Hello!
Just a few reminders for you before sharing our exciting highlights of the week!
1) Mrs. Sessler will be having a lunch bunch with the students in our class this week! Students with class numbers 1-10 are invited to have their regular lunch with Mrs. Sessler on Tuesday 4/15 in the conference room, and students with class numbers 11-20 are invited to have their regular lunch with Mrs. Sessler on Thursday 4/17! The kids are looking forward to their special time with the principal!
2) Our field trip is all set for this Wednesday, 4/16, to the Arlington Heights Historical Museum! Thank you again for returning those permission slips and fees so promptly. We are looking forward to having Mrs. Schickerling, Mrs. Bevacqua, and Mrs. Grave along on the trip with us!
3) The children are going to be working on an Arlington Heights Landmark study in the LMC over the next few weeks that goes along with our social studies unit. Please make sure to turn in those landmark request forms on Monday, so the landmarks can be assigned and the learning can begin! We will discuss the "Then and Now" assignments on Monday, too!
4) Don't forget that there is no school this upcoming Friday, 4/18...
The children had a couple of unique learning experiences this week!
Author Andrea Beatty visited Dryden to share with us her experiences as a writer! She shared one of her books, talked about how she comes up with ideas to write about, and answered some of the children's questions. Thank you, Dryden PTA, for such an authentic learning experience!
The March Madness book bracket came to an end this week! Similar to the basketball March Madness brackets, Mrs. Powers and Mrs. Dufern created an awesome book bracket for the children to vote on some of their favorite books! Here the children are watching a short You Tube video prepared by our librarians, and then they voted for their final book selection. The final two choices were actually written by the same author, Mo Willems.... Ask your child who won! :)
Our whole group reading selection happened to be a play this week! The children read "Pushing Up the Sky," which was a Native American tale. As we looked carefully at the pictures and processed the text, we were able to make several connections to our learning in social studies about the Potowatomi Indians, who lived in our Arlington Heights area
long before us!
It was time to spruce up our classroom a bit for spring! During our independent work time, the children assembled adorable bunnies. They followed up their art work by writing several paragraphs in their writing journals about bunnies, gardens, spring, etc!
They turned out so cute! Spring, we are ready for you! :)
The second unique opportunity provided to us by the PTA was a visit by the Chicago Boyz Acrobat Team. They amazed us with their ability to jump, tumble, and soar through the air!
They were jumping with not one, but two (and even 3 at one point!) jump ropes simultaneously! Wow!
That's our Erick with an acrobat leaping over him!
How exciting!
Katie Rose jumped in there with Erick too! She is 4th from the left!
They were so proud! And a little relieved too, I think! :)
THEN it was Danny's turn! The acrobats took turns leaping over him next!
Finally Mr. Deptula had his chance to shine! The acrobats were amazing!
Here he is with a student on his shoulders and an acrobat overhead!
This one looks as though the acrobat may land right ON them,
but they flew right over everyone every single time! The acrobat team also shared with us an important message of doing well in school, setting goals, and working hard to achieve them.
The children enjoyed the assembly very much!
Now that all of our students have finished up being star student, we are adding a few finishing touches to our star student books before they go home this week. Here, the children are writing down one word that describes each of their classmates!
With support from me and clear directions, the children are practicing facilitating the reading of our weekly Time for Kids newspapers in small groups! Each group has a leader who's goal is to keep everyone focused on the task at hand. They start by activating their background knowledge about the topic before reading!
Then, the leader calls on children who feel comfortable reading to the group. They can choose to read with a buddy or all together if that is their preference!
Then the children jot down "Important Information" that they read in this week's news. It can be a few important tidbits they learned, or a short summary of the text.
Finally, the group notes any new vocabulary words they learned, and any further questions they have about the topic. Last of all, they go through the "Nonfiction Checklist" that is listed down the side of the page. They check off any nonfiction text features they can find, including graphs, diagrams, pronunciations, bullet points, captions, etc. They have grown to be very comfortable during this independent group time! They are all grown up! :')
As I mentioned, our classroom star student presentations have ended, but now it is fun surprising the kids with mystery guests! This week, Mr. Deptula popped in to share information about himself that that the children may not already know!
He showed us pictures of his parents and his niece and nephew! He also showed us a calendar he makes every year with his silly faces, and he told us about the bands he plays in!
And he read us the book "The Sorcerer's Apprentice."
Our week ended with yet another unique and hands-on learning experience- it was an art appreciation lesson with Mrs. Bartels! She shared with us the history and work of Michelangelo during the Renaissance time period.
The children felt a piece of marble- they noted how hard it was! It must have been
very difficult to carve statues from long ago!
Then the children had the opportunity to imagine they were painting the Sistine Chapel on scaffolding on their backs like Michelangelo did hundreds of years ago. The children giggled and commented on how hard it was just to color with their crayons!
These were some of their finished products!
Aside from the learning I mentioned above, the children continue to meet with their guided reading groups, learn their capital cursive letters, and practice daily grammar, DOL, and DOG lessons. We have been working with decimal notation and money amounts using calculators during math, and we are learning as much as we can about the history of Arlington Heights before our field trip on Wednesday! We have covered the Potowatomi Indians, and now we are learning about the settlers that are moving in on their covered wagons. The children "packed" covered wagons this week, too, and will write a narrative about their experience moving west!
There is never a dull moment in 2nd grade! :)
Enjoy your weekend!
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