September Learning
Here we will post photographs of our class hard at work, so you can have a glimpse of life in our classroom!
I will always add new photos to the top of the page so you don't have to hunt for them.
Click on an individual photo to enlarge it. You can then arrow through the photos to see the pictures in the album.
I will always add new photos to the top of the page so you don't have to hunt for them.
Click on an individual photo to enlarge it. You can then arrow through the photos to see the pictures in the album.
Reading Raffle Winners (9/29)
Books Won: You Read to Me, I'll Read to You: Very Short Fairy Tales to Read Together, The Word Collector, Jada Jones: Nature Lover, Science Comic: Sharks, and Peter Powers and the League of Lying Lizards
Mission Impossible
A fun way to practice math facts! Students each write an addition expression on their whiteboard and form a circle. One player steps into the middle of the circle and tries to answer as many facts as they can, until the end of the Mission Impossible theme song. Anyone who can make it all the way around the circle before the song ends is our winner! Eventually we will play with the other operations too!
Pajama Day
We were so busy that there wasn't much time for photographs today, but we were able to squeeze in a few for our pajama themed "Find Someone Who" activity.
Fun Run
The big day final came! As a reward for all of great fundraising efforts, our school participated in the Fun Run. Classes ran laps while jamming out to some great tunes. The event culminated with students getting to throw pies in Mr. Lumnah's and Mrs. Kistler's faces! Thank you everyone who donated and/or helped to raise funds to make this event so magical for all of students!
ELA Centers
This week we practiced our spelling words with both rainbow spelling and a new whiteboard spelling game! Students rocked their Lexia unit goals and wrote creative stories. We are still working on procedures and independence in centers, but our work product is great!
Multiplication Models
Today we started to dive into multiplication! We broke out the colored tiles are learned how to put them into equal groups to represent a multiplication fact. Lots of students were able to make connections to what they are working on in ST Math!
Partner Work: Comprehension
Our reading work comes with a workbook that has a story for every week. That means we can write in it and annotate the text! We read our story the story together on Monday. On Tuesday, we answered the first page's questions together then students chose a partner and worked together to answer the remainder of the questions.
Have you seen our reading rugs?
We love our reading rugs! They are super comfy for independent reading or buddy reading.
What a great way to get cozy while reading!
What a great way to get cozy while reading!
Musical Chairs: Drawing Edition
Another rainy day, means a new indoor recess game! Today students started to draw a quick picture (for about 60 seconds) then they got up and started dancing or walking around the room. When the music stopped, they found the closest open chair and added to that person's drawing. When the music started up again, they got up and the game repeats. We got some very interesting pieces of art work from this fun activity!
Reading Raffle Winners (9/22)
Books won: Jo Jo Makoons: Fancy Pants, Pigskins to Paintbrushes, Encanto, and Goosebumps: Son of Slappy
Fun Run Reward: Dance Party
We earned the third reward on our fundraising thermometer! We ended Friday afternoon with a fun Just-Dance dance party!
Fuzzy Friend
During our 2nd Fun Run class reward (extra recess!) some of our students made a new fuzzy friend
ELA Centers
This week during centers we worked on our Lexia computer program, wrote in our shared journals, used thesauruses to find synonyms to given words, and dove into our story of the week to find the answers to comprehension questions.
Thesaurus Exploration
This week we started to learn about synonyms. We are using our class thesauruses to look up synonyms to common words. This morning we worked with a partner to figure out how to use this type of reference book, before we used them independently during centers this week.
First Fun Run Reward: Art Hub!
As our class fundraises money for the big Fun Run event, we earn special class rewards. We reached our first fundraising goal over the weekend so, today we completed a class drawing activity with Art Hub for Kids. The class voted on which video to use, so we practicing drawing a classic character- SpongeBob! If your child wants to finish their drawing, or try it again, they can watch the video again HERE.
The more our class fundraises, the more fun activities we be able to do!
The more our class fundraises, the more fun activities we be able to do!
Data Gathering
As we are working on our graphing unit in math, students collected data from their classmates on a given topic. Then students had to turn their graph into a scaled bar graph, where they displayed the data. We will save these graphs to use again in another lesson.
Indoor Recess
We had some wet weather this week, so had to stay inside for recess. Today we got to choose from drawing, coloring, games, puzzles, Lego, and various STEM activities.
