As Thanksgiving came and went, it was the perfect time to stop and think for a moment about all of the wonderful things around us for which to be thankful! I am thankful to be surrounded by hardworking and enthusiastic students and teachers, supportive families, and access to so many amazing resources, materials, and volunteers that help make learning interesting and exciting!
We celebrated our super star student, Chloe! We were happy to have Mrs. Tauber in as our special guest. Chloe and her mom modeled a fascinating experiment for the class demonstrating how a real submarine uses water to raise and lower itself in the ocean.
Together, they also shared one of my favorite books, To Fill a Bucket, with the class! This book was a terrific reminder that all of our actions can either fill another person's bucket with happiness, or take away from their bucket. We definitely want to be bucket fillers!
We are so fortunate to have a student as bright, energetic, and helpful as Chloe in our class!
Mayor Hayes took time out of his busy schedule to visit our 2nd graders and teach them about the government in Arlington Heights. He helped us understand how important the citizens are in our town, and he explained how decisions are made and how problems are solved.
The children were a captive audience and asked terrific questions!
The 2nd graders sparkled and shined in their musical! It was a compilation of silly tunes that brought smiles to all of our faces!
Thank you to Mrs. Tauber and Mrs. Zemla for volunteering their time to help our performance become the
best it could be!
Our reading lessons have shifted to mini lessons that support and reinforce key skills in our fiction unit. Below, the children are reading fiction texts and are looking carefully for words that note the passing of time. They also worked to analyze the main character's passage throughout the story. The children look for changes in this character's appearance, dialogue, and viewpoints as the story progresses.
As a part of our citizenship unit in social studies, our class is participating in a mock election with fictional characters. We are moving through the actual steps in our presidential election on a much smaller scale including Primaries, National Convention, Campaigning, and coming up will be the election and inauguration!
We started off meeting four candidates who shared their viewpoint and platform with the class.
The class then split into two main parties to nominate the one candidate that they felt represented their viewpoints the closest.
Nicholas and Dawid's candidates were nominated to continue in our class election. These boys are doing an outstanding job playing the roles of their characters! They have given speeches, offered handshakes to their voters, and they even participated in a debate!
Another element of our citizenship unit is our president research reports. With the guidance of Mrs. O'Kelly in the LMC, the children researched and learned about one of our earliest presidents. The children quickly became their president's expert! They went on to draw the face of their president to help him come to life! These finished projects turned out great, and are hanging proudly in the hallway outside our classroom.
Back to our class election- here are a few photos of the children wearing buttons and making campaign posters to support their candidates!
The children are learning that voting is a privilege and a responsibility that citizens of the United States are fortunate to have.
We celebrated Michael's star student week as we approached our Thanksgiving extended holiday. It was great to meet Michael's sister who shared a favorite story with our class, as well as Michael's dad who assisted Michael with his experiment! Michael showed his classmates how he was able to transfer energy from a lemon to a tiny lightbulb, causing it to light up! Amazing!
We took some time this week to learn about the voyage of the Pilgrims on the Mayflower back in 1620 leading up to the first Thanksgivingf. We realized that the freedoms that we enjoy today were achieved after trying times. The children were encouraged to form an opinion and then support their thinking with evidence from our learning while answering the question- Would YOU have boarded the Mayflower? Why or why not? The children's choices and reasoning were outstanding. I especially loved to see that their ideas were supported with facts! These were fun and so interesting to read.
Here is our turkey of thanks! I hope everyone enjoyed their Thanksgiving and this precious time with family and friends!
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