Wednesday August 27, 2008

Welcome to my Blog and to my Second Grade classroom in the West Wing! At this point in the year, we will have twenty friends in this room. There will be an equal number of boys and girls!

I am glad to be meeting you at Parent Orientation tonight and am very excited to meet and greet your children in the gym on Tuesday for their first day of Second Grade. Please remind them to bring in a snack, a Tee shirt for art class, their favorite book, and their "Summer Reading Challenge Folder". Wearing their Bus Name Tag will really help simplify the day for everyone.

If you can read this at home, it means that your subscription tonight worked.

                                Sincerely yours,

                                 Mrs. Liz Roper

            First Week: September 2-5, 2008

    In reflection of our school's commitment to the "Responsive Classroom" philosophy, we spent a lot of time this week getting to know each other as well as the classroom materials and expectations. We have been having  Morning Meeting in which we have tried several ways to "greet each other";some sharings; the calendar routine; and some unison reading of the message on the easel. By mid week , each child had a classroom job and was performing it to "tend" or care for our room.

    The empty wall outside our door has been filled with puzzle pieces the children decorated with drawings of themselves making our classroom a better place. On the wall to the right of the doorway, their June pictures of introduction will be replaced with a graph we did together using the mini-books they made about the favorite book from home each chose to bring in. To complete the graph, we needed to decide on five categories that would include all the different kinds of books we all enjoyed. Today this graph was used to help them answer questions about our graph data on individual sheets as math practice.

    As another way to help develop class cohesion, we all ate together with our classmates for the four lunches of the week. Now that they are comfortable with the routine, they will be able to choose to sit with friends from other classes for lunch.

    They learned and practiced responding to four different signals to get attention before instruction-giving, transitions, and group gatherings. They earned three "marbles" for compliments given to the entire class by adults (including me) in the school. Compiling marbles up to the red-line in the Marble Jar will earn them an extra recess. As you probably noticed, they labeled and are using Home/School Folders as a way to safely pass notes, notices, and papers back and forth. They also used one spiral-bound notebook as their Journals for completing short daily language or math messages in class. Lastly, we had two complete Math lessons, so we began using our "Math Journals" to practice concepts of sequencing numbers and adding coin values.

    Literacy has focused on Skills to  use in Reading Comprehension. We are learning to use "Metacognition" where we think about our thinking during our reading. I will continue to model this in the next few days with various books. We also focused on our "Schema" which means that information or experiences we already have . This helps to make a scaffold or framework for connecting our new  reading information to. Another term that refers to our "Schema" and which we will be using throughout the year in reading is making "Text-to-Self Connections". We are practicing this after I read and model books in the "Think Aloud" fashion then share and record our connections on a class "Anchor Chart".

    Lastly, we had our first "Science Companion" lesson today in which the idea of  "Doing Science through Investigation" was introduced. I modeled creating questions about some materials I chose, then tried out an investigation of those questions followed by recording the results. I divided the class into five smaller groups and let them chose several items from a table of materials- mostly recycleables. Then they needed to decide upon a question to investigate that would involve their particular materials. We will be carrying out these investigations on Monday.

    Whew! What a busy week! Thank you for your prompt completion and return of KES paperwork! 

            First Week: September 2-5, 2008

    In reflection of our school's commitment to the "Responsive Classroom" philosophy, we spent a lot of time this week getting to know each other as well as the classroom materials and expectations. We have been having  Morning Meeting in which we have tried several ways to "greet each other";some sharings; the calendar routine; and some unison reading of the message on the easel. By mid week , each child had a classroom job and was performing it to "tend" or care for our room.

    The empty wall outside our door has been filled with puzzle pieces the children decorated with drawings of themselves making our classroom a better place. On the wall to the right of the doorway, their June pictures of introduction will be replaced with a graph we did together using the mini-books they made about the favorite book from home each chose to bring in. To complete the graph, we needed to decide on five categories that would include all the different kinds of books we all enjoyed. Today this graph was used to help them answer questions about our graph data on individual sheets as math practice.