Reading Raffle Winners (9/15)
Books won: National Geographic: Chomp!, Take Your Pet to School Day, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Third Wheel, How NOT to Start Third Grade, and Lola Levine and the Ballet Scheme
Kinetic & Potential Energy
In Science we are learning about force and motion. We started by learning about energy- specifically kinetic and potential energy. To make sure students understood the concept, groups worked together to complete our first cut and paste activity of the year where they sorted pictures into the categories of the two types of mechanical energy.
I Love Math Game
I Love Math is a math version of rock-paper-scissors. We started with simple one-handed addition so we can learn how to play, and we will move on to more advanced versions throughout the year. This is a quick time filler for students to work on their math skills, but it can also be used at home with siblings, cousins, friends, and parents.
Ask your child to teach you how to play!
Ask your child to teach you how to play!
Getting to Know You Game
We have a new Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) program for the building. Each month we will focus on a new character trait to help better develop ourselves as we learn and grow. One of today's activities was a fun getting to know you game, where we learned how we learned some of our similarities and differences from our classmates.
Reading Centers
This week we started reading centers! Students practiced four different types of activities that they will see pop up in centers throughout the year- rainbow spelling, buddy reading, shared journal writing, and sight word 4-in-a-row game!
Buddy Reading
Students buddy read one of our stories of the week from our reading program. We will read this story multiple times, in different ways - each time for a different purpose. Today's focuses were fluency and compound words.
Power Writing
This activity helps us focus on ideas for our writing pieces. After completing a themed "Sit down if... / Stand up if..." activity, students focused on two images from the slide deck and chose one of them to write about. Everyone got just 60 seconds to write as much as they could on the topic. These quick writes let us focus on getting our ideas down on paper, while not having to worry about spelling, conventions, or neatness. These are just times to practice sharing our ideas, which is a huge part of the writing process!
Reading Raffle Winners (9/8)
Books won: We Don't Eat Our Classmates, Twins vs. Triplets: Back to School Blitz, First Day Jitters, Benji's First Day of School, and The Day You Begin
Paragraph Practice
After we learned about paragraph structure with our paragraph puzzles (see below), Students had the opportunity to show off their writing skills by writing a paragraph in their journal about their second grade experience. Anyone who wanted to share their work with the class had the opportunity to do so.
Paragraph Puzzles
To review proper paragraph structure, we played with our paragraph puzzles! Every student received a random sentence. Students walked around the room to find people with a sentence on a similar topic to theirs. Once each group identified their topic, they worked together to build a paragraph from their sentences (topic sentence, 3 details, and a concluding statement).
2 Truths & 1 Lie Activity
A classic ice breaker- 2 truths and a lie! Students took some independent time to brainstorm 2 true statements about themselves and one not-true statement that sound believable. Then they took turns sharing their statements and students guessed which "fact" wasn't true. Some students got to share on Friday and the rest will get to share on Monday.
A fun and simple way to get to know our classmates better!
A fun and simple way to get to know our classmates better!
STEM Challenge: Cup Towers
Our first STEM challenge of the year was to build the tallest structure possible using just 40 small cups. Groups worked together and found some creative ways to stack their cups and complete the challenge!
Bump: A Math Game
Bump is a simple math game that involves rolling dice, finding their sum, and covering that number on the game board. If your opponent already occupies that space, you use your marker to "bump" them off the spot to claim it for yourself. This is a game we will use throughout the year with addition, subtraction, and multiplication facts and even some literacy skills! There were lots of giggles as students practiced working with a partner and their math skills!
Indoor Recess
It was too hot on Thursday to go outside for recess, so students exercised to various Youtube movement videos. This way we still got to get our energy out, but in a safe environment.
Character & Setting Annotating Text
This was our first dip into the wonderful world on annotating a text for a specific purpose. After reading the picture book Allysaurus and the First Day of School, each child got a print out of that text and worked with their group to highlight the character names and clues to the various settings. Students then transferred their findings into a list on a separate sheet of paper. This year we will spend a lot of time annotating texts, for various purposes.
Find Someone Who... Activity
To get to know our classmates better, we played a "Find Someone Who" game. In this game, students traveled the classroom and interviewed their new classmates to find answers to statements like "Find someone who loves math" and "Find someone who plays soccer". When they found a classmate who fit a particular category, they wrote their classmates name in the corresponding box on their sheet. The catch? They could only use each person's name one time. This challenged us talk to new people, so we can get to know them better. This activity helps us realize that we have a lot in common with other students in our class!