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 First Day Jitters on our first day. The second graders then make their own faces to show their emotions. We read a Jitter Juice poem and sampled some of our own Jitter Juice to help the jitters "fly away". I think this group is happy to be back at 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 Community
We 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 Web
We 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 Learning
Today 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!
