Headed for Christmas

It's been a while since our last post. We have been busy preparing for the holidays and working on some fun Thanksgiving creations. Our reading units have covered a couple of really good stories including Officer Buckle and Gloria and Head, Body, Legs. Both of these stories emphasized teamwork and collaboration between groups of people and individuals.

We've been working in Social Studies as we learned more about our founding fathers and Mayflower passengers. Some of the Native American stories were well received as we learned more about Squanto and his tribe members.

In math we have come back to symmetry and th things in our environment that are symmetrical. We are planning a tour of our building where we discover those things all around us. Another fun unit of math is coming up next week as we explore 3-D shapes and discuss volume. We are looking forward to completing another unit of science over the next few weeks as we approach Christmas.

Our class has also purchased a new "Flip" camera through a grant from digital wish and we hope to have some video on the blog soon.

Trick or Treat

Halloween is on the loose at White Hall Elementary. We had a great week with Halloween crafts and pumpkin studies. Our class read a great book called Farfallina and Marcel for our weekly language unit. We learned about friendship and wrote a letter to a friend describing our Halloween Costume. We studied bats in science and introduced plural possessive nouns. It was a tricky subject for second graders and we really started connecting the parts of a sentence.

In math we started a new unit discussing measurement and how we use it in the real world. Our week concluded with a great Halloween party with scary monster music and fun games. A great time was had by all as we kicked off the second quarter of our school year.

A Short Week at WHE

With the celebration of Columbus Day Monday and an SIP on a shortened Friday, WHE learners had an atypical short week. Our Language Arts Unit took us to coastal Australia as we learned about Harbor Seal Pups. We discovered many endangered animals as we took our LA unit one step further and discovered endangered species all around us. Our science unit coincided with this study as we learned how to "save a whale" if we ever come upon one in White Hall. (The class decided that it would be unlikely).

Our math unit took us deeper into money and time. We have been telling time to the 5 minute mark for some time and now we have started telling time to the exact minute. We are all surprised at how easy it came to us. The Promethean board has been indispensable as we use it in all facets of our day. With our new "egg" activotes we have been able to all participate in great math units with time and money. We look forward to developing our skills with this new technology.

FALL IS HERE!!!

Cool weather has hit the North Greene area and the class is breaking out the sweaters and long sleeves. We have completed our first unit in our language arts curriculum and started a new unit with a book called the "The Tiny Seed" by Eric Carle. We also completed unit 2 in math and made many new discoveries with addition and subtraction. The class is beginning to correlate these skills and anticipate a new unit where we discover some new skills including shortcuts in our addition and subtraction along with measuring skills.

We had a shortened week due to our regional teacher's institute. This bi-annual institute is held at Jerseyville High School and includes teachers from Macoupin, Greene, Calhoun and Jersey counties. It promises to be an interesting day. Next week is also shortened as we celebrate Columbus Day on Monday. We did a few Columbus related activities on our Promethean board this week.

Our class will receive our "ActiVotes" next week. This will add another dimension to our Promethean Board and will allow us to get immediate feedback from our students as we introduce new topics and teach 2nd grade skills. It's my intention to keep every student engaged as we develop as second graders. Our team has put together a list of skills that each student will understand at the end of the year and we push hard to ensure success for each student. If you're around WHE, come and see me for a complete "goal" list for our students.

HOMECOMING WEEK

WHE's second grade had another great week as we studied immigrants in our country and worked on a story called "My Name is Yoon". It was a great introduction to our differences and our similarities. We added some new "fact family" skills to our math repertoire. We've concluded our work on animals and their homes and culminated this unit with an internet study on reptiles and their habitat.

We celebrated North Greene's homecoming this Friday with a blue and white day and our annual homecoming parade - GO SPARTANS!!!

It's hard to believe that it's already October and we have just finished the first of our six units in language arts. This year is really flying by and our class has really picked up on all of our procedures and activities in second grade. I am really proud of our class and how well we're progressing. Hope to see you all at the football game.

Open House and Field Trip !!!

What a great week to be in second grade. We worked on a great unit in our language arts curriculum called "Meet Rosina". It deals with a deaf student attending a school for the deaf and hard of hearing in New Mexico. It introduced us to ways that we are all different. Many discussions and questions came up surrounding this topic.

We also started working with fact triangles and introduced some multiplication work. In science we continued our work with animals and their habitats. We learned all about the photographer Ansel Adams through our art volunteers, Mrs. Winters and Mrs. Painter.

On Wednesday we celebrated our school with our annual open house. Our class had a great turnout with 10 students and their parents attending. We had the chance to show off our skills with the Promethean Board and our progression in second grade.

