A prosperous week in 2-2!

What a full week we had at school!

Our whole group story this week was called "The Alvin Ailey Kids School of Dance." The children again worked on the skill of summarizing. We pulled the most important parts sequentially out of the story to create a summary. The children worked on the irregular verb "have" during grammar. 

Our text talk story of the week was "Everybody Cooks Rice." It was a cute story about a little girl off to find her brother for dinner. She stops in at all of her neighbors' houses looking for him, sampling their dinners along the way. The little girl noted that her neighbors were from Italy, Germany, France, Barbados and more, and they all were having their own versions of rice for dinner.  The robust words we practiced this week include: community, appetizing, grumbling, diversity,  The children kept track of their usage of these new words on the white board. The winner of the week was ... diversity!                                                                                                          

                                                             

Our geometry lessons continue! Using  "Magneatos" (magnetic pieces) the children worked to identify lines of symmetry in a series of shapes. They also worked with partner to create series of pyramids. The children practiced identifying the faces, bases, edges and vertices on each shape.        

                                                                                                 

The children and I began our studies of how holidays are celebrated in countries other than our own. We talked about the holidays in both Germany and Mexico. The children enjoyed constructing a tree using their traced hands as branches. They also created poinsettias to adorn our classroom based on the flower that Joel Poinsett brought to the US from Mexico! 

Ola constructs a poinsettia out of construction paper!

Our classroom is beginning to look very festive...

The children continued to flex their creative muscles after listening to the story "The Night Before Christmas." The children were challenged to describe their house the night before their favorite holiday. They wrote about this holiday of their choice and described it in detail. They went on to draw a picture of what they would be dreaming about as their favorite holiday approached. These projects turned out so cute and are hanging in the hallway outside of our classroom.

We celebrated our star student, Filip, this week at school! Filip enjoyed sharing an experiment with his classmates that got them thinking about the mixing of colors. Using a clear glass of water placed inside a clear bowl of water, Filip used food coloring to show how the colors red and yellow mix to make orange. What a cool experiment! We just love having Filip in class with us this year! He is such an honest, sincere, good hearted, and hard working student! We enjoyed spending Friday afternoon with his mother and listening to Filip read Sneezy the Snowman to the class.

Some proud American citizens!

It was so great to meet with everyone to discuss the children's progress during our parent teacher conferences last week. The children are so fortunate to have such interested and supportive families! We jumped right back into the swing of things at school. The only difference this week was we had a new friendly face in our classroom! We welcome Jaimie to our classroom and look forward to getting to know her better!

Thank you for all of your hard work with the children on their landmark projects. It was so much fun to see them take ownership of their learning and teach their peers all that they had learned. The children's projects added a whole new dimension to our citizenship unit!

Once all of the presentations were complete, we invited Mrs. Coyle and Mrs. Glaser's first grade class to a "Landmark Fair" in our classroom. Our students set up their projects, and the first graders walked through our classroom and stopped to listen to new facts from us!

During reading this week, we read a nonfiction piece called "Meet the Super Croc." We learned how to summarize a text by only sharing the main ideas, as opposed to retelling the entire story.

In order to enhance our vocabularies, we started a program called "Text Talk" this week as well. The story that anchored our lessons this week was The Bad Case of Stripes.  Our new words included: remedies, distraction, contagious, perplexed, altered, and vanished. The children were encouraged to use these words in their everyday dialogue as much as they could, and we tallied points next to each word as each one was used. Did your child tell you who our "Word Winner" was? It was distraction! It was fun to see the children's wheels turning as they worked to incorporate these words into their vocabularies. They did a great job!

During math, our lessons in Geometry have begun. The children learned about what a "point" is, and practiced clearly labeling a series of points with capital letters. Next they learned about what a "line segment" is. They connected two points to create a line segment, and noticed that the line segment could continue on in either direction. They labeled their line segments using the name of both points.  We went on to look for parallel lines all around our classroom. The children found the ceiling tiles, mailboxes, bookshelves, mini blinds, and hundreds chart all contained parallel lines! We learned that parallel lines will never ever cross.  The children also worked to build up their strength of their addition facts through a series of mad minutes and some daily practice with xtramath.org. Thank you for helping review those addition facts a few minutes at home each night too! Its so helpful as we apply those facts during daily lessons.


