Week in Review

It was another wonderful week in Room 200!

With 2 full weeks of school now under our belts, we are feeling more and more like 2nd grade experts. 

We have spent the first two weeks getting really good at our routines, expectations and new tools to help make our entire year successful and seamless. 

We have moved on from our Digital Citizenship Boot Camp and are now learning some of the new tech tools that we will use often this year. 

We started with a great app called ScreenChomp (free). Screenchomp is a great screencasting app that allows us to record our voices and show our thinking on the screen at the same time. 

This app is a great example of my tech philosophy. The students in Room 200 will be spending their time using our creative apps. The apps we use will be usable in all subject areas and any given time.   Our goal is to become experts at sharing, discussing and presenting our thinking.

We even Tweeted with the app developer for Screenchomp!

Check out this amazing ScreenChomp: 

http://www.screenchomp.com/t/EWCTymt0Zr1Z

Writing:

Writing time in our room is often one of our favorites. It is a chance for us to spread out, relax and get comfortable writing our thoughts. In our Writer's Workshop, like many other parts of our day, we don't have to stay in our seats. We can get up and work in a more comfortable location if we choose.

We also spent this week getting to know the Writing Process and what it takes to be a great writer. We focused on the first three stages of the Writing Process and learned a few new vocabulary words along the way. 

This week's words:

• Prewriting - forming our initial ideas or brainstorming
• Drafting - initial writing phase
• Revising - improving on our writing ideas

Revising is often the most difficult stage for any elementary student to understand and complete. Buddy revising is even trickier because you are adding in the "friend" element. However, "tricky" doesn't scare us in Room 200! We dominated our buddy revising tasks! Check it out:

Revising from LBright on Vimeo.

Finally this week, we explored another one of our creative apps called PicCollage (free). This is a poster/visual presenter app. It is great for categorizing, making info-graphics and creating exciting educational posters. 

We used this app to help us share our learning about our Daylilies project. They are still a work in progress but they are coming along nicely. 

We also used PicCollage to finalize and publish our Declaration of Awesomeness. *name credit goes to L.W. from Room 200

During the very first few days of school, we started the process of creating our Declaration of Awesomeness by watching this amazing Kid President video: http://safeshare.tv/w/HdkRhiJSOv

Then, we discussed Kid President's message.

Next, the students traveled to many tables to jot down their thoughts on our learning environment and mission.

Then, we took snippets from each table poster and used Post-its to gather our favorite and most powerful thoughts. 

It is just as important to show the process as it is to show the product. In Room 200, we focus on both equally. 

Finally, this week, these powerful thoughts became our final version of our Declaration of Awesomeness. This is how we have all agreed to learn and live this year. 

We hope you enjoyed our Week in Review. This week we will be continuing the writing process, finishing Unit 1 in Fundations and updating you on our Daylilies and gardening projects. Stay tuned!

Week in Review

We had a wonderful 1st full week in Room 200. 

We started our week with a wonderful story about being kind and the way kindness can change the world. 

Just like in the book, the students came to the table and grabbed a stone. As they put the stone in the water, they told us something kind that they had done recently. We watched the ripples of kindness spread through the bowl, just as they spread through the world. 

We also participated in our first Week of Wonder! Check out our blog post on it here.

We spent some time discussing personal narratives and practicing in our new journals. In our journals, our main focus is the content of our narrative. However, we are still keeping an eye on our word wall words, capitals and punctuation marks. 

We spent a lot of time building our reading stamina. We have made it to 14 consecutive minutes with all of us staying focused on our books. I tried my hardest to distract them on Friday but was unable to tear them away from their books. I tried throwing tissues, ringing a bell, jumping up and down loudly and slamming the door. Their eyes were still glued on their books. I even got super close and took pictures of them reading. They were totally unphased. 

Check out this quick video of their amazing stamina. 

Stamina from LBright on Vimeo.

We also spent the week talking about digital citizenship. 

