Sunday, September 27, 2015

Week in Review Sept 21st -25th

We had another fantastic week filled with excellent learning and new frontiers. 

We are continuing the great thinking on our Graffiti Wall. This week's focus was an author study of Kevin Henkes. Starting next week we will be participating in the Global Read Aloud program with a new chapter book by Kevin Henkes. With all of our new learning and understanding of his writing style, we will be ready to dive into his new book. 




We also took some time this week to discuss bus expectations and safety procedures. The students were excellent listeners and were very respectful during the presentation. 

We had a few moments this week that proved that our 2nd Graders can have a much better eye than I do. This week, H. V. caught a cool feature on the end pages of Velma Gratch and the Way Cool Butterfly. She kindly brought it to our attention. It is always fun to learn and see new information. 


This week, we also ventured out of our room to visit with our new STEM Coach, Mrs. Olsen. Mrs. Olsen splits her time between Blackberry and McDole. I have known and admired Mrs. Olsen for years and we are so lucky to have her in our building. 

Mrs. Olsen recently drove to the Field Museum in Chicago to rent a few prairie specimens for our 4th grade learners as they study prairies. However, our 2nd graders think they are pretty cool too. What a great time to get our wondering minds going!

So, we traveled to her room with our Minis to document our experience for a later project. 





We were able to close our experience by asking Mrs. Olsen a few questions. 


We also started diving into the world of blogging this week. As you know, I am a big fan of the art of blogging. I find it an incredibly useful tool to share information, showcase our amazing experiences and connect with others. 

The kids are starting the process of a creating successful blogs. We start with paper blogging to get us used to the idea. The kids worked so hard on these blogs. 


When our paper blogs were finished, we talked about the very important process of commenting. 
As a class, we decided that our form of commenting will be one or more of the following:

  • A Specific Compliment
  • A Kind Suggestion
  • A Connection
  • A Question

The kids did an amazing job creating appropriate comments!

Once we showed that we understood the process of blogging and commenting, it was time to really start creating our own. 
We used two different tools to help us become more tech fluent and decide which tool we prefer for this particular activity. 

The iPad mini's were much quicker and allowed us to add our own pictures. 

The Chromebooks were a bit easier to log-in with and have a nice keyboards. 

However, the students were very successful with both tools.

Right now, our KidBlogs are just for Room 200 while we become more comfortable with them. When we decide, as a class, that we are ready, we will share them with you.


In Science, we had a special friend from 5th Grade come and help us plant the newest addition to our garden... Marigolds! It was so nice for the kids to be able to work in small groups with a student leader. 



In other garden news, our Daylilies have started sprouting!


The garden is really starting to flourish!



I would venture to guess that all of Room 200 slept very well on Friday following our very exciting Run for Fund! I had the pleasure of running with the kiddos as well. What a blast!

It was fun to run with a great group of kids and some of us made 14 laps (3.8 miles)!


We had an absolutely beautiful day for the run. 


It was great spending time with our friends and family while helping out our amazing PTO. 


While much of our learning week is filled with major projects and activities, we always take time to celebrate the equally important smaller moments. 

M. M. showed amazing fluency, or smooth reading, by reading one of her favorite stories to our class. She did an amazing job!

T. M. has been working extremely hard on a fiction story this week called Sugar Glider and Spider. He shared his story with us and we really like it. He was so proud to share his story with us and the kids gave so many kind compliments and asked so many great questions. 


This coming week will be filled with science, wonder, a new math unit, personal narrative writing and quality reading. 

Thanks for checking in!

1 comment:

  1. Mrs Bright its Anna we are going to have a great week

    ReplyDelete