, double this, double that, double double this that!! What quick, agile learners you all are! FUN! We solved story problem this afternoon in math with POW, and showed our thinking using picture, words, numbers, and the answer!! Today we worked with subtraction problems, and remembered how important a clear, organized, accurate picture is when showing your thinking. Now while all that was going on, PTO was getting ready for the BIG EVENT OF TODAY! COTTONWOOD!! That's right, the band Cottonwood played live... at our school... while we were treated to delicious BBQ chicken, dogs, fresh veggies, home grown salads, watermelon, and snow cones!!!! OH MY, does it get any better than this?? Incredible live music, beautiful dancing smiling children, delicious BBQ, and sharing it with our whole Sunderland community??? Not sure it gets any better. Today, it was really all about the after school party! Great day friends! Fun Friday tomorrow!

Can You Say "Button Party" and More with Magnets!!

Howdy Friends! Tuesday started off with a rousing morning meeting hosted by Charlie! Well done Charlie! We stretched our learning and vocabulary with our magnet unit while watching a Unitedstreaming video. In writing workshop we put all that vocabulary to good use while writing "magnet facts". Writers shared some of their work and made even more connections! Charlie was our sharing friend today, and he wowed us with his coin collection and some rare pennies from the 1800's! Cool! In math today we worked with our 100's chart and noticed patterns while skip counting and paying close attention to place value!
You may have noticed our button jar is practically full! Not that you're surprised... after all, each and every button signifies an act of kindness, taking a risk, helping a friend, cooperative learning, or even an unsolicited positive comment (when you thought no one was noticing)! A lot of character is reflected in each and every button, and my guess, is that, our 2W button party is not far away!! Well done second graders!

Magnetic Monday!!

Greetings Friends! Another soggy Monday, but that didn't stop us from getting ready for a busy fun day (business as usual)! Lannashia started us off with an eye opening morning meeting! Chicken Lips song, koosh greeting, and clothespin game! Well done Lannashia. Right after that we integrated science and word study and began our magnet unit! We learned from Brainpop Jr. and generated an important (theme based) list of words we will all learn by Friday on magnets and magnetism! Writing in weekend journals felt comfortable and productive! Sharing personal narratives was wonderful, and many students shared their stories about the 5th Grade Play, baseball/softball games, and other important family/weekend events! In math we worked with our 100's board and recognized patterns and talked about place value! The highlight of our afternoon might have been the super-cute "Super-flex" readers theater we were invited to by our first grade neighbors. We learned (from them, yes, we, the second grade, learned from first graders...) the importance of having flexible thinking in social situations. We learned that you can even change the way you think/react by having positive thinking, and how being a "rock brain" (inflexible) never really works out for anyone! Well done first grade. And what a great audience second grade was! Such positive feedback, generous compliments, and tangible support for your first grade friends! So proud! Great day! Tomorrow, Tuesday, PE, sneakers please.

What A Show!!

OH MY!! What a show friends! Charlie Brown delivered! Our second grade birds were outstanding! Suppertime... amazing! Everyone in the show was awesome! How impressive that Ms. Lee (along with a posse of parents and friends) could pull off a show like this! Well done Sunderland, well done!

Fun Friday!!

What is that... that golden shiny orb glowing in the sky... could it actually be the SUN?? Holy cow, it DOES exist! Today Maya started our Friday with a great meeting and fun game of alibi! Well done detective Maya! Readers practiced fluency with our very own "Chickens" poem (inspired by Jack Prelutsky, of course). Reading together and out loud is a great way to work on expression and fluency, especially with poetry! Students thoughtfully read and reread the variety of poems they've been working on in our poetry unit. We finished editing our work and chose one final piece to publish. We illustrated each of our poems and will display our work in the Sunderland Public Library! Can't wait! Stay tuned for news about our gallery opening! Impressive second graders! Publishing poetry at the ripe old age of 7 and 8 years old! We ended our day with Peter's final math meeting and handed our "math meeting baton of brilliance" on to Ethan for next week! Looking forward to Saturday night and another wonderful performance by our 6th grade and many wonderful 2nd grade birds in "You're a Good Man Charlie Brown"!!! Have a great weekend friends!