    As another way to help develop class cohesion, we all ate together with our classmates for the four lunches of the week. Now that they are comfortable with the routine, they will be able to choose to sit with friends from other classes for lunch.

    They learned and practiced responding to four different signals to get attention before instruction-giving, transitions, and group gatherings. They earned three "marbles" for compliments given to the entire class by adults (including me) in the school. Compiling marbles up to the red-line in the Marble Jar will earn them an extra recess. As you probably noticed, they labeled and are using Home/School Folders as a way to safely pass notes, notices, and papers back and forth. They also used one spiral-bound notebook as their Journals for completing short daily language or math messages in class. Lastly, we had two complete Math lessons, so we began using our "Math Journals" to practice concepts of sequencing numbers and adding coin values.

    Literacy has focused on Skills to  use in Reading Comprehension. We are learning to use "Metacognition" where we think about our thinking during our reading. I will continue to model this in the next few days with various books. We also focused on our "Schema" which means that information or experiences we already have . This helps to make a scaffold or framework for connecting our new  reading information to. Another term that refers to our "Schema" and which we will be using throughout the year in reading is making "Text-to-Self Connections". We are practicing this after I read and model books in the "Think Aloud" fashion then share and record our connections on a class "Anchor Chart".

    Lastly, we had our first "Science Companion" lesson today in which the idea of  "Doing Science through Investigation" was introduced. I modeled creating questions about some materials I chose, then tried out an investigation of those questions followed by recording the results. I divided the class into five smaller groups and let them chose several items from a table of materials- mostly recycleables. Then they needed to decide upon a question to investigate that would involve their particular materials. We will be carrying out these investigations on Monday.

    Whew! What a busy week! Thank you for your prompt completion and return of KES paperwork! 

           2nd Week: September 8-12, 2008

    With our first full week of school coming to an end, it's starting to feel like routines are falling into place. Greeting at Morning Meeting has provided continued practice on names while finding out  more about each other. After illustrating a class poem called "My New Friend" with a drawing of someone in the class new to him, we tried to guess which person was the "new friend". Today, our first "Book Talk"with oral sharing of books the children had read recently, was followed up by D.E.A.R. (Drop Everything And Read)time at which children swapped books. Almost every child remembered her Green Reading Log and the new one was dated to come home. At our snack in the afternoon, I was reading the classic My Father's Dragon to the class but in honor of English author Roald Dahl's (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) birthday tomorrow, I started to read his short book The Enormous Crocodile. As tomorrow is also American chocolatier Milton Hershey's birthday, we tasted his milk chocolate and started a fun end-of-the-week activity of inventing our own candy bars. By the middle of next week these should be hanging outside our room.

    Whole group lessons on reading comprehension strategies using our schema (what we know) by creating an Anchor chart for The Art Lesson and then each child filling in both sides of an Anchor (or T chart) for the Core Literature book Ira Sleeps Over. This was a good vehicle for discussing  some ways that friends should treat each other.  We've had several  "Word Study " lessons using our  Fundations  magnet boards, sound tapping words,  and reviewing digraphs ( 2 consonants that make one sound such as -sh or -ch) and blends (2 or more consonants that keep their own sound as they are blended together in words).

   In science, we started life cycles looking for repeating patterns in living organisms where the offspring resemble the parent (human) and where the offspring don't resemble the parent (bean plants). We'll continue this early next week with houseflies, sheep, and  frogs.  These discussions  were enhanced by cutting and pasting in their new Science Notebooks. In Social Studies we started learning about communities and neighborhoods that make them up.

    Third Week of School-September 15-19,2008

    "The times, they keep a changin'" to quote Bob Dylan. But outside our room, it's displays that keep changing. You may have noticed that the mini books that made our graph of favorite kinds of books came home early this week. In their place are our delicious student created candy bar designs to honor Milton Hershey and the author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl. As I read Dahl's shorter picture book The Enormous Crocodile during snack time, I realized again how much children delight in his not-so nice characters getting their "just rewards". Today our recent computer lab productions using "Pages" word processing combined with "Photo Booth" were hung to show our favorite times in school.

