Halloween Carolers

For a fun Halloween treat, Mr. Deptula and his 5th graders popped in this morning to sing some spooky Halloween songs for us! It was a fun surprise for our class, and they enjoyed the music and a visit from the 5th graders!

Halloween safety tips from the AHPD

Kaitlyn is a STAR student!

Kaitlyn was our super star this week! During her experiment, she showed the kids how heat can transfer through a metal fork as she pressed the fork into an ice cube! You should see the imprint of the fork on the ice cube after she had finished pressing for a short time. Then Kaitlyn tried pressing a plastic cap into the ice cube to see if the same thing would happen... it didn't! Heat transfers easily through metal- its a conductor of heat! Then Kaitlyn read us an amazing book about Ocean animals. Every page had a natural sound effect attached to it! The kids loved this book! We ended Kaitlyn's week with a mini dance party! We are so lucky to have such a sweet, caring, and hard working girl in our class!

A Thinking Lesson with Mrs. Schwarz!

Mrs. Schwarz popped in on Friday for a thinking lesson! She is working through a series of 5 lessons with our class. This week she taught the children the difference between "critical" thinking and "creative" thinking. The kids stretched their critical thinking skills by identifying the varying attributes of a number of geometric shapes. They enhanced their creative thinking skills by thinking of a number of different solutions to the same problem. The children had fun with Mrs. Schwarz, and we look forward to her next lesson!

2-2 National Convention

We held a mini classroom "National Convention" this week as the next step in our election process! Our goal was to narrow down our 4 candidates for class mayor down to 2. The class split in half, and each half chose their preferred candidate. Our two remaining candidates are.... "Fair Frank" and "Silly Sally!" The kids were eager to begin the campaign process. Our candidates gave a small speech thanking everyone for their support and reminded us of what they will do if they are elected to be our class leader. The children went on to make posters and campaign buttons showing which candidate they thought would best represent our class. The candidates went around shaking hands and saying hello to the voters while they worked on the campaign. The children are eager to make their voice heard in our class election on November 5th!

Our Community Research Continues!

The children were SO EXCITED to meet a government worker in the field that they have been researching! The children have been searching for the answers to the questions that they came up with in their small groups. They used the internet and they looked in books. Unfortunately, there were still some questions that they had answers to! The perfect solution was to ask an actual expert. On Friday afternoon we had these wonderful people pop in for an interview: Firefighter: Dave Bacino (Mrs. Schellinger's son-in-law!) Librarian: Julie Jurgens in the Library Media Center (she brought the bookmobile to us!) Nurse: Mary Sterrenberg (a public nurse from Village Hall) Park District: Elizabeth Robinson (Mr. Robinson's wife) Post Office: Dick Poteracki (retired mailman, also a Dryden crossing guard!) The children really dug deep and asked some great questions! We will be pooling our research with the other 2nd grade classrooms on Monday, and the kids will be sharing their research with the whole grade level next Thursday!

We are Writers!

The children are now in the middle of their LETTER WRITING unit! They are going to be exposed to so many different types of letters in the next few weeks! We started off by talking about the 5 main parts of a friendly letter.

Then the kids were ready to write their first friendly letter. They wrote it to me! In their friendly letter, they told me how they thought 2nd grade was going so far. They highlighted the Date, the Greeting, the Body, the Closing, and the signature to make sure we had all of those important pieces in our writing.

Next the kids learned how to write a thank you note! We noticed that the SAME 5 parts are in a thank you note, but our focus changed a bit. We made sure to: 1) Specifically say thank you for the gift or action 2) Tell how it made us feel 3) Add a few kind sentiments 4) End with a closing sentence. The children wrote a thank-you note to Officer Hajek at the AHPD for a great tour of the Police Department, and they also wrote a thank you note to Miss Julie and Miss Teri at the AHML for bringing the Book Mobile for a visit on Tuesday! The kids did a really nice job writing authentic thank-you notes this week!

