Math and Mrs. Roberts

We have been working hard this week on math. While we have been reviewing things like single-digit addition, counting by 5's to 100 and the months of the year, we have also been studying some new things like rounding and fact families. Today we did a partner game with dice that had us practicing our fact family knowledge. Partner games are great because we can help each other out.

Mrs. Roberts, our school counselor, came by today for her first classroom lesson. She does guidance lessons every other Wednesday in our room and we love having her come in. Today she explained her role at Sherwood and she told the students a little about herself and her family. It turns out that her son Cooper is in our Pen Pal's class so we will be getting to know him more throughout the year!

Mrs. Roberts reviewed the school rules: Be Respectful, Be Responsible, and Be Safe.

Thank you Mrs. Roberts! Stay tuned for more happenings in Room 12!

On Thursday, the students had their first experience with "Bank". The students earn pennies each day for good behavior and every other week, we do "Bank" which is where they get to trade in their pennies for larger coins. I always have a student helper or two be the "Bankers" and they are in charge of helping the other students count and exchange their money. My first "Banker" was CT and he did a great job!

We shared our baby pictures with each other and told stories about the times when we were babies (or at least little). The stories were so cute and I wrote down the different things the students said so that it could go into our class book.

Thursday afternoon, we had our first assembly and it was a fairly short one. Look at how good we are sitting and paying attention!

Mrs. Roberts, our school counselor, and her leadership team got us grooving with some music to kick-off the assembly.

Before too long, the Round-Up and Happy Canyon Court came to visit us and introduce themselves as well as answer a few questions about themselves. The students were very interested!

Here are the covers of our first class books. We make these throughout the year and I will start to allow the students to take them home in January. That way we will have made close to enough for each student to bring one home to share.

Some excerpts from the baby book:

And here are some excerpts from the "When I Grow Up I Want To Be..." Book:

I have been having so much fun getting to know your children better! They are all so sweet and

funny - truly, teaching is the best job in the world!

Cowboys and Cowgirls

We have been doing a lot of things important like making our birthday train pictures:

and being lunch helpers in the cafeteria:

and learning about the Pendleton Round-Up and our community that we live in. On Friday we get to do art and I whipped out the paints and we got busy making some cowboys and cowgirls. First we drew them in pencil and then we traced our pencil lines with a black marker. Then came the fun part - the painting!

By today, the paint was all dry and we could begin to cut our cowpeople out and glue them onto our background piece that we also painted on Friday.

Once they were cut out we glued them onto our background piece and viola! They were done!
Look at these cowgirls and cowboys!

They turned out so good that we decided to hang them in the hallway for everyone to enjoy.

Last Friday we also drew our first "golden ticket" winners. Students can earn golden tickets throughout the day from all teachers and workers at the school as they display good behavior. They then turn them into a basket in the classroom and we draw for prizes on Fridays. Our first winners were SH, RT and JH.

Our first Star of the Week brought his poster back today to share with us and it looked awesome! All of the students wanted to touch it and read through it so once AL was done sharing, we hung it up so that everyone could enjoy it some more. Good job AL (and family!)!

Today we also did some journal writing about rodeos and what we know about them. The students have to do the writing first and then they may draw a picture. Here are a few examples:

After everyone had a chance to write and draw, I chose 5 names out of a cup and those people got to come up and share what they had done. We put their journals underneath the document camera and project it up onto the board so that everyone can see easily. RT went first.

AC went next and everyone pays careful attention to the author.

I hope everyone had a great 3-day weekend and I am so excited to see everyone's baby pictures tomorrow! I will let you know what we are doing with them after I get some good pictures of our activity!

Stay tuned for more happenings in Room 12!

Starting to feel like school!

This first week of school has been so much fun! I am so impressed by the wonderful behavior I am seeing from all of the children. We have been able to learn a lot about each other as well as learning what I expect from them as 2nd graders.

In 2nd grade we do a lot of fun stuff that incorporates reading and writing in almost every lesson. Something that we start on the second day of school is our 2nd grade scrapbook. We put at least one scrapbook page a month into our book as well as letters that we receive from our 2nd grade pen pals at McKay. The students keep these books in their desk and they love to look through them throughout the year. Here is GB with his first scrapbook page:

The first couple of weeks of school, we do a lot of assessing. I need to know where your children are at in the areas of reading, writing and math so that I know exactly what they need to be taught. Mrs. Frazier has been in our classroom this week and she has been sitting with students one-on-one to listen to them read 2nd grade sight words. We have to know 235 by the end of 2nd grade and I am impressed with how many your children know already!

Look at them hard at work! When I say it's work time - that's exactly what they do - work. They are all such good listeners and so eager to please. I tell you, teaching is the best job in the world with students like this!

We continue to use our Promethean board each day and yesterday we looked at the classroom blog together and I explained how to use it. We also took turns reading the entries as well as the comments some of you had written. Thank you - your comments become meaningful reading for the students and they love to read them again and again!

Stay tuned for more happenings in Room 12!