    On Tuesday, GATES Teacher Mrs. Glynn introduced her "Challenge of the Week" or "COWS" as she lovingly calls this supplemental math sheet. This is another aspect of "Critical Thinking Skills" which she will be teaching for six weeks. To the children she describes critical thinking as "thinking that isn't always easy". The yellow COWS sheet was optional. If your child didn't take one but decides to give it a try later on in the year, please let Mrs. Glynn or me know. There is a week's turn-around on them.

    This was the week for guests. Mrs. Mason (KES Occupational Therapist) and Mrs. Fornaro (School District Physical Therapist) talked with the kids about safely wearing their backpacks using both straps and carrying only what you need for the day in them. They demonstrated "good posture" (remember that from elementary school?) at desks and on the rug. A fun follow-up to practicing the tripod grip with pencils was the "Pencil Olympics" where they raced their fingers up and down their pencils while maintaining this grip. Lastly, backpacks were weighed and recommendations made about needed reductions in contents.

    Finally yesterday afternoon the Second Grade  was privileged to meet Mr. Thomas Harnett, Maine Attorney General for Civil Rights. He led an animated discussion about things that hurt people , especially prejudicial and intolerant words. The children heard him read a picture book entitled 10 Little Words  that encouraged children who are bystanders to befriend those who are teased and perhaps make a difference in their lives. A paper chain of our promises to make positive changes at our school was created. 

    Just as classmate Nicholas predicted, our monarch caterpillar changed from its J-shaped chrysalis to a complete adult butterfly in exactly two weeks. We observed part of its life span right during the time we were discussing the various spans of life of living organisms: bean plants, houseflies, sheep and humans in our science Life Cycles unit. Next we went on to discussions of generations of family members from babies to senior adults.

    In continuation of comprehension strategies, we learned that good readers "stop when they get confused" so they can figure out what they're not understanding. Sticky notes marked words that were troublesome in the William Steig book Amos and Boris so they could be looked up in the dictionary. Text-to- World (T-W) connections were introduced here with a hurricane during our recent hurricane season in the news.  These T-W connections were again looked for in The Great Kapok Tree and in Lynn Plourde's Summer's Vacation. The children recorded what they thought were T-W and T-S (Text-to Self) connections on sticky notes for these then used these to complete sheets, with their ideas being saved on a class T-chart or Anchor chart.                                                                                                                      Word Study skills of digraphs and consonant blends were built on our magnet boards then practiced on several phonics book pages. After watching a video about three different kinds of community neighborhoods: urban, suburban, and rural, the children pasted magazine pictures to show characteristic of life in these areas around the word labels on large sheets of paper. As we really haven't done a lot of work on paper, I am delaying introducing portfolios until this coming Friday so they have enough examples from which to make choices of their best works.

    Adding to our regular biweekly more structured Writers' Workshop, we tried our introductory session of "Writing Buddies" with Mrs. Washburn's class. After each child in both classes completed lists independent of one another of his/her favorite things to write about, the children looked around to find a student with one topic in common. Once paired, they began pre-planning by establishing the two main characters, giving them names, and thinking of a problem they wanted to solve in the story. They will meet again in two weeks from 8:30-9:00 on Friday to continue.

    Have a great last weekend of "summer"! Be sure to put the Ice Cream Social on your calendar for Thursday, September 25th. See you there!!!!

    4th Week of School: September 22-26, 2008

    How nice it was to see so many of students with their families last evening at the annual Ice Cream Social! Since it was a combined KES/Sea Road School PTA event, it was fun to talk with past children and parents. It was especially exciting to talk with a young man who is a KHS freshman but was in my class in a portable at Park Street School and he's contemplating his future!

    After my reading Eve Bunting's moving picture book Fly Away Home about a boy and his father who live in an airport, we charted their T-S sticky notes easily. Then I realized that it had been  difficult for them to make the T-W (Text-to World) connections as very few of them had seen or recognized homelessness in their experiences. Of course, that makes a positive statement about life in our area and in southern Maine. It was time to jump in with some second grade appropriate current events. The whole second grade subscribes to weekly "Time for Kids" with each teacher using this colorful news "magazine" in a different way. Using an early September issue with some familiar images : Barack Obama, the Olympics in China, and swimmer Michael Phelps, we read together and located specific parts of the TFK format.