The 3rd type of writing the kids practiced this week was writing an INVITATION. We recognized that its important to include the WHO, WHAT, WHERE, WHY, and WHEN details of the event, as well as any other important details (what to bring, etc.) The children were so excited when they learned they were going to be making invitations for their parents to our music show on Tuesday! They worked so hard and put so much effort into their work. We hope you liked our invitations (and we hope you can come to our show!)

Math Update

The children reviewed place value in 2 and 3 digit numbers. We reviewed coin values and exchanges among different coins (5 pennies = 1 nickel, etc.) and the children practiced “buying” items in the Fruit and Vegetable Stand. They had to find a variety of coin combinations to buy select items. We also practiced making change. The children learned to start at the cost of the item, and then count up to the amount paid to find the change. They found the hundreds chart on their desk to be a useful tool! Thank you for your help with your child's math homework at home. They did a wonderful job finding real items in ads and writing down the dollar/coin combinations required to purchase them. It really was quality practice!

The children also reviewed telling time. They learned that the hour hand is always moving just as the minute hand is, only at a slower rate. We practiced telling time by only looking at the hour hand! We noticed that when the hour hand is half way in between two numbers, it is about half past, or 30 minutes past the hour. (See the clock below :)

Reading Update

The common theme to our literacy activities this week was animal rescues. Our whole group story was called, “A Harbor Seal Pup Grows Up.” It was about a young seal that is unintentionally abandoned by its mother as she waits on the beach for her to return with her food. She is rescued, helped, and released back into the ocean. New vocabulary words from this selection include: examines,hunger, mammal, normal, rescued, and young. The comprehension strategy we focused on this week was summarizing. We did this by sequencing the key events into 3 parts: the beginning, middle, and end. This is a simple way to do a comprehension check with your child once they've finished reading a book at home, too! We made sure to include sequencing words that included: FIRST, NEXT, THEN, and LAST as we practiced this skill. The children also met in their small guided reading groups. Each group read about another animal who was endangered. Bald eagles, tigers, and whales also need our help! After each group read their book, we looked up a video of these animals on You Tube to see a short video segment of these actual animals, their actions, and characteristics we were just reading about. Its important to connect the books we are reading to the ourselves, the world, or to additional texts in order to deepen our understanding. The kids were excited to see a few minutes of a whale jumping out of the water, and a couple of tiger cubs playing!

Look what ROLLED in today!

The children had so much fun visiting the Book Mobile today at school! So many of the kids remembered to bring their library cards today and were able to check out a couple of items. We learned that the book mobile houses 4,000 materials, including books, movies, video games, music CDs, and magazines! They also carry cookbooks, too! :) The Bookmobile visits Scarsdale every other Thursday from 6:15-7:30. It will be there this Thursday, 10/25 if you want to return, browse, or borrow more books! Reading is FUN! Click here for the link to the Bookmobile's route and schedule.

Our field trip to the Arlington Heights Police Department!

We were so fortunate to have a rain-free walk to the Arlington Heights Police Department on Friday morning! Thank you to Mrs. Cacini, Mrs. Patterson, Mrs. Repple, Mrs. Strimling, and Mrs. Katsogianos for coming along with us! The children seemed to enjoy their walk on the chilly fall day, and it was so much fun learning about government community services in such an authentic way! Officer Hajek explained the routines and procedures that police officers follow, and he showed us around the police station including the male and female jail cells, the shooting range, the evidence room, the report room, and he let us get up and close to a police car! He reinforced several important messages while talking to the children that included: always tell the truth and take responsibility for your actions; stay away from dangerous objects; always show respect; and listen to your parents and teachers! The children learned that the jail is not a fun place to be, and we should make sure to follow the laws of our community. They were especially interested in the car that was pulled over- in front of the police station- someone was breaking the law! Authentic learning, indeed!

Luca is a Star Student!

 Luca had a fabulous week as our Star Student. We celebrated his birthday with him on Tuesday! We also learned that he did a phenomenal job in his hockey game this week- scoring 3 goals! WOW!  Luca's mom came to school and helped us out with our research project on Thursday, and we were excited to welcome Luca's mom again to class on Friday afternoon to help out with his experiment! We watched as Lucas blended separate colors together into one color by spinning them quickly. What a neat experiment! Our week ended with a great read aloud story- Yertle the Turtle. What a great week you had, Luca!

