See ya, September!

We have completed our first full month of school, and boy was it a full one!

Below, view photos of some of our 2nd grade adventures this week.

Look out October, here we come! :)

Our unit on life cycles has begun! The children traced and measured a hand and a foot so we can see just how much we grow over the course of the school year! We anticipate the arrival of our caterpillars so we can watch and learn about their life, too!

The children have LOVED the exploration and collaboration that the cardboard challenge experience has provided us.  They have really interesting and creative ideas and it was so much fun to watch them try and tweak and try again to make those ideas come to life!

It was picture day on Thursday! The children looked adorable in their picture day outfits and their smiles sparkled! :)

One of our reading lessons this week revolved around the concept of retelling. We have been talking about ways to connect more deeply with the text. The children practiced visualizing, re-reading, and making connections to go from the "wading pool" as we called it to the "diving well!"  This week the children took their reading further by considering the most important parts of the story: the characters, problem, beginning, middle, end, and the conflict resolution. We practiced as a whole class with The Interrupting Chicken" and then the children were challenged to practice the same skill after reading a book of their choice on their own.

One way the children have been interacting with each other and the text is by participating in the "fish bowl."  The children will eagerly hop up to volunteer to sit in the conversation chairs and take turns discussing the topic or question of the moment.

In the LMC this week, we learned all about digital citizenship. The children listened and thought about ways to show responsibility using the internet. Then, they created a chatterpix message reiterating a key idea from today's lesson!

We realized our American flag is a bit out of the way and in the corner of the classroom, making it hard for everyone to see during the Pledge of Allegiance. The kids and I thought it would be a great responsibility for the "teacher's assistant" to hold the flag for everyone to see each morning! Thanks, Max, for displaying our flag so proudly for us this week!

We talked a bit more about the "Zones of Regulation" this week. The children have begun to develop a good self awareness of the zone they are in throughout the day. Our lesson today provided the children with various scenarios, and they moved to stand underneath the color that best corresponded with the feelings in this zone. We noticed that some scenarios could cause different feelings for different people, and that's okay!

After talking about the different zones and reasons people might move from one zone to the next, we came to the understanding that it is OKAY to have feelings in each of the zones. The goal, however, is to find ways to get ourselves back to the green, happy, content zone. We reviewed some strategies that can help us get back to our happy place including taking a quiet break, getting a drink of water, listening to music, writing down how we are feeling, or even doing some jumping jacks or taking a walk!

We were so happy to welcome Nicholas' grandmother into the classroom for his star student presentation! We thought about how a ball rolls vs. how an egg rolls. We listened to a great story called "Otis," and we shared all of the terrific reasons that we are happy to have Nicholas in our class this year! He is such a happy, hard working, bright, and strong student, friend, and classmate!

Thank you for stopping by our blog this week!
Have a great weekend!