One More Exciting Day!

We started our day at morning meeting. During morning meeting we read a new poem, My Dog Does My Homework. We will use this poem to work on our reading fluency. We will even have the opportunity to memorize the poem and recite it to the class! We also had a group juggling activity during morning meeting - ask your child to explain how it worked! After taking care of all of our business at morning meeting, we moved on to shared reading. We are reading a story about two friends - Lizzie and Harold. Today we took a picture walk with a partner and made predictions for the story. Mrs. Peckmann started reading the story to us as we followed along in our own books. As Mrs. Peckmann read we made "I wonder..." statements about the story. (Ask your child to tell you what happened in the story so far.) Next it was time for recess and then writing. Today we learned about many proofreading marks that we can use when we edit our written work. We practiced with sentences that needed a little help! After that it was time for lunch. After lunch we had our silent reading time and then it was time for math. In math Mrs. Peckmann read the book Chrysanthemum to us. We saw that the name Chrysanthemum has 13 letters in it - that is half the alphabet!!! We compared the number of letters in our own names with the number of letters in Chrysanthemum. We wrote number sentences and made true math statements about our names. Tomorrow we will make a graph of the number of letters in our names and answer questions about the graph. In the middle of math we had a fire drill. We did a great job during the drill. Next it was time for our special of the day - Phys. Ed. At the end of the day we completed our friendly letters to our friends in the class. Homework tonight is a math fact practice sheet. Tomorrow is Day 2. We do not have a special.

We started our day with our special, Library. After our special we had our morning meeting. We greeted each other by reaching out to someone according to Mrs. Peckmann's directions. During morning meeting, some of us shared our All About Me Bags. After our first recess we took a spelling inventory pretest to check our spelling skills from first grade. We also played a game called "Guess What's in my Head?" with the No Excuse Words. Next it was time for lunch. After lunch we had our silent reading time and then we read and discussed Henry and Mudge in the Green Time. We reviewed how to retell a story by telling the characters, setting, problem and solution. In math we worked with ordinal numbers from first to twentieth. At the end of the day we started to talk about Labor Day and what it means in our country. Homework tonight is to read 10 minutes and to complete a math worksheet.

Welcome to Second Grade 2009-2010

We are very excited to begin a new school year at Roundtown! The first day for students is Tuesday, August 25th - I can't wait to meet everyone!!!

Junior Achievement Began Today!

We had an exciting day today! We started our day with morning work and morning meeting. At morning meeting we clapped the syllables in our name to get ready for our writing lesson today where we needed to know the number of syllables in words in order to write Haiku poems. After morning meeting, we went to our special of the day, Music. After Music we had recess and then Mrs. Miller read more of The Runaway Dolls to us. Next it was time for our reading groups. Mrs. Miller met with the Magazines and Internet groups today. After lunch Mrs. Miller explained how to write a Haiku poem and read the book Dogku to us. We wrote a class haiku poem about winter. During our next writing lesson we will write haiku poems of our own. In math today we worked with money story problems. We learned how to use key words in the problem in order to know how to solve it. We also learned how to write an explanation about how we solved the problem in addition to showing our work. At the end of the day we had a special guest in our classroom. Mrs. Little is presenting our Junior Achievement lessons to us on "Our Community." We learned about the many jobs needed to make our community work. Tomorrow is Day 5. We have Library. Homework tonight is Math.

Ella is Student of the Week

Today was an exciting day in our classroom. We started our day with our special of the day, Library. After Library we completed our morning work and had our morning meeting. Each day, Mrs. Miller is teaching us new and exciting greetings at morning meeting. We also practiced our poem of the week, completed our math activities with the calendar, listened to the students sharing and our student of the week and talked about the rest of our day. After morning meeting and morning recess (indoors due to the wind), Mrs. Miller continued reading some of The Runaway Dolls to us. We are enjoying looking at the many illustrations in the book and making predictions. Next it was time to practice sorting our words. We worked with a partner to complete a blind sort of our words. One partner read the words aloud and the other partner pointed to the category that they would belong in. After that it was time for reading groups. Mrs. Miller met with the Books group and Mrs. Peckmann met with the Newspapers and Letters groups. In the afternoon we previewed and read the book that we were going to share with our Kindergarten buddies, Hippo's Toothache (ask me to retell it to you). We read it to a partner to work on our fluency and then we answered many retelling questions citing evidence from the text to support our answers. We would be asking the same questions with our Kindergarten buddies at the end of the day. During math, we paracticed our math facts and took an assessment on addition with regrouping. Tomorrow is Day 6. We have Art. Homework is Jumpstart 9.

We started our day with morning work and then morning meeting. Our normal morning meeting routine is: greeting (different each day), weather report, sharing (4-5 students each day), reading and discussing the morning message, poem of the week, math activities with the day of school (today was the 106th day of school!), activity (varies each day) and finally our class pledge. (Ask me to recite the class pledge.) After morning meeting, it was time for Music and then recess. What a beautiful morning!!! After recess Mrs. Miller read more of The Runaway Dolls to us. In the middle of reading, we had a fire drill. During the fire drill we looked at our shadows since it was almost noon. At noon our shadow points north and we found the other directions on the compass using our arms. Next it was time for reading groups. Mrs. Peckmann met with the books and letters groups and Mrs. Miller met with the newspapers group. After lunch it was time for writer's workshop. We learned about adjectives and how to use them to make our writing more interesting. Some of us continued to type our "relatives" stories while others illustrated their stories and others wrote in their journals. Now it was time for math. We completed a review exercise for addition with regrouping and we worked in math centers. At the end of the day we read about and discussed President's Day. This year is the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth. (Ask me to name 3 things I learned about Abraham Lincoln.) Homework is math - regrouping. Tomorrow is Day 5. We have Library.

100th Day of School

Today we began our day by completing a search of 100 shapes. We used the number of shapes we found to answer many math questions and to create a bar graph. After this morning work it was time for morning meeting. We greeted each other and sang a song about the 100th day of school. After morning meeting it was time for our Special of the day, Music. After Music, Mrs. Miller read the end of The Meanest Doll in the World to us. (Ask me about it!). Next we talked some more about the 100th Day of School. We read a book called 100th Day Worries. We discussed why the main character, Jessica, was worried and how she solved her problem. We also made a list of all of the ways we could group 100 items in even groups. After that we completed a short book in which we had to write to many prompts that had to do with the number 100. Finally it was time for lunch! After lunch Mrs. Miller taught us all about how to use a compass. We each held a small compass in our hands and found the North side of our classroom. After we labeled the North wall, we labeled the other walls with the cardinal and intermediate directions. We played a game of "Simon Says" and moved in the direction that "Simon" told us to. Then it was time to go to Sinking Springs for some 100th Day activities with our 5th grade buddies. The activities all had to do with the number 100 and involved measuring, writing and math and Mr. Otterson's Wii. (Ask me what my favorite activity was!) By the time we came back to Roundtown it was just about time to pack up and go home. What a great day! Tomorrow is Day 5. We have Library. Homework is a doubles math fact search.