    Another Literacy focus this week was the second grade favorite and District Core Literature selection: Frog and Toad are Friends. Even though most children are somewhat familiar with it, they still seem to enjoy reading the antics of grumpy Toad and his patient, cheerful friend, Frog. As an introduction, we discussed similarities and differences between real animal frogs and toads. This was a great opportunity to introduce the Venn diagram "graphic organizer". After group reading "The Letter", we reviewed what parts were the beginning, middle , and the end of the story .After reading "A Lost Button", we  described their two different personality traits and what made Frog such a good friend to Toad. Lastly, we began sorting these traits out onto another Venn diagram.

    In Word Study, we started learning how to decide which letters or combinations to use for the sound of /k/. These are, of course,  "c" which is almost always used at the beginning of words, like "cat". Then there's the digraph "ck" which is at the end of a word or syllable immediately following a short vowel like in the word "sock". The saga of making the sound of /k/ will continue next week. In other language skills, we had continued reminders about using upper case letters at the beginning of sentences and names, periods at the end of sentences, and using "I" when the letter "i" stands alone as a word. Soon, self-correcting these skills in one's own writing will be expected.

    We switched from thinking about the life cycles of human living organisms to that of the tree. We reviewed some appropriate vocabulary like trunk, branch, seedling, sapling, deciduous, and evergreen. After discussing how scientists use their senses to observe and record what they observe, we tramped out into the woods close by our Wing to meet our class tree. Observations were written down into their "Science Notebooks".Then these were shared and collated into a class list before the students made some predictions about what parts of the tree and its surroundings would change and grow during the year when we continue to observe it.

    The multiple papers that may come tumbling out of your child's backpack would be the ones he did not choose as his "Best Work" to put into his Portfolio. On Monday, we'll look at the brief form and how to fill it out before attaching it to his choice. These are intended to be for some reflection on something learned or done well recently. Also among those papers should be a green half sheet "Science Wish List" from the whole second grade.

   Some events coming up next week are the second grade "Walking Trip" around downtown Kennebunk on Thursday  October 2nd. We'll leave KES  at 9:00 , after a quick snack  as we'll not return until noon and have a late lunch at 12:30. Be sure to have your child wear comfortable shoes for walking and appropriate jackets or sweatshirts for the temperature as the buses only drop us off at the beginning and pick us up at the end. the places we will visit are Wallingford Farm, the KKW Water District, the Library, and Dairy Queen. This is the second part of our focus on "Community Helpers" as we had a presentation by some of the enthusiastic MSAD 71 "Grounds and Maintenance Crew" this past Tuesday. The children's "thank you letters" reflected their strong interest in all the fascinating equipment they finally got to see "up close and personal"!

    Two other notes for the upcoming week:

           -School Photo Day on Friday October 3

           -orders for KEPTA's Fall Fundraising  "Meadow Farms" products are due back October 6th, not on the 2nd as indicated by mistake on the sheet that came home this week.

Fifth Week of School: Sept. 29- October 3, 2008

    Dear Parents,

I just lost an hour's worth of typing of this week's many wonderful events. It is 5:30 p.m. on Friday and I am going home. You'll need to ask your children about the many activities we did including taking measurements of fall data of our class tree, learning about the 7 continents and the concept of Pangaea, our field trip around downtown Kennebunk, Text-to Text literature connections, and products and services in communities. I'll try to summarize in my forthcoming October newsletter. Sorry for the disappointment!

             Sixth Week: October 6-10, 2008

    It only seemed appropriate that this being "Fire Prevention Month" and the Second Grade going to visit the town's Emergency Facilities, that the week be punctuated by two evacuation drills. One was announced and one was not. For both, we practiced evacuating to what has been called our Secondary Evacuation Site. For the latter, the Fire Department was here to observe procedures. For our Classroom Extension to the Emergency Facilities, I want to thank the EMT crew who demonstrated with some real kids, the back board and neck collar for stabilizing potential neck and back injuries so they can load the  "patient" into the ambulance. They also used the stethoscope, then showed them the back and the cab with the radios.

