Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Happy St. Patrick's Day from 2-2!

It was so much fun to see the sea o'green in our class on Friday!

* The children were hard at work completing their persuasive writing pieces, carefully crafting details that they should have a new pet in their family!

* We read a favorite St. Patrick's day story, Tim O'Toole and the Wee Folk. The children were then challenged to come up with wishes they would make for themselves, their family, their school, their community, and the world!

* We learned about author Peter Brown in the LMC, who is making a trip to Dryden School in early April to share is writing expertise with the Dryden Dolphins!

* We read How to Catch a Leprechaun and the children participated in an engineering/design project! They were so excited to put their heads together to develop, design, and build a trap to capture a leprechaun. Such a huge array of skills come into play and different areas of the brain are awakened during projects like these. It is amazing to see the children's thought processes come to life!

 In the LMC we learned with Mrs. O'Kelly about author Peter Brown! He will be visiting Dryden in early April.

 We read Mr. Tiger Goes Wild and shared our thoughts about the story using nearpod!

We read "How to Catch a Leprechaun" together to start thinking about some ways to build a leprechaun trap!

 The kids broke into groups and considered which materials would help them to build the best trap.  Then they drew a few designs that they thought might work!

Then it was time to collaborate and build! The children worked, built, tweaked, and built some more!

 The children were beyond excited to share their innovative designs and ideas with their classmates!

Lots of luck and laughter to you on this St. Patrick's Day! :)

Lately in 2.2....

The Just Move it! Challenge 5k and 1 Mile run/walk fundraiser will be held on April 22nd at South Middle School.  This is a great family and community event that raises money for ABC25 grants.  Please consider participating as a runner/walker or a volunteer and help Dryden bring home the participation trophy this year!!

Early registration for the JMI Challenge is now open to all walkers and runners!  Please go to registration.  In order to guarantee that you receive a t-shirt for the race, you must register before April 7, 2017.

If anyone would like to volunteer to help make this year's race a huge success, please sign up here.

Donations Needed for Dryden STEAM Night- Thursday, May 4th 6:00-7:30 PM

Your donations of the following items would be greatly appreciated! They will be used as a part of the various activities and stations for STEAM Night. Please drop them off in our school office for Advanced Learning Facilitator, Laurie Wasik.  Thank you!

• Cardboard rolls from paper towels, toilet paper and wrapping paper
• Newspaper
• Cardboard boxes that have NOT contained food items, such as boxes from Amazon, or others similar

The children have been hard at work at their "Earth's Systems" reading unit. They are reading and learning more than you would believe about forces that change the earth including erosion, earthquakes, hurricanes, volcanoes, and even tsunamis. We are applying deep and thoughtful reading strategies to help us decode and build understanding with these complex topics.

I love when the children find something so fascinating in their books that they race over to show me and tell me! That's the kind of reading excitement I hope that they have forever! :)

As conferences approach next week, the children took a moment out of our busy day to think about how they are learning and progressing this year. They jotted down some of their ideas in a letter to their parents!

The LMC continues to support our learning in the classroom! The children were reading and listening to facts about the Australian state/territory they are studying. They have been taking careful notes that they will combine with their group members' notes to create a persuasive commerical, telling us why we should visit their territory!

The children were very engaged in authentic data collection during our math lessons. They measured and recorded their arm span and long jumps using collaborative teamwork!

The children wrote down their long jump on a post-it note. Then we SORTED our data in order by size! We noted that the smallest number is called the MINIMUM and the largest number is called the MAXIMUM.  When you subtract the minimum from the maximum, you can find the RANGE of the data set!

In order to find our class median, we had the minimum and the maximum sit down in our line until we got down to the students left in the middle.

Here was our median! :)

We practiced an important "Shelter in Place" drill so we would all remember how to quickly and safely respond in case of severe weather. Our class did great!