Today in math the second graders were practicing math stations. Students moved from station to station. One station was playing the card game Trash (Garbage). This is a great game for building number sense. Another group used Unifix cubes to create patterns and measuring towers. A third group played the card game Addition Top It to practice their basic addition facts. The final group used pattern blocks to create different shapes and pictures. We had a lot of fun! |
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This week we have been able to begin working on establishing a Reader's Workshop in our classroom. An important part of Reader's Workshop is independent reading. This week the second graders focused on building their stamina (we are up to 12 minutes!), selecting good fit books, and picking appropriate spots for the reading time. I am impressed with how quickly they are building their stamina. Our goal is 20 minutes. Later in the year, we will extend that to 30 minutes. Here is a peek at what engaged readers look like!
We had Mr. Latch visit our classroom as a guest reader! He came to our room and ready The Energy Bus. The story talks about how powerful a positive attitude can be in life. It was a great message for the second graders as we begin a new school year.
We were fortunate to have CLIMB Theater come visit our school. The second graders (along with the kindergartners and first graders) watched a production on bullying and how to stand up for yourself and others. It was a wonderful, interactive experience for us all!
We continued to build our classroom community this week. We did this through games, read-alouds, discussions, and team building. As you can see, we all put our thumbprint in the heart to show our agreement of the classroom and school rules. Second graders also helped me brainstorm a list of what makes a great classmate. We ended today with reading How Full is Your Bucket? and creating a classroom chart and classroom book on how to be a "bucket filler".
We have really enjoyed our first week together. It is clear that we have a kind, compassionate group of second graders in this classroom together. Here are some photos of the highlights of our first week back to school. We read the book Chrysanthemum. After reading the book students made cube towers to show the number of letters in their names. They then compared to other students and recorded data about friends who had more, fewer, and the same number of letters. We also make a sticker plot of the number of letters in our names. In order to think about our Hopes and Dreams for second grade we read Pop! The Invention of Bubble Gum and Uncle Jed's Barbershop. We learned the inventor of bubble gum had to work for a long time and not give up before he found the right recipe. We also learned that chewing gum can help you concentrate...so we gave it a try! I will post photos of our Hopes and Dreams display next week! Creating a Classroom CommunityWe spent time discussing how we would like our classroom community to be. We came up with rules and discussed above the line, below the line, and bottom line behaviors. We read Personal Space Camp to support our thoughts on being a positive member of our classroom community. We sorted behaviors into Good Choices and Need to Do Better. The second graders have a great foundation of being kind and caring classmates. Students also worked in teams to create posters of our four classroom and school rules (Be Safe. Be Respectful. Be Responsible. Be Ready to Learn.). Kindness WebWe used yarn to create a Kindness Web. Every student gave a compliment and passed the yarn. We created a wonderful web. We discussed what would happen if one person dropped their part of the web and related that to kindness in the classroom. And of course we had to take a silly photo, too! Flexible LearningToday the second graders we able to try out some of the different learning spaces in the classroom. They were able to discover spots that worked well for them as learners. Some of them also discovered that spots they thought they would like were not a good fit. It was a wonderful learning experience. They are getting very close to being ready for the responsibility of selecting the spot that is best for them to learn! Teamwork!This afternoon we spent time time building teamwork. The second graders were in teams of 3-4 and had the challenge to make the tallest structure as possible with only marshmallows and spaghetti noodles. It was a challenging task, but we all had lots of fun and lots of laughs!
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