We started with our safety rules.

One of the highlights of our Digital Citizenship Boot Camp was The Stoplight Activity.

The students had 3 colors to show me their thoughts on the scenario that I gave them. 

Green = Go! This is safe and I am making a good choice.

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

Red = This doesn't feel safe, appropriate or right. I need to tell an adult. 

Here are some sample scenarios:

• My teacher gave me a great website about sharks to visit. (G)
• This site is great but it has some unusual ads. (Y)
• Someone I don't know just tried to chat with me! (R)
• I found a new website and I don't really understand it. (Y)
• My mom and I are researching new plants for my garden. We found a website together. (G)
• Mrs. Bright e-mailed a link to my mom. (G)
• I'm at a friends house and he wants to visit a site that I'm not allowed to go on. (R)
• I found a site that is not kid friendly. (R)

Of course, we made some time for a few guest readers. 

Finally, we also continued talking about our new math vocabulary.

I hope your enjoyed our weekly recap! I can't wait for Week 2!

1st Observation

*This blog post was written as a collaborative activity with all of Room 200. We hope you like it. 

This week was our first "Wonder" activity. Mrs. Bright brought in something mysterious to wonder about. 

We started with a scientific sketch in our notebooks. Then we added our wonders and noticings. Here are some of them:

We Wonder...

• What happens when it dies. 
• if there are eggs inside.
• what it is.
• why it has no smell.
• where it came from.
• why it is in a flower.
• why when we smelled it hurt our nose. 
• what are we going to do with it.
• If the black things are seeds for the spider flower.
• why it is hard. 

We Noticed...

• it is some sort of flower.
• it doesn't smell like anything.
• it feels crumpily.
• it look like a flower.
• it is brown.
• there is something inside of it. 
• that it looks dry. 

We observed this picture:

We watched this video. 

From the video, we gathered new learning.

New Learning:

• We learned that they are Daylilies. 
• They are called Daylilies because they die in one day. 
• They come in lots of colors.
• They are beautiful. 
• There are 20 flowers per clump.
• They are planted from littler plants. 
• They are really colorful and very unique. 

So, since we had a wonderful amount of Daylily seeds, we decided that it would be a good idea to plant them. 

Here is how we did it:

1. First, we harvested our seeds and learned what they were.

2. Next, we labeled our bags with "daylilies", our names and date.

3. Then, we put the paper towels in our bags.

4. Next, we put the seeds in the bag with the cut up paper towels.

We watched the video to make sure we were following the proper directions. 

5. Then, we poured our water mixture into the bag. We didn't want to spill and the directions said, "no puddles". So we were very careful. 

6. Finally, we taped the bags to the window so they could get enough light. 

We had so much fun! We think you should do it too!


*Dear Parents and Visitors,
We would love a kind and helpful comment from you. We celebrate each one we receive. 
Thanks,
KBK200

The First 3 Days

The first 3 days have come and gone. Oh, how wonderful they were. 

We started our year on the right foot by all entering the building together as a class...or family.

We entered the room, greeted each other warmly and read a wonderful book. 

Then the students were dying to find their new seats and tablemates. Well, it would have been fine to have them go find their name tags and sit down. However, it is so much more fun to give them each a puzzle piece and find the pieces that they belong with. It was a great team-building experience and we had a lot of fun!

The students also participated in a STEM/creativity project. They were each given 3-4 pipe cleaners and a few sheets of aluminum foil and given the direction to... create! 

They worked thoughtfully on them for a great deal of time. It was fun to see how their creative brains work, an excellent way to get to know them. The projects will be used for a future blog post. 

We also made some time for good amount of reading!

Room 200 Fun Fact - We write down the title of every read aloud experience we have as a class. In the first 3 days, we heard 7 amazing books!

It was nice to hear from a guest reader too!

We also started working collaboratively on our Declaration of Awesomeness. More to come on that very soon!

Our first 3 days were so packed with fun and learning that it is almost too much to list! 

