2 Weeks in Review!

We have had a WONDERFUL few weeks as Room 200. We have almost all of our 2nd grade routines in place and are ready to start getting busy with the exciting parts of the year. 

We have successfully completed our reading stamina goal of 15 minutes and are working towards a bonus goal of 20 minutes. The students were even able to fight my crazy distractions!

We also enjoyed National Read a Book day with Mrs. Reilley's 5th grade class. It was nice to share our books with them and to hear the books they brought to read to us. Bonus: We were able to enjoy this time in KBK's cozy reading lounge. 

In science, Room 200 began making scientific observations about things around us. We started with plants in our classroom garden. We drew scientific sketches, used descriptive words and made noticings. These notes were held in our Observation Notebooks. 

Staying safe is the name of the game in Room 200. We talk about our classroom rules and expectations but we also talk about our internet and device rules. 

The students could show me using our "stoplight" cards how they felt about certain scenarios they were given. 

Green = Good to go! Super Safe!

Yellow = I'm not super sure. I'd better ask.

Red = Not ok! I need to tell an adult. 

They did a great job! 

Photo Credit: C. P.

Photo Credit: C.P.

We practiced these new skills on the San Diego Zoo website.

In addition, we used our new device expectation knowledge to practice a new app, PicCollage. The collaborative teams worked hard to complete as many items on the classroom scavenger hunt as they could. 

Here is an example:

This past week, we also got a bit more settled into our Daily Reading centers that we call "The Dailies". 

We are working on fluency work while reading to a partner.

Also, comprehension skills while enjoying a story in our listening center.

In writing, we have been talking about interesting and descriptive words (or Buttery Words) to help make our writing more exciting. We read a wonderful story called Max's Words. It is filled with exciting words for us to use!

To help gather some of these words for future use, we collected them on a special Today's Meet page. You can see it here.

Dot Day!

Room 200 had a very successful Dot Day! I can't wait to hear all about it tomorrow. Here are some photos from the amazing, Mrs. Brown. 

Last but not least, here is a bit about some data you will be hearing from us weekly:

Room 200 in the Numbers

Each week, the students take 2 very quick quizzes to measure growth in math fact fluency and spelling the words on our current list of word wall words. Each week we have 2 goals for each assessment:

1. Collect as many correct answers we can as a class.

2. Score an "All Time Best" for ourselves!

Please notice that I didn't say "perfect score". This is all about personal and team growth. Knowing where we starts is powerful to help us find where we need to go. 

This week we made huge jumps in our Random 5 Word Wall assessment! We were practicing really hard all week!

We went down slightly in our Math Fluency team chart but we had two students absent to we felt that it was still very successful! 

Our Numbers:

Random 5 Word Wall:

Total words correct for the Class: 106

Number of Perfect Scores and All Time Bests: 22!

Math Fact Fluency:

Total problems correct for the Class: 187

Number of Perfect Scores and All Time Bests: 10

Thank you for checking in with us! Please leave us a comment below. We are excited to hear from you!

Week in Review

We now have our first full week behind us and boy was it busy!  

One of our fun challenges this week was our daily Word Talk. During our Word Talk, we take a challenging word and dissect it. We discuss the meaning or multiple meanings, other relationships and what we see in the letters. Want to try it at home? Show your child this picture and try the word, September.

In Writer's Workshop, we focused on our jobs. We created a chart to help us know what all of us should be doing during our writing time. Our Writer's Workshop is comprised of a 10 minute mini-lesson, 30 minutes of writing time, and 10 minutes of share time. We had several friends sit on the "share chair" and share their stories. 

In Math, we talked about many different ways to show numbers. We are working on building our number sense and math vocabulary. We will continue to work on this in the coming week. Watch for this on our math homework this week. 

We continue to work on our Declaration of Awesome. The students worked in collaborative groups to decide how our classroom would run and our collective values. It is not quite finished yet but we will show you as soon as it is done. 

We also competed in an individual challenge where the students were given 1 piece of aluminum foil and 3 pipe cleaners. The students worked to "create something". They did a great job of being creative and having fun. We also scientifically wrote about our creation. I can't wait for the next challenge. 