Reading Update

The common theme to our literacy activities this week was seeds and planting. Our whole group story was called, “The Tiny Seed” by Eric Carle. It was about a little seed that blows through the air with its seed companions.  The seeds face a variety of dangers including potentially landing in the ocean and desert, blowing too close to the sun and too close to the mountaintops, being eaten by birds, and being picked by humans! It was a miracle that the little seed survived!  The comprehension strategy we focused on was drawing conclusions.  To do this, we first identified important facts from the story. Then we put these facts together to determine what the author was intending for us to understand, without directly stating it. The children concluded that not all seeds grow into plants! They also realized that the seed needs just the right amount of  heat, water, and nutrients to survive.  New vocabulary words from this selection include: burst, desert, drifts, drowns, gently and neighbor. 

Math Update

We have reached the end of Unit 2, after working with “in and out” boxes and “frames and arrows” problems.  The children have not only completed these problems using a variety of rules, but they have had to critically look at completed problems and identify the rule on their own.  They have had practice with equivalent names, fact families, and writing addition and subtraction story problems based on a given fact family. The children took their Unit 2 assessment this week, and they did a great job! We are ready to delve into Unit 3- the children will be working with place value, money, and time!

The Progressive Dinner!

Here are some shots of the wonderful project our class contributed to the Progressive Dinner party, thanks to Mrs. Strimling! It was a personalized Dryden Baggo game, and it looked really amazing! The kids signed the bean bags for a small personal touch. I can't wait to hear who the big winner was! Thank you to everyone who contributed to this fundraising event for our school. Your generosity was very much appreciated!

The Election Process

Our Citizenship lessons this week discussed the process of voting! Our new vocabulary words were "majority" and "ballot." We discussed how our vote is a choice that gets counted, and whoever/whatever receives the most votes wins. We did a few "show of hand" votes to practice- and we noticed that many of the children looked around to see what their friends had chosen, and a few even changed their vote! We talked about how a secret ballot keeps the voter's choice private, and each person's vote remains unaffected by others' choices or feelings. The kids decided that the secret ballot was a more fair way to vote to get the voter's true choice, and it respected everyone's privacy to make their own decision, too! 

We put together an "election timeline" that helped us better understand the election process. We briefly discussed the PRIMARIES, during which many candidates show their interest in running for the office of President. Then we learned about the NATIONAL CONVENTION during which the Democrat and Republican Parties name their candidate. The children are aware that our two candidates for President are our current President Barack Obama, and Governor Mitt Romney! We moved on to discuss CAMPAIGN process- during which the candidates are giving speeches, having debates, making commercials, etc, to tell the voters what their plans are and why we should vote for them! We might see posters, signs, and buttons that show who fellow citizens are supporting. (We realized that this is currently where we are in the election process!) Coming up on November 6th is the ELECTION when its time for the voters go to the polls to make their choice.  Finally on January 20th will be the INAUGURATION, or "swearing in" of the President of the United States for the next 4 years!

 We have begun a mock election with fictional characters who are running for our class mayor. Our class election will follow the same format! We are currently in the Primary stage where our 4 candidates have announced their intentions to run for office. They are "Tough Tiffany, "Healthy Harry," "Fair Frank," and "Silly Sally." Our candidates have each given a speech sharing their intentions, and we will be narrowing our 4 candidates down to 2 in our National Convention next week. Its so fascinating to watch the children participate in the election process on a smaller scale! They are very interested and engaged in this process!

Student Researchers...

The children broke down into their small groups to get back to work on their research projects on service workers in the community. We were so thankful to have the help of Mrs. Patterson, Mr. Delea, Mrs. Repple, and Mrs. Bir! They helped the children move from the "question-asking" stage, to the "research" stage. Mrs. Dufern brought in the laptops and each small group began looking online -and in books- to find new information about their topic, as well as to answer some of the questions they came up with! The children noted important facts they wanted to remember by jotting them down on a post-it note, and sticking it to their group's poster. We also learned that next week, we will have a LIVE expert visit each group! We will have a retired mail carrier, a firefighter, a librarian from the AHML, a nurse from the village, and a park district employee (who happens to be MRS. Robinson!) The children are so excited to continue their studies!