Our unit on Citizenship has come to an end. We reviewed key concepts on Friday morning and the children took their unit assessment. Coming up, the children will be learning a little bit about holidays around the world during the month of December.


Finally, we had our first star student presentation this week! Mia did a terrific job sharing an experiment called "Air Rocket" with the class. She showed them how she was able to use air pressure to propel a balloon taped to a string attached to two chairs -across the classroom. We were so happy to spend some time on Friday afternoon with Mia's mom and dad, her older sister Elise, and her grandma and grandpa too! Mia is a sweet, sparkly girl and we are so happy to have her in our class!

That's all for now! Thank you so much for your interest in our learning at school!
Have a great weekend!

Weekly Wrap-Up!

We had a wonderful, full week at school!

Math
The children were hard at work reviewing and preparing for their Unit 4 math test. We practiced making ballpark estimates, making change, and the partial sums algorithm before the children took their assessment on Thursday. After reviewing the assessments upon completion, I was so pleased to see how well the children were able to demonstrate their understanding of these concepts!

Reading
We read a passage about the first Thanksgiving this week. After reading, the children worked to locate answers to a series of questions in the text and then highlighted them. Then they transferred these answers to the questions in writing, using words from the question in the answer. They did a great job!

Handwriting
We focused a bit on our handwriting as well. The children were reminded of good posture while sitting in their chairs (No flamingos allowed! Both feet need to be on the floor :) We reviewed the letters o, a, and d to ensure that the children are forming those letters beginning in the middle at the center line. The a and the d are made "around, up, and down" as opposed to the circles and sticks that they may have learned back in kindergarten. Forming these letters properly is so important as we begin the transition to cursive after the new year. The children were encouraged to make their tall letters taller than the rest, and to put appropriate spacing between their words. The handwriting fairy popped in to visit some exceptionally neat work! :)

Writing
The children and I practiced writing a series of steps in a sequence using the transitional words first, next, then, last. The children then wrote their very own recipes for how to cook a Turkey! They considered the food, seasonings, and other materials that were necessary in the process. They also decided how hot the oven should be and how long the turkey should cook. (Some children suggested fun family activities to pass the time while cooking- including board games!) We have some creative thinkers in our class this year!

Social Studies
Our study on citizenship continues! We are so excited to see the children's US landmark projects when they return from Thanksgiving break! Once everyone has presented their projects, the children will have an "open house" with a 1st grade class to share their learning and what the project that they created. It will be so much fun to watch the children take charge of their learning! This week we reviewed the meaning of the Pledge of Allegiance, we learned about the history of our national anthem "The Star Spangled Banner," and after watching a few renditions of this patriotic song online by Carrie Underwood and Taylor Swift at the start of past Super Bowls and World Series games, we created star-spangled windsocks to decorate our classroom! We will be wrapping up this unit and will move into a mini unit about holidays around the world!

It was a terrific week at school, and so much was accomplished. The children are adjusting nicely to new captain of the 2-2 ship :) as well as the expectations that go along with her! Mrs. Schmidt and I are looking forward to meeting with all of you next week to discuss your child's learning and progress at Parent/Teacher conferences!

Coming up:
Monday, November 24 and Tuesday November 25: Parent Teacher Conferences
Monday, December 1: US landmark projects are due, presentations will take place that week
Friday, December 5: Our 1st Star Student presentations begin with Mia!

I wish everyone a wonderful and relaxing Thanksgiving holiday with family and friends!

Greetings! I'm so happy to be back in the classroom, learning and discovering alongside the students in 2-2. Thank you to Mrs. Schmidt for getting this school year off to a great start! The children and I had a wonderful first few days together. We spent some time getting to know each other, and then we got right to work!