    Many children were surprised to learn that the Police Station was once the Post Office as shown by a huge mural of the Pony Express delivery to Colonial Kennebunk. In the Police Station, Officer Carney pointed out the all-important Dispatch Center then we visited the Squad Room , Interview Room, and the Briefing Room before seeing the interiors and trunks of a squad car and the Animal Control Officer's car.

    There was Soooo much to see in the actual Fire Station as well as numerous Fire Fighters there, were eager to tell us about everything. A fire fighter donned all his "turn-out" gear from the steel-toed boots through the hood, helmet, mask, and tank so that they  could emphasize the look of a fire-fighter to help eliminate any fears. They explained that the goal of the gear is to cover all the officer's exposed skin and to keep out smoke which seems to be equally dangerous as flames in a fire situation. The differences between the ladder truck and the engine/pumper trucks were explained as well as the vast assortment of tools to help in both fires and car accidents. It was very impressive!

    Although we debriefed and made lists of what we had learned on this second "field trip" about community helpers, we did not start the thank you letters yet. We were still correcting the letters to the four other previous destinations so they can be delivered. My personal "thanks you's" go out to these parents who gave up an afternoon to keep us safe on our trip: Ann Charlton, Louise DeLorenzo, Diane Guay, Lisa Palmer-D'Orso, and Bill Van Deinse. We did take a break from the "Magic Treehouse volume : Vacation Under the Volcano during my "Teacher Read" portion of afternoon snack time to listen to some of the Community Helper books from the Kennebunk Free Library.

    In Writers' Workshop, Mrs. Lisa Erickson Harris has been helping the children transfer their "Favorite Summer Activity"  Power Plan onto the color coordinated strips. Next they will copy over the corrected strips onto a sheet of paper to have a finished product. In the area of creative writing, Mrs. Lisa VanDeinse helped pass out samples of 5 different kinds of apples in a sensory experience to elicit describing words. From their Writing Notebook lists of adjectives for Apples, Acorns, and Leaves, she helped them create their first acrostic poems with another choice being "Autumn" .

    In Readers" Workshop, we finally started Reading Groups with the books ranging from fiction, nonfiction and biography (Columbus, of course). Along with the groups, the children received their first "Center Contracts" for activities from a limited number of choices until they get used to how the whole system operates smoothly.Several of these centers will change weekly to add more variety such as the Listening Center and  Poem Pocket Chart.

    Lastly, in science we continued the Life Cycle Unit expanding from observing and recoding tree growth to human growth. Today we began measuring and recording fall data  of our height and making painted hand prints which we will glue into our notebooks then measure the length for that data. Along with foot size and head circumference, we will repeat this process in the spring to compare and, hopefully, observe growth. 

             Seventh Week-October 14-17, 2008

    With a shorter week due to the Columbus Day holiday and no field trips, this was a more settled week. It enabled us to progress on our daily academic schedule. Between our two Writers Workshops, the children were completing the final steps of copying over their "Favorite Summer Activity" narratives from their color-coded strips.. The newest step of creating a closing sentence that mirrors their opening Topic sentence brought their Power Plans full circle. Our acrostic poems about the season of fall, are in various states of completion. Several children were copying them onto leaf-shaped lined paper which they were framing with leaf-shaped colored construction paper. Soon these will appear in our hallway. Today our Writing Buddies program with Mrs. Washburn 's class continued. One completed story was sent home to a volunteer parent typist to create a finished piece for the boys to illustrate and read again and again!

