Caution: Long Post Ahead!

It's been a busy, busy month in 2nd grade (hence the lack of blog posts!) So I think it'll be best to sum it up using pictures... 

The kids finished up our unit on the 10 Commandments in Religion and worked in groups to draw and write about one of the Commandments. I love watching them work together!

 I'm so impressed by their ability to focus and work well together, even (and especially!) when I choose the groups for them!

 We made 3D Family Trees and connected it to Spanish. The trees were used to decorate the hall for the Multi-Culti feast. They were such a nice touch!

 We've been moving along steadily in math focusing on various concepts and already getting to our subtraction facts! We've learned about telling time to the half hour, lines of symmetry, fractions, adding money, tally marks, and adding multiple addends to find a sum.

 We finished our Character reports and the students presented them to their classmates. Each student created their character from a book of their choice and filled a baggie with drawings of at least 5 items that the character needed to have along with two sentences describing why or how that item helped them.

 Mrs. Harabedian surprised us as our Mystery Reader. She read "Miss Nelson is Missing" and had to leave in the middle of the story....

 Only to return as the awful Mrs. Gorf!!!

 The kids had fun taking a picture pretending that the awful Mrs. Gorf took over their classroom. This picture makes me laugh! I love it so much! Their expressions are so theatrical!

 We celebrated our heritage by feasting on a variety of cultural dishes at our Multicultural Feast, which started off with a heartfelt prayer service of thanksgiving for our beautiful families and heritages.

 The students were so brave to stand up in front of all of their parents and peers to read a prayer that they wrote. I am so proud of them!!

 We had more character report presentations!

 And right before Thanksgiving, we made cookie turkeys using oreos, candy corn, reese's, maltballs and frosting... yum!! Best part of all -- we made them with our 8th grade buddies!!

 The 2nd graders ADORE their buddies, so it was so fun to watch them work together to make a delicious treat.

Wow -- is it really already December??? Stay tuned to see what THIS month has in store for us! (Hint: elves, Christmas Around the World, more Mystery Readers, exciting Hero Project, field trip to kick off our Dinosaur Unit, and lots, lots more!!)

Mystery Reader!

 SO surprised to see Grandma walk through the door!!

 Students listening intently!

 Best birthday surprise? A special auntie coming in as Mystery Reader!

 So happily surprised by Mom's book selection!!

The students are LOVING Mystery Reader! They are so surprised to look up and see who it is walking through our door. Some students are a bit suspicious and figure it out by the hints... others are completed blown away by their loving family members who have volunteered to read to them!

If you haven't had the chance to sign up yet, send me an email and we can find a time or date that works! Remember -- it doesn't HAVE to be a parent and it doesn't HAVE to be for a birthday, but it certainly can be one or both!!

Rite of Enrollment

Last week, the second graders were initiated into Sacramental Preparation at the Rite of Enrollment Mass. It was so great to see everybody there on such a dreary Sunday! This year's preparation for the Sacraments will be a great one! Looking forward to our other fabulous spiritual days before our Sacraments!

What is Daily 5?

Hopefully by now your children have come home talking about Daily 5. {If not, ask them about it!} I thought I'd do a blog post (perhaps even a series of posts) that discuss and describe Daily 5 ALIVE in our classroom!

Over summer, I did a lot of research on how I could have more effective reading groups. I came across several classroom blogs written by teachers who sang praises about something called "Daily 5." What is it? I wondered with piqued enthusiasm the more I came across blogs that posted about it. So I purchased the e-book and read up on it and I was set on implementing the program in my classroom.

Daily 5, in a nutshell, is a series of literacy stations that students complete throughout the language arts period that allows the teacher to work one-on-one (which is rare/impossible with class sizes as large as ours!) or in small groups with students. The stations consist of: read to self, read to someone, listen to reading, word word, and work on writing. For the past 6 weeks, the students have been working on building their "stamina" on all of these activities so that they are guaranteed to work independently thus ensuring that the teacher can work with a small group. Each day, we have 3 mini-lessons where I explicitly teach the children how to become better readers: from focusing on a specific fluency task, to working on decoding skills to build accuracy, to checking for comprehension, to tuning in to interesting vocabulary words to build up our lexicon.

Daily 5 has been such a huge success in our classroom that Mrs. Harabedian has observed several times and now we are encouraging the implementation of it in all of the classes at our school. Hopefully your children have been "showing off" their skills at home. Whether they ask for "coaching vs. time", or "check" for comprehension, or back up to re-read something that didn't make sense, they are transferring the information learned at school to their skills at home.

One of the most rewarding things for me as a teacher was overhearing some of the kids working on their vocabulary books. It wasn't Daily 5 time, but they were working in pairs reading a passage. I heard several students come across unfamiliar words and instead of their partners jumping in with the correct word, they asked, "Coaching or time?" Together they decoded the word. What a success!!

Daily 5 -- I wish I could take credit for "inventing" it -- but the two "sisters" who came up with the idea {Boushey and Moser} are geniuses. I am so thankful to have time to work with small groups while the rest of the class is 100% engaged in their independent and meaningful activities.

So ask your kids about it! See what they say :)

Has it been that long?

Wow! I can hardly believe that a) this is my first entry on the blog for this school year, and b) it took me until November to actually get around to it!

So... I'd like to officially welcome you to the 2nd grade blog! Feel free to become a follower... it makes me feel special. Ha! No but in all seriousness, I like to post the day in the life of second grade (more like the week in the life of 2nd grade) for you to see. And feel free to comment as well!

Before I start posting photos of the kids, I'm going to be sure to send an email....

Until then, see you in a few days.... I'll be posting Daily 5 pictures, Mystery Reader pictures, and some other little goodies!

Descanso Gardens and a Farewell to Ginger

Anyone still read this thing? ;0)

Last week we went on a great field trip to Descanso Gardens. The kids had such a great time observing nature and all of God's beautiful creation! I was so impressed with their ability to recognize some plants that we've studied in the classroom, like the Foxglove! We even had one adventurous and brave goose come have his picture taken!

Thanks to all of the parent volunteers who assisted us in getting to the Gardens: Mr. Beaton, Mrs. Beegle, Mr. Bourgault, Mr. Fisher, Mr. and Mrs. Gorocica, Mrs. Grogan, Mr. Householder, and Mrs. Johnson.

 In other news, Ginger needs a home... any takers? I'll be sending home the request forms this week (hopefully today)... I look forward to finding her a new place to live!

Come One, Come All!

Hello to all of your who still loyally check the blog! I apologize for the lack of posts. We've been hard at work to get ready for Open House. Please join us in classroom festivities on Friday night at 6 PM. Can't wait to have your little ones show off all of their great work!

Thank you to all of you who came with open hearts and minds to the Agape First Communion workshop. I know some of you had to leave early due to the miscommunication of timing. Again, I apologize for that. But the morning was very prayerful and I loved seeing you with your little ones.

We've been very busy with our preparations for Open House. We have mainly been preoccupied with completing our Dinosaur (and eggs) project.

It's a messy job, but someone's gotta do it!

Brave second graders eager to get underneath the dinosaur and excited to get messy!

Looking forward to seeing you all at Open House!