However, Here is a quick final rundown of our first moments together:

We played some new math games. 

We wrote on our Graffiti Wall about our 1st day book.

We explored the room.

We made our room feel like home. 

Enjoy this glimpse into our first 3 days:

2015-2016 from LBright on Vimeo.

Meet Mrs. Bright - Welcome to Room 200!

It is almost time!!!!

The summer just flew by and now it is time to get back into the school mode. I am really looking forward to starting my journey at Blackberry Creek Elementary School. 

Right now, Room 200 is very lonely and empty. I am excited for 26 students to fill it with love, laughter and learning. 

I can't wait to meet all of you in just a few short days. Until then, let me tell you a bit about myself:

(Pictured above: Bruce, Ron, Laura, Dolly and Cooper)

My name is Laura Bright and I live in Sycamore, Illinois. We have a big old house that we have been fixing up and loving for the last 4 years. I live there with my husband Ron, my 3 dogs and 2 cats. Sometimes our house feels like a zoo!

I really enjoy school and it is my passion but I have some other fun interests as well. I am a fitness nut! I love running, biking, hiking and weight training. It is a fun way to meet new people and try new things. In fact, I will be competing in the Aurora Duathlon just after school starts! I am very excited to try a new type of event!

This will be my 12th year as a teacher in the Kaneland School District. I have spent the last 10 years at McDole with most of them being in 1st grade. I really enjoy teaching the primary grades and I believe it is absolutely my calling. 

You will soon find that I am very passionate about my job. I jump out of bed each school day, excited to join my class in another day of learning. I am most passionate about creativity, wonder and tech infusion to help enhance our learning day. With this passion, I also like to spread the word to other teachers by presenting at many conferences and leading full day workshops. I hope to inspire not only my amazing students but other teachers as well. 

Goals for the Year:
This year, our class will focus our successful year around the 4C's. 
We will become collaborative learners, critical thinkers, excellent communicators and creative explorers. 
With these skills mastered, there is no limit to what we will be able to achieve. 

In addition, as for my personal goals for the year, I want my students to feel loved and trusted. I want them to know that I think about them and do everything I can to personalize their education. I want them to feel that they have ownership in our classroom and are comfortable sharing their learning with us. 


Homework:
Parents, Please take a few minutes to fill out the attached survey so that I can get to know and understand your child.  

Click here for Parent Survey

Also, feel free to send in a framed photograph of your family or other photograph with special meaning to your child on the 1st day. We will display these photos in our room to help create a warm and comfortable atmosphere. 

Can't wait to see you all on Monday, August 17th!

Spending Time in Fairy Tale Land

The Land of Fairy Tales has moved into Room 222. As we study these classic stories, we have set a goal to become experts in this genre. Our room has immersed itself into truly understanding the story and the struggles of our characters. 

To do this, we have a S.T.E.A.M focus for our unit. S.T.E.A.M stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math.

For our Fairy Tale Fair, each student has chosen the project and fairy tale study of his/her choice. Through this process, Room 222 decided on 5 different Fairy Tales and Focuses. 

Some of our Room 222 classmates have chosen to study the art of theater by performing two classics, Jack and the Beanstalk and Cinderella. 

A few have chosen the art of design through the study of The Emperor's New Clothes. Our clothing makers are experimenting with weaving. 

The Culinary Arts will also be represented at our Fair through the study of The Little Red Hen. Two of our talented students are studying and experimenting with bread baking.

Last but not least, an ambitious group of engineers has chosen to try and trick the Big Bad Wolf by building a house that he (my blowdryer) cannot blow down. 

At our Fairy Tale Fair, you will not only be able to see two amazing performances, you will also be able to learn about the other projects from our experts and experiment with these techniques yourself!

Room 222 can't wait to see you at our Fairy Tale Fair. 

Check out this example of the amazing learning the student have been doing:

Fairy Tale Two from LBright on Vimeo.