    In other odds and ends, Mrs. Glynn did a critical thinking lesson on categorizing items by locating what didn't belong in the group. If I am correct in my dates, next Tuesday will be her last session with us at this part of the year. During our "in class lunch" on Wednesday's Early Release plan, we watched two short movies via the school's subscription to "Brain Pop, Junior". One was explaining the differences between people's "Wants and Needs" which is part of our Social Studies' community study. Then we learned a little bit more about the accomplishments of explorer Christopher Columbus in the New World. Lastly, you may have noticed that a lot of corrected papers came home yesterday. As part of helping our classmate Cameron gather his work for moving away, we all sorted through piles to put some items (ie.) Candy Bar designs, Reading Logs, and "Rural, Suburban, and Urban" directly into their portfolios and to make choices about recent "Best Works". Every child wrote a goodbye message into a class book for Cameron to take with him  to his new home in Blue Hill.

    Readers' Workshop Centers have been a hubbub of activity. I was really excited about how many wonderful, different stories were written about pumpkins and scarecrows at the Writing Center. Several children completed spelling practice by stamping words from 6-word lists individualized from each child's recent writing, especially Weekend News. Meanwhile, three Reading Groups completed books- one fiction and two nonfiction, plus response activities- then signed out Book Bags to take these home for further re-reading and completing  activity sheets. Next week, the Listening and Poem Pocket Chart centers, will change a third time.

    After cutting out and gluing in their handprints in their Science Notebooks, the children were able to finish the last of four fall physical measurements to the nearest centimeter. They made predictions of  the same measurements in the spring when we will repeat the process for comparison. Today, we continued on, with thinking about  mental growth and learning by way of the brain making connections when  senses are engaged. They looked at three PET scans of a brain during certain kinds of activity and colored diagram areas of the brain according to a key.

            Eighth Week: October 20-24, 2008

    Last week, I neglected to thank you all for your Scholastic Book Club orders. I have seen a few of these coming back for Book Talk. There will be one more before the end of 2008. It will be out in time for holiday shopping. With the bonus points accumulated from these orders, I was able to add an assortment of books including a USA atlas to the class library. Thanks again Kerri Robinson for collating the order forms.

    In Science, we continued with figuring out which area of the brain gets activated by exposures to new information. In this case, we tried a number of new foods which gave us new "word" information and multiple sensory information from such foods as parsnips, pomegranates, cilantro, garlic, cashews, Asian pears, and mango.  Anything that involves eating is exciting to kids! Later in the week, we discussed survival needs for animals and humans. This started us off on making preliminary "Adventure Plans". On Wednesday, we read the main article of the most current "Time for Kids" together. It was about various spacecraft looking for other signs of life on Mars after ice had been photographed there.

    In Mrs. Glynn's last session with the students for awhile, she introduced  "Guide Words" as a basic dictionary skill . This was an example of what the "Word Wizard" role includes in Literature Circles. Her highlighted book was Madeline which the children also watched as a movie on our one rainy indoor recess day. Another movie experience was a movie about "Postal Worker Community Helpers" accessed through the school's United Streaming account. This was our Early Release classroom lunch focus.

    Writing thank you letters to the various Emergency operations teams in Kennebunk for welcoming us on our visit several weeks ago was accomplished. As they have done several, writing these is going much more smoothly now. More autumn acrostic poems were finished and copied over for framing with leaf-shaped construction paper. Children continued to turn out a multitude of fall-themed stories via the Readers' Workshop "Writing Center". A "Bat Story" option was added to  scarecrow and pumpkin options. In Word Study, we reviewed "glued" sounds "an, am, and all" then moved onto Vowel Teams. These pairs of vowels make sounds of long vowels and included -ai, -ay, -ee, -ea, and -ey.

    Lastly, at our snacktime "Teacher Read", we finished up the Magic Treehouse Vacation Under the Volcano adventure. Then a vote between two possibilities started us onto the sequel to Elmer and the Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett. This one is Elmer and the Dragon.

               Ninth Week: October 27-31

    Writing took children in several directions with the introduction of a creative writing activity for which each chose an animal as a main character and gave it a name. Then they created imaginary stories following the circular pattern of If You Take a Mouse to School, plugging in their chosen animals. By next week, parent volunteers typists will start to see these edited drafts coming to them to be typed into finished works which the children will illustrate before I put them into a class book form.  Of course, other writing projects are still being finished up. Several children were also ready to begin a final written response to our Core Literature book. Putting themselves into a situation similar to Rosa, they decided what they would save up money for if they had lost their house, explaining how they would earn the money and why they made the choice.