Next week we'll begin a new guided reading format for the first hour of our day. Many students will travel to different second grade classrooms for this hour. Many students from other second grade classrooms will come to our room for an hour and we will begin working on some project-based learning activities that will include many of the interests of students. Much of what we will be doing during this time will be student led and driven and I will serve more as a facilitator than teacher. We hope to make the transition from "student" to "learner" and make real-world connections to our work.

Our week culminated with a fied trip to the Prairie Land Heritage Steam Show. We had a great time as we toured the grounds, visited the petting zoo, drove tractors, and rode the mini-steam show. A big thanks goes out to the North Greene FFA who held a very interesting petting zoo with many animals including the fainting goats.

Another Great Week

Our first progress reports went home this week and all of the students have been doing a great job. We've been using our new classroom technology as we learned some new skills in our mobile computer lab on Friday. We discovered how to use drop down boxes, safe searching techniques, saving settings and tabs. We hope to discover many more fun and safe internet techniques next week as we search natgeokids.com next week.

In Science we learned about animal habitats and repotted some of our turnips. Many students took their turnips home to repot there. We left our unit on community helpers and start a new Language Arts Unit based on the story "Meet Rosina".

In math, we completed our first unit and had a unit assessment. We learned a lot about number sense and hope to continue that with an exploration unit with fact triangles and angles.

Getting in the Swing of Things

We've completed our first three weeks of second grade and we are adapting quickly to the procedures of a new school year and a new classroom. Last week we read a great story called "Mr. Putter and Tabby Make Tea". It's a great story about friendship and became the impetus for many great discussions about friends and friendships.

The students worked hard creating friendship cards and developing lists about what it takes to be a real friend. We ended our week with a great trip to "Greene County Days" and were able to learn some interesting civil war facts from General Grant.

We also had a day of AimsWeb testing on Wednesday. This short three story test assesses our students fluency rates and gives us a great starting point to create language arts lessons that are differentiated for each student's needs. It's a great assessment tool that we will repeat later in the winter and again in the spring. These three short probes will allow us to chart the growth of each student as their reading skills progress.

Next week, we'll start a unit on public servants and focus on firefighters specifically. We'll also be discussing animals and their habitats in science. Our math will focus on number sense as we develop some base 10 skills and dig deeper into greater than/less than problems. We'll also tackle the thermometer as we introduce that skill later in the week.

FALL IS ON ITS WAY

We have completed our first two weeks of second grade at White Hall Elementary and the students are settling in to our daily routine. We have many procedures in place to keep us on track and learning throughout the day. We start every day with our morning routine that includes unpacking and unloading in specific areas and then straight to our vocabulary journals where we define and draw a graphic representation of a new word every day. Our vocabulary list comes from a group of words we have identified throughout all areas of our curriculum. Monday we focus on Language Arts, Tuesday is Math, Wednesday is Science, Thursday is Social Studies, and Friday is a mystery word from another area of our curriculum.

The class is preparing for our next Language Arts Unit. We will center week 3 around a story called "Mr. Putter and Tabby". All of the phonics, fluency, grammar and writing skills will focus on the details we find in this story. We've also introduced all of our math routines and hope to get down to some real skill building with a week of math activities that will include number grid work, <,>, and = skills, counting patterns and congruent naming. We have had a great time getting ready to build our math skills.

In Science we are eagerly watching our turnips grow and await replanting into bigger pots. We've been studying the growth cycle of our plants and have been making posters to delineate the seperate parts we might see in our turnips.

Our Promethean board has played a big part in our learning this week. We work with every subject area on our board and have been able to incorporate our language arts with some really fun "flip-chart" tools. The students have a great time using the board and being able to interact with this new technology.

WELCOME BACK !!!

Wow, It's great to be back for another great year in second grade. We are all looking forward to an exiting new adventure as we explore the world of learning through brand new eyes. We have had a great first week and have become reacquainted with both the school and each other. We have a few new faces and new roles at WHE.

I have found that the blog is a great way to communicate with parents and family of students in our class and vow to be faithful to weekly postings. I'll try to update everyone on new events and activities that we will be sharing in our second grade classroom and also share some pictures of our daily journey.

Our first week included an introduction to our new "behavior" plan. It's all about Spartan power as we incoporate our three school rules: Be Respectful, Be Responsible, and Be Safe. These are very "all-encompassing" and include some great incentives for following the rules. We did a lot of informal assessment this week as I listened to each student read and viewed some great writitng samples. We also started a sciece unit on plants this week and culminated part one of our study by planting some turnips that we'll transfer into bigger pots as they grow.

Along with 15 great new students in my class, we also ushered in our newest member, the Promethean board. It's an interactive white board that allows students to relate to technology in an all new way. One thing I've found out about our new technology initiative is just how much students already know about technology. It's great to hear a whole classroom of 7 and 8 year olds teaching me about everything from the itouch to the white board. I hope to incoporate the board in all aspects of learning.