Happy birthday!

Happy birthday to all of the marvelous students born during the months of August and September!

Fall Fun

Welcome autumn! I love the beautiful changing leaves, cool crisp air, pumpkins and gourds, haunted houses, and delicious apple cider that come with autumn. We celebrated the first day of the new season with our Fourth Grade buddies from Miss Campbell's class on Friday. The students listened to a story and wrote acrostic poems about Fall.

Johnny Appleseed's birthday was on Saturday, September 26th. One of the Great Friday Afternoon Event teams performed a play about John Chapman's life in honor of him! Can you tell who played Johnny?

Every morning in Room 110, the first thing the Second and Third Graders do is read silently for about 30-40 minutes. Last week, they practiced reading with a partner. Reading to yourself is always fun. Last week, I saw that sharing a book with a friend is a special treasure! We sure are falling into reading. :)

In writing this week, we read a story called Miss Tizzy. Miss Tizzy reminded us a lot of Mrs. Piggle Wiggle because of her friendly nature and love of children. In the story, Miss Tizzy teaches the children in her neighborhood about true friendship. The Second and Third graders wrote about their friends last week. We worked on editing our work and adding many describing words and details.

In social studies, we continued to study maps and geography. The third graders learned how a distance scale works and used a distance ruler to measure from city to city.

In Second Grade science, the students finished their Insect Flip Books and they are now proudly displayed in our classroom and hallway.

Allyson was the Star of the Week. Allyson wanted to know... What is your favorite food? Each student wrote his or her favorite food on a post it and we sorted them on the food pyramid. Can you tell which food group was the most popular?

Edison was the Virtual Field Trip Planner. He took us on a spaceship to Pluto! We learned all about Pluto and its moons. Thanks, Edison, for an "out of this world" trip!

On Wednesday, a special pink fire truck visited our school. The teachers wore pink shirts and Mrs. Huisinga even sported a pink fireman's coat in honor of the Pink Heals Tour for breast cancer awareness. The kids sat during their lunch recess to listen to the firemen speak about their mission.

Virtual Classroom Tour

Exciting things are happening in our classroom all the time! Take a tour of our classroom to find out some of the many things that we do during our days together.

Student work always fills our hallway, making it bright, cheerful, and welcoming (as well as showing off all of the skills we are learning)! Below are the second grade Noun apples. This is the rocking chair that I sit in when I read to the class and teach whole group lessons. On the book stand, I keep the songs that we sing in the morning and the chapter book we are reading (right now, it's Matilda).

This is our writing center. It is complete with many kinds of writing tools including an assortment of paper, stencils, a dictionary, pencils, colored pencils, crayons, markers, stickers, a stapler, and a chart of 100 words to know. As the year goes on, this section of our classroom will change to include science topics that we are learning about. Currently, the second grade science unit is on display. Can you tell what it is?

I do write on the chalkboard, but not on this part of it! Here we keep track of the days and months, how many days we've been in school, how many students are present and absent, and the weather. Our circle of books is also on the board; we keep track of the different genres of books we read together as a class to make sure we are reading a great variety of books. Also near the calendar is our daily journal prompt.

One of my favorite places in the classroom is our reading corner. It's cozy with beanbags and stools to sit on and full of great literature. Kids are often found here picking out and enjoying books!

Extra, extra! Read all about it! This is where we post interesting and exciting news articles. It's important to know what is going on in the world around us. Behind the news board, our Numbers All Around museum is on display as well as a handwriting center where students can work on their handwriting skills.

Soon, I will be meeting with groups of students at our Guided Reading table. Here we will work on important skills that all readers need to know!

3...2...1...Blast off! The Star of the Week gets to take a ride in our rocket ship. Our class mission is also on display as a reminder that we always need to be respectful, responsible, and caring.

Thank you for taking a virtual classroom tour of Peterson's Planetarium.

Our class is full of star students!

Busy Bees

The kids in Room 110 have been busy, busy, busy!  We have been gathering lots of writing ideas in our writing journals and writing a lot about things that have happened to us.  We've learned that many authors use events that have happened in their lives to create and write stories.  Donald Crews wrote about visiting his grandma in his book Bigmama.  Our class has published a book about the people and places we like to visit.  The second and third graders have also been responding daily to imaginative journal prompts.  In one journal prompt, the students had to pretend that we lived underwater.  They described what life would be like in an underwater world.  We've also been talking about nouns: people, places, and things.

In science, second graders have been exploring insects.  Ask your second grader if he or she can tell you the three important body parts that all insects possess.  In third grade science, the focus is on magnets.  Does your third grader know what the word repel means?

Borders, mountains, desert, railroad tracks, cities, compass rose, continents...  Where can you find all of these things?  On a map!  In social studies, we've been learning about geography, maps and globes.  

Mathematically speaking, we've been working on reviewing some important concepts including skip counting, counting money, number grids, and place value.

Of course, we've taken some breaks to enjoy the sunshine, play with friends, and get to know each other better!

The Star of the Week is Garrett.  Garrett surveyed the class to find out which ice cream flavor they like better: chocolate and vanilla.  The results? Can you tell from the picture below?!

Kelli is this week's Virtual Field Trip Planner! We took a long plane ride to Antarctica to learn about penguins.  It was a long, expensive, and quite cold trip, but it was worth it! 

I don't know about you, but I've been having tons of fun at school this year.

Second and Third Graders, what is your favorite subject in school so far?  Why do you like that subject?

The Great Friday Afternoon Event

Last Friday, we had our first weekly Great Friday Afternoon Event!  Our class was divided into four groups: newscast, play, declamation and poetry.    

The newscast group shared several interesting articles from the news and gave the weather forecast for the weekend.  

  The play group wrote and performed their own play, The Black Hole. 

The declamation group read a chapter from a Magic Tree House book.

The poetry group selected and read poems to the class; they even sang a song!

 The students will stay with their group for the next three weeks, having a chance to present each category.  After the groups have all done participated in poetry, declamation, play, and newscast, we will switch groups.  Our first GFAE was a great success!  Everyone did a fantastic job of working with a group and presenting with a loud and clear voice!  I can't wait until this Friday! 

What was your favorite part about the Great Friday Afternoon Event?  

Which category are you looking forward to presenting?