Happy Fall!!

The students are SO excited about entering our Fall season! Fall brings activities and units about pumpkins,leaves, acorns, owls, and bats! In October we will  be starting a research project on Bats.....along with the help of Mrs. Landsman, our Librarian. In this project we will combine research and technology to produce our end product. Look for more info to be coming home soon!

The students continue to be extremely enthused about our Daily 5. We are up to 'Read to Self ' for 25 minutes [!!], 'Work on Writing' for 15 minutes, and 'Read to Someone' for 15 minutes. They are SO proud of their hard work!! When we stop our 'Work on Writing' section, the children are so very excited to share what they've written! It's amazing! We've heard some terrific stories. We continue to work on our stamina everyday in all areas [the goal is to be able to reach 20-25 min.in each area.] We will soon be starting 'Word Work".

This week we welcomed 2 SNHU education students who will be working with us for the semester for about 45 min. each week. We will also be having another student join us for a longer period once a week.She will be working with students as needed.The class loves having 'College Kids' in our classroom!

Please take a moment to become a follower of our classroom blog! It's my hope that I will have some 'guest bloggers' soon [aka students!]. Come back soon - pictures will soon be posted!!

Our First Week!

Our first week of school went fantastic..............we have a wonderful group of "Stupendous Second Graders"!!

We officially began to work on the "Daily 5" last week. This is a different approach to the "workshop" or "center" part of our daily Literacy block. There are 5 components, and we are learning them slowly, one by one. This week we began to practice 'Read to Self". We have been working on our 'stamina' [ask your child to tell you what this means!] and have reached 11 minutes of quiet, independent, reading. The students are SO proud of this, and very anxious to make it even more! TOur first week of school went fantastic..............we have a wonderful group of "Stupendous Second Graders"!!

We officially began to work on the "Daily 5" last week. This is a different approach to the "workshop" or "center" part of our daily Literacy block. There are 5 components, and we are learning them slowly, one by one. This week we began to practice 'Read to Self". We have been working on
hey are hoping to get to 20 min. this next week - which I'm sure they can! .We will be learning 'How to Pick a Good Fit Book' this week, which will help us even more to become successful independent readers. Towards the end of the week we will  begin our next part - 'Work on Writing'.

Please note that this week we will begin Spelling Tests! Your child will bring home the words in their 'Spelling Notebook', along with a list of practice activities to do in the notebook all week. The notebook should come back to school on Friday, which will be Test day. The students are so excited for Homework......if they only knew!!

If anyone has any large decorator pillows, or bean bag chairs, that you do not use, we would love to have them for our 'Read to Self' time! We like to get nice and comfy during our Reading time!

A HUGE Thank You to all who sent in classroom supplies!  Another HUGE Thank You goes to Kathy Tilton for buying our class a new classroom Globe [the old one was broken during summer cleaning] All  items will be put to great use - you are the BEST!!

Look for pictures to be posted later this week!  :-)

Welcome to Second Grade!!

I hope you all had a great summer! I had a busy, exciting summer break traveling over to Europe [Italy, Greece, and France]. The students will be hearing about my travels all year as I share some pictures, experiences, and language with them.

It's been so fantastic starting the year off with a group of second graders that I am familiar with. We have 5 students new to our class, and they fit right in with our group of  'Stupendous Second Graders'!!

Next week we will begin our more formalized instruction. Our Reading will be much like last year - with a focus on fluency, comprehension, and independance. Writing this year will be more of a focus, as we strive to become more independent learners and thinkers.In Math we with expand on much of what was learned in First Grade - with a continued focus on Math Facts! Spelling Tests will not start for another week or so, as will our other Homework.

I'm very happy to welcome Ms. Marcia back to our classroom this year. Ms. Marcia is our foster Grandmother who helps us out in class as needed. She comes every day from 9-2, and is a huge help to us all!

I will post again soon and add some classroom pictures.Please feel free to leave a comment - and become a follower!

What we've been up to in May!

Wow.........this has been such a busy month for us! Between learning about bees, tadpoles, and plants there hasn't been a moment to spare. Needless to say, we are becoming quite the experts in all these subjects! We have planted sunflower and pumpkin seeds, and are recording there growth in our plant journals. We are also keeping track of our tadpoles in our tadpole to frog journals ( that has been very slow going!).

Of course along with all of this we have been doing lots of reading and writing as well.We've done a mini unit on Jack and the Beanstalk, and will soon do one with the Tooth Fairy. In both of these "mini units" we read a variety of books then compare and contrast them.The students then do a writing activity, and possibly an Art or even Math project to go along with it.We have fun,while also doing lots of learning!(my favorite way to teach!)

I do have pictures of some of our projects and activities to post, but unfortunately this will have to wait for another week or so due to camera accessory problems!

Please check back soon for more posts and photos!!

St. Patrick's Day Festivities!

We had a great time last week getting into the "Irish Spirit"! First off, we were visited by "Lucky the Leprechaun"! He magically changed cups that we had decorated into Small Leprechaun hats! He also left us an activity to do, and a few pieces of "gold" [candy that is!] We read about Leprechauns, and wrote about how to catch one, and what we would do with one if we DID catch one...............wonderful ideas were hatched by my smarties! We did measuring activities using shamrocks, and also graphed our Lucky Charms. Our data told us that the 'shooting stars' were the shape most used in the cereal! All in all, a very busy, fun, day integrating learning into our celebration! Look for pictures to be posted soon............


Next week we will begin having our official Spelling Tests. These will be every Friday, unless notified. We will work with these words all week in class, but your child will also be expected to practice them at home. I will be sending home a "Tic-Tac-Toe" for Spelling words that has some great practice ideas!
Hopefully everyone has been practicing their math facts at home as well. We practice them daily during our Math Workshop time, but practice at home is also essential.


Thanks so much for all that you do at home with your child........it helps SO much!


Please check back soon for more updates and photos!!

Fun with Dr. Suess !!

We had a great time celebrating......here are just a few of the activities we did!!