We have also been talking a lot about characters, actions and feelings. We used a fabulous book called Each Kindness.

This book is about a new student who joins the class and her classmates are not kind and welcoming. 

The author talks about how our actions ripple out into the world like ripples in the water. The teacher in the story asked the students to share a kindness they had done and toss their pebble into the water. The main character was unable to share a kindness because of how she acted towards her new classmate. 

As a class, we talked about the kindness that we can send out into the world. We each shared a kindness and placed our pebbles in the water. 

Family Challenge Time!!!

In Room 200, we record all of our read aloud experiences. We participated in 20 read aloud experiences in our few days of August alone! Can your family guess how many read aloud experiences that we will have during our time together this year? Click here to record your guess!

The First 3 Days

The First 3 Days have come and gone. Here is a glimpse at our initial time together:

We began with a pep talk from our friend, Kid President. You can watch it too on our Room 200 Resources page. 

We thought about his message and put it into our own words and illustrations.



We also created our "First Day Faces". This challenge contained a little twist. The students were not allowed to use scissors. They had a blast and the faces turned out great!



Also, many of our building experts helped us remember our school expectations during our Expectation Walks. We practiced our CHAMPS and many other helpful routines.





Expectations and routines are going to help us run a very smooth classroom. We made a video to help us with our morning routine.

Morning Routine from LBright on Vimeo.

In math, we learned a really great new game called Knock Out. Check it out and try it at home. 

It is super important to be able to work as a team so we spent time talking and practicing teamwork with our Big Bad Wolf challenge. 

And as always, we spent a ton of time reading, talking about books and writing about books. 

Thanks for checking in! 

Stay tuned next week for our Declaration of Awesome!

Welcome!

Greetings and Welcome to Room 200!

School is just around the corner and I am so excited to meet all of the newest members of Room 200. I am very curious to learn about you and I will bet that you are very curious to learn about me. 

Here are 10 interesting facts about me:

1. This will be my 13th year as a Kaneland teacher and my 3rd Kaneland building. I have taught 1st, 2nd and 3rd grade. 

2. I am a huge Harry Potter fan and I am always rereading one of the books. It is my happy, magical place. 

3. My husband and I are fur parents. We have 2 dogs (had 3 until recently) and 2 cats. They all greet me when I get home from school and that makes me so happy.

4. I am very passionate about making your 2nd grade experience super comfortable and stress free. I think about this all of the time. I try to make our room cozy and creative. I think you will love it!

You can get a glimpse of our room by following us on Instagram: @mrsbrightkbk

5. I LOVE plants!  I love gardening and spending time with my flowers and vegetables outside. I also love bringing nature indoors in my home and our classroom. We will have a very "green" classroom!

6. Last November, I became an aunt for the first time. You are going to hear A LOT about Baby Wayne!

7. I am entering the 3rd and final year of my National Board Certification process. I had to take a really big test and send in videos of myself teaching and my students learning. I am always working on being the best teacher that I can be. This process has helped me on my teaching journey.

8. I love fitness! It is really important for me to be in great shape so that I can have enough energy to be the best teacher for all of my Room 200 friends. I enjoy biking, running, climbing and hanging. However, my favorite is weightlifting. I am on my journey to become a national qualifier in my age and weight bracket. I like being strong and confident. I am on a team filled with other amazing women and we have a blast!

9. My friends are super important to me and they make a huge difference in my life. You will hear me talk about a few of them a lot. 

10. I love teaching because I love my students. I am SO excited to meet you and start our journey together. We will have fun, challenge our minds and stretch our hearts. This is going to be amazing!

As you can see, I think having many hobbies and interests is important and makes me a better teacher. I look forward to learning all about you!

Now I'm going to ask two things from you:

1. Please click here to tell me a bit about yourself and your family. 

2. Please email me a picture of your family so that I can hang it up in our room to make it even more comfortable. laura.bright@kaneland.org


I look forward to meeting you Monday night. Until then, feel free to browse the blog to get a feel for what our adventure might look like this year.