A Hard Lock-Down Drill

The children may have told you we had another drill at school this week. On Thursday, we practiced our "Hard Lock-Down" procedure. The goal during this drill is to make sure we are in a secured (locked) space, away from the view of a window or door, and to simply remain quiet during this time. We happened to be in the library for this drill, and the children again showed wonderful behavior- and many actually used our few minutes of quiet to read their new library books! :)

The Book Mobile is on its way!

Hello! During our citizenship lesson today, the children and I talked about how our taxes pay for government services including: the police department, fire department, our library, parks, our schools and more. The children are going to break into small research groups to study five of these wonderful services that keep our community happy, healthy, informed, and safe! This is the perfect opportunity to let you know that we have arranged for one of our government services to visit the Dryden 2nd Graders! The Arlington Heights Memorial Library's Book Mobile will be visiting Dryden School for us to visit, learn about, and even check out books! Have your child bring their library card to school next Tuesday, October 23rd!

Bus Safety

We had a brief bus evacuation drill at school on Thursday morning. Even though a number of our students do not take the bus on a daily basis, we all participate in field trips that may require the use of a bus. Our chat with the bus driver on Thursday reminded us of proper behavior on the bus. We also learned what to do in case of an emergency. The bus driver demonstrated how the radio works, where the emergency exits are, and how to properly evacuate the bus. Now we are ready for a field trip! :)

A Fire Drill

We had an all-school fire drill Wednesday morning with the assistance of the Arlington Heights Police Department. We remembered to turn off the lights and close the door, and the children were quiet and attentive during this very important practice. They did everything exactly as they should! I was very impressed with the outstanding behavior I saw from my class! Great Job!

Our Citizenship unit has begun!

We are very excited to begin our studies of our country, our government, and the landmarks, services, and liberties that are associated with it! We started off our unit listening to the song "America, the Beautiful." We thought about the reasons that Katharine Lee Bates may have had that would cause her to write this song! We listened to and read the words carefully and we decided that Katharine Lee Bates has a lot of pride for her country. This pride for our country is known as patriotism, and the children and I thought of other ways that we can show our patriotism! We thought of our National Anthem that we hear before our favorite sporting events, the flag that is flying in front of our school and classroom, and saying the Pledge of Allegiance each day at school. New vocabulary words we focused on this week include: government, law, consequence, patriotism, tax, and vote. We also discussed why we have rules and laws in our home, school, community, state, and country. They keep us safe and protected! We also discussed consequences to breaking the law.

We have scheduled a field trip to the Arlington Heights Police Department for this coming Friday, October 19th. Thank you for sending your permission slips back so promptly! We are looking forward to this authentic learning experience!

Reading Update

This week was a "Week 6" or a review week in our Treasures reading curriculum. The children and I reviewed skills we have been working on over the last 5 weeks of school (paying careful attention to the use of quotation marks- as well as combining sentences :) and they took their Unit 1 Assessment yesterday at school. This was a lengthy assessment that contained 2 extended responses. The children worked very hard during this time!

Being a review week, the children had the opportunity to choose their very own spelling list this week! The children were asked to consider past spelling words that were tricky, words they have tried to use in their journals that they didn't yet know how to spell, current social studies words from our citizenship unit, or words related to our month or time of year. I was AMAZED at the challenging words the children chose for themselves! I saw "Washington, DC," "patriotism," "government," "pumpkin," and "because" appear on our lists. Way to go, class! I'm so excited to see how pushed yourselves to learn these words this week! I am so eager to grade these tests! We will be back on track with our regular reading, spelling, and fluency activities next week.

