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!!

We've Been Suess-i-fied!!!!

We've had a great time this week celebrating Dr. Suess' Birthday! We've read many of his books, written rhyming words, created our own "Suess Creatures", drawn Cat in the Hat self portraits, tasted Green Eggs and Ham [and graphed how we felt about them], graphed colored Gold Fish crackers [after reading 'One Fish, Two Fish']. We also made Lorax moustaches and took a class photo. What a fun week....combining Literacy, Math, and Art!


Next week we will move on to learn everything the St. Patrick's Day way.............check back next week for an update!!

Happy Winter Vacation!

We've worked hard this week learning about fact families, letter writing, and Presidents Washington and Lincoln...........my firsties have become very knowledgeable about the presidents!

Wishing you all a fun and enjoyable week off with your child!

Valentine's Day Excitement!!!

We had a fun filled Valentine's Day! The student came in with loads of energy, and left with even more......and we didn't even have any sugar! We passed out our Valentine's this morning, then graphed them according to topic [animal, superhero, cartoon,etc.] We discussed our data, and my smarties came up with some excellent findings! This afternoon we decorated our 'Kindness Hearts', then passed out our comments to each other. Everyone was so excited to read all the kind thoughts! Lastly I passed out all the goodie bag items [again, thank you all SO much !] We had a "love"-ly day!! The pictures below show our classroom amongst all the decorating........it was a sea of red and pink in here!

Happy Valentine's Day !!  :-)

!00 Day - Part 2 !!

Here are a few pictures of our 100 Day Bulletin Board.........pictures of how the students think they will look when they're 100 years old. They were SO adorable!!

100 Day Fun!!

We had a FABULOUS 100 day!! We were greeted at our door announcing that we were now "100 Day Smarter!" We made 100 day necklaces, and 100 day headbands, along with MANY other 100 day activities! When asked what they liked best about 100 day, the answer was a unanimous 'EVERYTHING"!!!

Working hard this week!

Add caption

Happy February.....GO PATS!!

I will make this a quick post since it is Superbowl Sunday! Can you believe that it is already February??

We had a lot of fun this week watching a LIVE streaming video of a Black Bear in her den [up in No.Maine]with 2 little cubs! Needless to say, we will be doing some quick research about black bears.....very fascinating to hear them grunting and squeeling. The babies are SO cute! It's become quite the activity in our classroom during free time!

I hope you have been able to practice with the flash cards that were sent home this past week. Soon a Math log will be sent home as well, with more direction on how and what to work on. So far we have been working with adding and subtracting 1's and 2's. We are also working on Math stories - which are fun to watch the students figure out - I love to see the different thought patterns!

Friday is our 100th day of school! We will be doing all sorts of activities with the number 100. I am looking forward to figuring out what is in all those 100 Day Bottles! Hopefully I will be able to post some pictures too!

I'll post more soon........off to watch the game!

What we were up to last week!

This past week we were busy taking our DIBELS, and  NWEA testing! Quite a lot for first graders to do all in one week, but we did it!! I think the students loved the NWEA test because it was all on the computer....a nice change of pace. We also had our first 'mini' spelling test, and I'm proud to say that almost everyone got 100% !! They students were so cute all week, coming in to me and proudly stating that they knew how to spell 'because' !! Exactly my reason for having the test!! [I will post next weeks list tomorrow as I left the word list at school - oops!]


We were also busy last week learning about penguins. Do you know how long the father Emperor Penguin goes without food while holding his babies' egg on his feet? Do you know how tall an Emperor Penguin is? Ask your child because they do!! We also completed an adorable penguin art project and  will continue our study this week!


In math we continue to become experts on reading and writing numbers by their place value. We've been playing games, and doing math puzzles. In reading we continue to learn new vocabulary words, work on our fluency, and to practice all of our long vowel sounds. In writing we have begun focusing on using adjectives [describing words] to make our sentences "Super" !


Our new classroom focus has become "Fancy Nancy Words"!! Fancy Nancy is a character in a series of children's books that we have been reading. Fancy Nancy likes to use "fancy " words when she talks. We have been having lots of fun learning other ways to say 'regular' words. We have started a bulletin board with all of our "Fancy" words  on it. What a fun way to enhance our writing!! Our favorite words so far have been 'crestfallen' for disappointed [Izzy's favorite!], 'posh' for fancy, and 'aroma' for smell [Sean's favorite!]. We've been having fun making our vocabulary more 'posh'!!


As we roll into February we have a lot to look forward to..................Groundhog Day, 100 Day, Valentine's Day, and President's Day. And yes, we will be learning about them all! Information on Valentine's Day and 100 Day will soon be sent home, so be on the look out for it! 


Thank you for visiting our classroom blog......please check back again soon!

What we've been up to this week!

This week we have been practicing our place value stategies. We've been placing objects into groups of tens and ones with partners during Math Workshop time. The students LOVE Math Workshop!! I hope to post some pictures soon!


We also made "Math Number Story" snowmen, and wrote about what we think snowmen might do at night. One of my cuties wrote "I think he drinks cold chocolate", and another wrote "I think he has a big party all night long". SO cute!


In Reading we continue to learn new vocabulary words, and new long vowel spellings. Remember that we will start having "mini" spelling tests this week. These will be frequently used words that the students often misspell. We also have our "Reading Workshop" almost daily as well. During this time your child may be working on ABC order, vowel sorting, writing, reading to a partner, spelling, or "writing the room"[ask your child what this is -- it's a favorite activity!]


This next week we will begin to learn about penguins. Always a favorite with the First Graders!


Thanks for checking in to read our blog. Be sure to check back often!!

Welcome

Welcome to our class website.  Here you can find out about the lastest news in our classroom. I hope to share some helpful homework tips as well as give highlight pictures of our days! I look forward to sharing with you and your child.
     
           Mrs. Young