 We read a new whole group story called "Head, Body, Legs." This story lent itself to the concept of cause and effect. After reading and re-reading the story in order to absorb the content, the children worked in their small groups to identify examples if one action that caused another to occur.

The children practiced logging on to their Dream Box accounts. Using the iPads, the children were able to "play" with their math skills. This program is designed to differentiate math concepts based on content, pace, and sequence. It is a highly motivating way for children to strengthen their math knowledge! They were so excited to begin, and I was excited to monitor their progress and growth from my computer at the same time! :)

During our math lessons this week, the children practiced making ballpark estimates. We learned that if the digit in the ones place is a 5 or higher, we should round UP. If the digit in the ones place is a 4 or less, we should round DOWN. We also practiced adding two digit numbers to find the actual answer, and then looked to see if they were close!

We also discussed measurement. The children talked about when they would use a ruler vs. a tape measure and why. Then they practiced measuring the height of their desk and chair, as well as the length and width of their math journal, in both inches and centimeters.

In Social Studies we continued the ongoing discussion about citizenship! The children are so excited about the landmarks they have selected for their landmark challenge projects and were eager to tell me! We discussed patriotism and listened to "America the Beautiful,"carefully considering the meaning behind the lyrics and how they show pride for our country. 

                 Here the children are reading about the American Flag and locating the answers directly in the text. They highlighted their answers using different colored crayons.

The Week in Review!

From the desk of Mrs. Schmidt...

It’s hard to believe that this is my last blog entry!!!  Where has the time gone?!?  It has been such a pleasure to teach your children this first trimester!  They are incredible individuals with wonderful and fun personalities!  It has been a blast, and I know that they will be in GREAT hands with Miss O’Sullivan!!!  Thanks for all of your support and warm welcome back to Dryden!!!

We focused on Realistic Fiction this week as we read “There’s Nothing Like Baseball,” making inferences about the characters and events as we read with our buddies.  Again, the emphasis was on combining our own background knowledge  with what we read in the text to draw conclusions about the story.  In our guided reading groups, we also read Realistic Fiction selections making sure to have stopping points in the stories to visualize what we were reading as well as to make predictions about what was to come.  Using the context of the stories, we tried to incorporate some grammar rules such as using quotation marks, pronouns, and past-tense verbs.  We love to use our highlighters to help us locate information!

To apply what we learned about the format of friendly letters, we wrote letters to Officer Romag at the Arlington Heights Police Department, thanking her for showing us around the police station and sharing information about her job on our recent field trip.  Again, the focus was on including the proper elements of a letter, such as a heading, greeting, body of a letter, and closing.  As a follow-up to our letter writing lessons, we wrote letters to Miss O’Sullivan, introducing ourselves so that she can get to know us better!

In math, we took a Trimester Assessment of all that we have learned so far this year.  This will be shared with you at conferences.   For our lessons this week, we have worked on solving number stories to find parts and totals for the presented problem.  We also measured temperatures using thermometers and solved temperature problems.

At LMC this week, we concluded our U.S. President research. Using the Pixie Program, we imported a picture of our chosen President on to Mt. Rushmore. Then, we tried to write convincing reasons that this person should be included on this national landmark.  The children utilized a lot of computer skills such as dragging and dropping images, creating text boxes, and working with font and color for this project.  Their work will be on display in the hall at conferences.  

We continue to work on our Citizenship Unit.  This week we learned about important patriotic symbols such as the American Flag, Liberty Bell, and bald eagle.  We compared these to our state of Illinois symbols, such as the violet for the state flower and the cardinal for the state bird.  Our future discussions will be what makes a good citizen.

Up & Coming

*Tuesday, November 11-Veterans’ Day-school is in session.  Mrs. Schmidt’s last day!

*Wednesday, November 12-Miss O’Sullivan returns!

*Friday, November 14-Dads & Donuts at 8:30 am in the Commons.

Mrs. O'Kelly explaining how to input their President research into the Pixie Program at the LMC