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.