Math Update

This week we reviewed name collection boxes, and we worked to find several different names for a given number. To reinforce this skill, the children and I played “Name that Number” as a class. We put 5 numbers on the board, with one "Target" number that we were shooting for. We practiced adding and subtracting two, three, and even 4 of these numbers in order to hit the "target." You can play at home as well! (Both players get 5 cards, dealt face up. One card is flipped over from the pile. The first player tries to add or subtract any combination of their 5 cards to total the card that was drawn, taking the cards that they used and replacing with new ones. If player 1 cannot find a combination that works, they can draw another card or shift to player 2. The players take turns until the cards are gone. The player with the most cards at the end of the game wins!) What a sneaky way to practice adding and subtracting! Remember you can access your Everydaymathonline.com account at home to play this game online, too!

The children and I also worked with "Frames and Arrows" and "In and Out Box" problems. Frames and arrows problems are basically a sequence or pattern of numbers that we either a) need to identify the rule or pattern b) need to complete the rule or pattern or c) need to both identify the rule AND complete the pattern! The kids seem to enjoy these types of problems! Our Unit 2 math test is approaching next week.

A Skype chat from ITALY!

Something really cool happened at school yesterday! Our class had a SKYPE chat with our classmate Luca, who is on a family vacation in Italy right now. He popped up on our computer screen yesterday afternoon at 1:30. It was 8:30 pm in Italy, and Luca had just finished eating dinner. We learned that he is in Genoa, Italy, which is the city that Christopher Columbus came from. Luca's mom showed us the view from the window, and we saw a huge hill or mountain with lights in it from the homes that are there. Luca has family there that lives on the port- they are near the Mediterranean Sea! When our chat with Luca ended, we quickly pulled down our classroom map to locate exactly Luca was. Luca told us that his family saw the Leaning Tower of Pisa on his trip, and also the Colosseum in Rome. We looked up the Leaning Tower of Pisa and learned a few new facts about it- did you know that the reason it is leaning is that it was built on a soft foundation? We learned a number of things through this experience! Another fact: Luca can speak Italian! How awesome it is to have a world traveler in our class that can share his experience with us while he is away!

Science Update

During our last few science lessons on motion, the children and I explored the rate of speed of falling objects. We dropped metal, cork, and glass balls at the same time, and we noticed that even though they have different weights, they dropped at the exact same rate of speed. In order to test this theory a little bit further, we dropped a huge 3 pound dictionary at the same time as a small cork ball to see what would happen. We found the exact same results. The dictionary and the small cork ball landed at the same time. We did notice, however, that heavier objects made a much deeper impact than the lighter objects when we dropped them in a pan of sand. The cork ball made a small indentation, the glass ball made a larger indentation, and the metal ball dropped several inches into the sand! The children and I enjoyed our unit on motion, and we learned so much! Now we are switching gears back to social studies... our Citizenship unit is up next- just in time for the upcoming election!

Reading Update

The common theme to our literacy activities this week was “Coming to America.” We talked this week about immigrants who come to America and we discussed reasons that they may come here- we are a strong, free country! We also talked about customs people from other countries bring along with them. Our whole group story was called, “My Name is Yoon.” It was about a little girl who moved with her family to America from Korea. She was hesitant to learn English and to make new friends. When we arrived at the point in the story that Yoon first wrote her name in English, the students in our class actually clapped for her because they were so happy! That was the first time I have seen students react in such a moving way to this story! It was very touching! Our comprehension strategy was making predictions, so as we read through the story, the children paused to think about what was going to happen next. Aside from our whole group lessons, the children met with their small guided reading groups as well. Each group read from the genre of historical fiction. We learned that historical fiction is a story that did not really happen, but was based on true historical events. In the guided reading groups we focused further on this strategy, we practiced our decoding strategies, and we noticed our weekly vocabulary words! Our new vocabulary words from this week included: cuddle, favorite, patient, practiced, settled, and wrinkled. The children also worked this week to identify words with inflected verb endings. We noticed that the ‘ed’ and ‘ing’ at the end of words give us information about when the word is taking place- in the past or in the present!

Our grammar lessons were woven into our reading lessons as well. The children practiced identifying compound subjects and predicates. They also worked to combine 2 sentences that contained redundant information into one clear and concise sentence. We also practiced identifying "talking" sentences, and incorporating quotations marks into these sentences!