    After the second reading of A Chair for My Mother paired up with a classroom buddy, there were several types of response activities to complete. Beyond three questions that focused on evidence that the book was set in an urban community and the motivation of the neighbors to help out, they compared Rosa's community to ours using a Venn diagram after we discussed this. Observing that the beginning of the book was not actually the beginning of Rosa's story, they did a timeline by cutting and pasting the events in Rosa's family's "story" in order. Lastly, they thought about any T-S (Text-to Self) or T-W (Text-to-World) connections that they had as their own schema with the book. For Readers' Workshop time, new contracts with several new centers were introduced. Reading groups are beginning new books- both fiction and nonfiction. In Word Study, we began constructing words that include the glued "closed syllable exceptions". These 5 combinations -old,-ild,-ind,-olt, and -ost- don't follow the closed syllable logic of making short vowel sounds. Instead they make long vowel sounds.

  The clue rhymes: Never Eat Shredded Wheat or Never Eat Soggy Waffles got a lot of giggles and inspired other silly creations like Kailee's "Never Eat Slimy Worms" while introducing the directions on the "Compass Rose" as well as basic map skills. We learned about using symbols on maps  in the Key or Legend via a United Streaming Video then practiced these skills in the first pages of a maps packet. In science, we generated a list of words to describe motion that I modeled. Then we took our new"Motion" Science Notebooks and pencils to the front of the building to be "Motion Detectives". One group observed and recorded motion that happened out front of the school with Second grade aide, Mrs. Anastas while the other half watched and recorded motion in the school lobby and in the gym with me. then the groups switched places. As you can see , we have started a new Science Unit.

     Hannah ended the day with a surprise treat of cupcakes. Thanks to her and her mom! On that note, I am heading home to greet little visitors at my door with treats. Your children may remind you to turn your clocks back tomorrow night as we read and illustrated a poem about "Daylight Savings Time" today.

          Tenth Week: November 3-7,2008

    In writing, we continued efforts to "edit" and "tweak" the assortment of assignments that are underway. The presence of volunteers Lisa Erickson-Harris, Joshua's mom on Tuesdays and Lisa Van Deinse, Thomas' mom on Thursdays to keep the "creative juices flowing" as well as help out with the nitty-gritty of spelling and other "mechanics" are crucial. Rhonda Rickert, Allison's mom, helps out with handwriting so the stories can be readable. She has been working with several children doing practice on letters and numerals that are often reversed. Three parents are"in the wings" in the unseen role as typists: Nick's mom Kerri Robinson, Molly's mom Julie Davis, and  again, Rhonda Rickert. Recently, the children have been keeping them busy word processing drafts for classroom books. In this season of thankfulness, I wanted to express my gratitude for all their help.

    Reading At the Market helped remind the children of various places where consumers can have their needs for products satisfied. We compared such kinds as "Flea Markets", "Crafts Fairs", "Farmers' Markets", "Supermarkets" and "Malls". Then they designed some of their own choosing.  In preparation for today's visit by several representatives of the New Page Paper Company in Rumford, we read the nonfiction book How Paper is Made. After they explained the various steps from forest to paper, each child went through a simplified, smaller scaled process to make a round "sheet" of paper. These are drying in our room presently. This demonstration addressed the interrelated curriculum areas of science "Life Cycles" of the tree and forest with the social studies aspects of producing a product to meet a need.

    We finished up Unit 3 in Math as well as in Word Study. The children used the "Magic Slates" and "Magic Pencils" in directed steps to practice this week's newest batch of "Trick Words" from the classroom word wall. Children get practice on individualized lists at the "Stamping Center" during Readers' Workshop. New Word Study concepts this week included words with the vowel teams -oi and -oy as well as review of the ideas of base words, the suffixes -s and -es to make words plural, and a rule to help them remember which to use when.