New Happenings!

As promised, here is my new smart board!!! I am in love with it and so are the students!

I adjusted my classroom so all my seats are turned so they can have a view of the markerboard up front and can turn their heads the other way to see the smart board.

I'm really happy that I set it up this way because then everybody has a chance to sit in the front.

I've already done several lessons on it and am looking forward to using it for centers especially once the ipad the school gave me is up and ready for me to give to the students as well!

New Management

As expected, eventually old classroom management systems can lose effectiveness which is why I've started this:  Cocoa compliments.  Every time I catch the students complimenting each other, a teacher or our class gets complimented, they get a marshmallow. Once they get it filled up to reach the word cocoa, our class will have a cocoa celebration! They are very excited and so am I (I love hot chocolate!)

Recess Contracts

Also, unfortunately, it seems as though this is when we really start getting into bullying-- especially at recess. Therefore we had to agree on a recess contract as a class.  Everyone had to write down these rules and sign it.

These are behaviors that are expected at recess, if they are not able to follow them then they will have to sit out for part of their recess. So far, I've only had to have someone sit out once and I was happy that they knew they made a mistake and that they needed to sit out for a bit.  Hopefully this will last until May,

I would love to hear anyone's suggestions for addressing bullying at recess. So far that's the only trouble area that our class is having and I think it's the hardest place to manage!

President's Day

We have done a lot of work doing shared reading and highlighting the main idea in papers written about popular presidents. The students have been very interested and are working to write a paper of their own using just the main idea.

It also has worked out as a good cross-curricular move because I have a group studying Franklin D. Roosevelt and we discussed the Great Depression.  In the read aloud I've started, Bud, Not Buddy, it takes place during the Great Depression so that group was able to help tell the rest of the class about that time as we wrote in our reading notebooks.

Have a wonderful President's Day!

1st week of school

So ideally I would've posted some pictures from the first week of school at the end of the first week (instead of the end of the second week), but since I'm still getting back into school mode, blogging hasn't been my first priority right now! Anyway here are some pictures of some of the activities we did the first week and I'll recap for what we've started this week as well.

Reading

One of the things we really hit the first week of school was how to ask for help and when it is okay to talk.  A book that really goes along with this idea is My Mouth is a Volcano! It's a very cute story about a boy named Louis who can't help but blurt out when an idea comes to his head. After we read the book, we did some brainstorming about what we can do when we think we might "erupt." We used some of the ideas from the book and also had some ideas of our own for dealing with those overwhelming ideas that want to erupt out!

I had all of the volcanos up for Back to School night and I think I'll keep them up for at least another week or so. It works as a nice reminder to just be able to point if someone is having a problem erupting that day :)

Writing

We have already done our first writing project. We did a word inventory the first week so that we could see how many words they could think of in 10 minutes and we also did a self-portrait.  I do this three times a year because I think it's very exciting to see the growth happening academically and developmentally. I will be sure to share these with parents at conferences.

Also, we wrote our first story about our summer. Those will be added to a portfolio so that students and parents can see how much they improve throughout the year.

In addition to practice writing, we are working on practicing using the right language when responding to questions.  Right now for our read aloud book, we are reading Diary of a Wimpy Kid (by popular demand!) and we are working on using academic language when responding. I will add to this list throughout the year (I just didn't want to overwhelm anyone right now!)

Math/Notebooking/Science

I don't have any exciting pictures to post yet. Right now in math we're mainly reviewing a lot of concepts like using a number line, hundreds chart, skip counting, and representing numbers.  

I will say that we are notebooking in reading, math, and science this year. What I like about notebooking is that students have a chance to look back at their practice work (like graphic organizers and worksheets) to study for tests. In math, it's a good place for them to see how to work out certain problems and reflect on focus questions.

In reading, our notebooking is more about vocabulary, phonics and comprehension skills (like summarizing, retelling, main idea).

In science, our notebooking is used to organize important vocabulary and ideas to prepare for tests and for reflecting later.  I will post resource links for students to use the National Geographic curriculum on this website as soon as I get access codes! The National Geographic Curriculum is great!

For parents:  This will also explain why you won't be getting a lot of worksheets coming home. Usually we will go over the answers together (so students can make corrections) and then they'll glue it into their notebooks. I will however start sending home some weekly homework on Mondays that should be sent back on Fridays. (My thinking is that it is less likely that the students will lose a stapled packet--individual sheets of homework sent home on random nights can be hard for them to remember). I hope we can work together to keep helping these 2nd graders :)

Upcoming dates:

Tomorrow, August 24- Reading logs due, Spelling test (words should be written in their planner)

Tuesday, August 28- I will be testing students' reading level all day. Please make sure they don't miss!

Friday, August 31-Reading logs due, Reading test (over the unit) and spelling test

Monday, September 3- No School!