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!

The First Day of School!

We had an awesome first day of school together! All of the students came in ready to listen and learn. We went over a lot of things like how to play at recess, how to use the bathroom correctly and how to walk in the hallways. We also did a lot of learning about the classroom. We did this by playing with math manipulates and then practicing how to clean up and get ready to learn again quickly. Here MB, HR and BC are showing me they can work on their own and with others in an appropriate way.

Later in the day, we got to learn how some tools work on our Promethean Board. We learned how to drag objects, color in shapes and use the pen tool to circle and write on the board.

We also took our pictures outside and wrote in our journals about our first day of school. Our pictures turned out great! Here are a few of the students in Room 12.

Last but not least, we had a birthday to celebrate! KB turned 7 today and we had cupcakes and juice to celebrate the big event. Here she is taking the first birthday bite.

All in all, the first day of school was great and the time flew by! If your student has not turned in their blog permission slip yet, be sure to send it back so that I can post some pictures of them! Stay tuned for more happenings in Room 12!

Grandparent's Day

On Friday, May 29th, we invited our grandparents and parents into our classroom. We wanted to share with them some of the things we have been working on as well as introduce and share our families with each other. To get ready for our grandparents and parents to come in, we practiced giving our African animal power point presentations to Mrs. Ellis's 2nd grade class. Her students walked around the laptops and chose different animal reports to listen to. Both classes did a wonderful job - those that presented as well as those that listened and asked questions!

When it was time for our grandparents to meet us in the cafeteria, the students were hardly controllable they were so excited! It was really neat to walk in and see all the families that turned out in support of this day for our 2nd grade classrooms.

After lunch and recess, we all headed into the classroom where the students began to interview their grandparents and parents. The students also had to choose one question and answer with the class when they introduced their grandparent or parent. The answers were so interesting!
I love all the memories that people share!

After introductions, we set to work creating 2 different class books. The students had to write and draw why grandparents are special and grandparent/parents had to write and draw why grandchildren are special. It was fun to see all the different drawings - we had quite a few artists with us. Everyone agreed though - grandchildren are very, very special.

When we finished up with that project, I shared some of the technology that we use in our room as well as explained about our Africa unit. I then went on to share how we created our power point presentations and how much work and effort the students put into them. Then I turned it over to the students and they shared their animal reports and answered any questions that their grandparents might have had. After we had all shared, I did end our activities a little earlier than planned due to the heat. You should have felt how hot my classroom was! WOW! Even though we ended a few minutes early, we all still had a great time and I just want to say "Thank You!" to all who could join us! Your children and grandchildren know how much they are loved and it was great to meet and visit with all of you!

Getting caught up!

We have been doing so many neat things that I haven't had the chance to blog about that I am going to do a quick recap of our last week or so.
First, we have discussed Kente cloth and how some tribes in Africa make them. Then we gave a try at weaving ourselves.






Then we decided to turn our Kente cloths into African animals. The students were given graph paper and told to design with squares, any African animal they wanted. I was pleasantly surprised at how creative and accurate they could make their animals to be. We had enough Kente cloths made for two animals.




We had the privilege of having two more guest speakers come into our room and speak with us about their trips to Africa. They even wore their Kente cloths for us. This is Mr. Rudy and Mr. Bill and they told us stories and shared some amazing pictures of the people, places and animals of Africa.
One of the most exciting things that has happened is that we have been able to borrow one of the ESD's roving sets of laptops to use in our classroom. Each student has a laptop on their desk and we are having a blast using them. One of the main things we have been doing is research for our African animal report. Each student had to choose one animal that they don't know very much about and then find our different things about their animal like habitat, diet, lifespan, enemies and 3 things that are unique to their animal.

They could use books as well as their computers.

They loved doing this so much that they wanted to work on their reports during recess!

One of my favorite projects of this African unit has been the making of our masks. I gave only basic directions - their masks had to have 2 eyes, a mouth and a nose. Those were my only directions and then I just put out materials for them to use. They did some pretty awesome things. I loved the creativity!

I will be posting about our power point presentations and Grandparent's Day later this week!

Jewelery - African style

Jewelery is very important to some tribes in Africa and it can symbolize a lot of different things - wealth, family, marriage. One of our projects last week was to design and then create our own necklaces. We had 4 different shapes and sizes of noodles as well as 4 different colors. The students had to design first:


Then they had to go and "shop" for their beads.

The next step was to follow their design and string the necklace. This took longer than they expected it too especially when you drop your string and have to start all over. (This happened to more than one student!)

They all turned out very nice and the students were very excited about them. You would have thought we were having fun or something!