Stars, Fall and Veteran's Day

I feel like it should still be September! I am amazed as another week races by that we are going to be getting ready for Christmas before I know it. Where does the time go?

Every minute at school we are busy learning. I feel like I hardly have time to pick up the camera but I am working on it and I wanted to share a few pictures with you.

We have had two "Stars of the Week" since I lasted posted and both created very good posters and shared interesting information about themselves. Here is BC's:

And here is CT's:

We made time for art the other day and I had fun doing a new art project with the students. They turned out beautiful and we have received many compliments. Look at a few of our fall reflections:

Veteran's Day is always a day where we have good discussions and I always love to see how serious the children can be about important topics such as death and honor. We watched a short 10-minute video on Veteran's Day and then we read a few books. One of the books we read was called The Wall by Eve Bunting. A little boy and his Dad go to the Vietnam War Memorial and they look for the grandfather's name. The boy shares his thoughts throughout the book and they are honest and candid. A soldier is there and he is missing his legs, people are there crying, a boy his age is walking with his grandfather. The book is wonderful and I always have to fight back tears. When I finished reading the story, a neat thing happened. The children started clapping. They have never clapped at the end of a story before. This was the first serious book that we have read together and I think they felt the emotion of it and recognized how good of a book it was. Their clapping made me proud of them.

After that, we made Christmas and Holiday cards for soldiers in Iraq. Again, your children amazed me. Take a look:

This one says: Thank you for fighting for us. Be safe please.

What a special group of children!

Carnival!!!

Tuesday night was the Sherwood carnival and while my own two boys were home sick and couldn't come and enjoy the fun, I was able to take lots of pictures of my students who were able to!

At the carnival I saw a lot of faces painted like LR's.

GB won an amazing cake at the cake walk. He was so excited he raced out to find me so that I could come and see. Way to go GB!

I ran into JH and he showed me his cool face painting and then...

I saw SM with JH's twin bug on her cheek!

The potato bar looked very tasty and when I asked LR and RT how it was, they just shrugged and said shyly "good". Silly question Mrs. G.

I found KB digging in a treasure box.

JA showed me some of the prizes he had won.

I caught AL using his golf skills to win some prizes.

LT was choosing his prize when I came upon him and he was so busy playing other games that I never had a chance to catch up to him again. In the glimpses I had of him later in the night he had a huge smile on his face though so I am pretty sure he was enjoying himself.

I did go into the cake walk room and I must admit I stayed in there for a long time. It smelled heavenly in there. Like sugar and frosting - some of my favorite things. The cakes were amazing. The high school students made them and every single one was different and unique. Here are a few just to give you an idea:

There were 40 different cakes and I know that every single person who won one was very excited! I know that I would have been!

Officer Golter

Officer Golter stopped by our room today to visit with us. He is one of our pen pals and we write letters to him throughout the year. On his next visits he will bring in some of his SWAT gear and we will also have a chance to explore his police car. Cool stuff!

On this visit he shared with us the different things that he carries on him at all times. He explained how his bullet proof vest works as well as how officers are always safe and careful with their guns. He didn't show the students his gun but he did explain why officers carry one.
He also explained why he had two different pairs of handcuffs and why they were different sizes.


On the board Officer Golter showed us how a taser works when it is fired and also how it works with just the electrical current.

It makes a loud noise when it is just the electrical current! That got their attention!

When he was done showing and explaining everything on him he answered questions. The students had great questions and they showed that they had been paying very good attention while he was talking. The students also had a chance to feel the handcuffs - how heavy they were and how big. They were very surprised at what a handcuff key looked like.

Thank you Officer Golter for coming and visiting us!

Math Games and Story Problems

This Friday was a game day during math. We played Race Your to .50 cents again.

Here GB is using the tangrams to figure out this pattern.

LB is coloring in his graph for the game Spin and Subtract.

WG and DS are showing what they know about clocks on the computers.

After we play games for a little while, we work on problem solving. We are in the middle of making our pumpkin story problems. First we created a background where pumpkins might be.
LT drew a cornfield at night.

SS drew the front of a house.

JG also liked the house idea.

The students did some very careful coloring. SM is making sure she uses 5 or more colors.

Here is CT's finished background.

Our next step was to create the pumpkins. However many pumpkins they create is how many will be in their story problem. Some students made 10 and some students made more than 20.

WG chose the cemetery as his background and then he carefully placed his pumpkins. We will be writing our problems next week and I can't wait to see what they come up with!

This and That

What do these silly kids have in common?

They (and GB) all received an award at our assembly last Friday. I had to choose 6 respectful students and boy was it hard to only choose 6. There were at least 10 more who could have also received the award. Always listening, following directions, and showing respect in many other ways - these 6 did an awesome job and I really appreciate it!


Speaking of respect, the 2nd grade classes also received two other awards. We received The Golden Book which is awarded by the Reading Teacher Mrs. Monkman to the grade level that showed the most Respectful behavior in her classroom. We also won The Golden Spoon which is given to the grade level that has the most Respectful Behavior in the cafeteria during lunch time. Way to go 2nd Grade!


BT is our Star of the Week and I am looking forward to having lunch with him tomorrow. I really enjoy getting to know the children better and I love the stories they tell me during our lunch times. In the classroom it can be hard for me to really sit down one-on-one with each child and just talk with them without interruptions. During our lunches though, we get a lot of time to just visit and chat.

Next month we will be starting our At-Home reading program. Mrs. Monkman runs the "I Love To Read" program and all you have to do is simply record the minutes that your child spends reading or spends having someone read to them. Each grade level has a different goal and for 2nd grade our goal is 360 minutes for the month. If your student reaches that goal they earn charms that go on their 2nd grade necklaces. These reading logs will be coming home with this week's newsletter. Get ready to read!

Reading Time

In second grade we love to read. We have reading first thing in the morning for an hour and 15 minutes and we are busy doing reading related activities the whole time.

We meet in small groups and work on skills and strategies that will make us good readers. We practice doing what good readers do: reread for understanding, read with expression, ask questions about our story, make predictions and connections with the book and many more things.

During our small groups we sometimes meet at the carpet and use our Smart Board to help us with our learning.

We often meet at the reading table in the corner.

We also silent read stories at the carpet.

Another thing we do is listen to stories at the listening center. Students can also record themselves reading a chosen story.

We use the computers in our classroom as well. The students go to a website that is full of stories that they can listen to and then take a comprehension test on afterwards. It is raz-kids.com.

We also work on writing skills. The children love to read each other's writing so a lot of them work on stories to share with the class as well as create books about their favorite things. I will show some of those in a later blog post.

Students also work on other reading related projects.

All in all we focus a lot on reading and I hope that your students are reading at home as well and developing that life-long love of books. A good foundation in reading will help them in all subjects. Have them read to themselves, to you, to brothers and sisters, grandparents and cousins. You can even have them read to a family pet! As long as they are reading they will become better readers!