Last Day of School

As I sit here preparing the gifts for my kiddos, I can't help but reflect on our year together. What an amazing year!! I absolutely cannot believe it is coming to an end. I don't know about you, but this has been the quickest year I've experienced. And that makes me sad. I have truly enjoyed ALL the times our Crew has had together this year. From ghost towns to town celebrations. From howling wolves to creating websites and launching rockets. And all the small moments in between. Each memory brings a smile to my face.

My biggest, heartfelt thanks to you, for sharing your wonderful children with me this year. Thank you for trusting me to be just a step in their learning journey. I have learned so much from them this year too.

I hope you all have a wonderful, safe, restful summer! I can't wait to see everyone next year, as great big 3rd graders!

Tuesday, May 21st, 2013

So sorry this is a day late.

This week's IA: PE
Next week's IA: Art
Following week's IA: Music (This is our last week of school.)

*Homework:
Hopefully you all saw the packet come home with your child yesterday. I sent home a packet with each child's name on it. Your child should write kind adjectives, phrases, or memories about each child in our Crew. I will then use these words to create an end-of-the-year gift for each student. In order for me to get all 25 of the gifts done, it is very important that I get these back no later than this Friday, May 24th. Please help your child remember to return it by then. Thanks so much for your help with this!

*Crew Breakfast and Portfolio Share:
Thank you, Jennifer for sending out the Signup Genius for our end-of-the-year breakfast. This will be on Tuesday, June 4th, from 9:00-10:00. This will also be the time that students will share their portfolios with parents. Please plan on attending. If you are not able to attend, please let me know. I know each child would love to have a parent here to share with.

*Expedition:
Our Crew will be creating a website to share with the world :) about wolves. Last week, Ms. Cari, Keanan's mom came in and taught us how to design and create a website. We are so excited to create this final produce for our Science Expedition. Be on the lookout for the link to our finished product.

 *Conflict Resolution
As we draw near to the end of the school year, tensions seem to run a bit high. We've been experiencing some conflicts in our Crew, so yesterday we did a restorative circle to help us learn how to deal with these conflicts when they arise. Each child had a chance to say what he or she thought about how to handle problems. Below is the chart we all created to help remind us what we agreed to. I was amazed by their deep thinking and creative problem solving techniques!

Monday, May 13th, 2013

I hope everyone had a wonderful Mother's Day yesterday! I enjoyed a relaxing day with my family.

This week's IA: Music
Next week's IA: PE

Reader's Workshop
We are reading fairy tales. As we read, we're discussing the lesson that the fairy tale is teaching. We're also talking about characters and perspective. For example, since we're learning about wolves in expedition, we are examining how wolves are portrayed in fairy tales. This has been a great way in to talk about point of view and perspective.

Also, we are learning some great vocabulary words. Some students are even transferring the new vocabulary to other parts of the day. Last week, one student used the famine (a vocabulary word from reading) to describe what could happen to wolves if we destroy their habitat! I love when kids make those connections! Hopefully you're hearing your child use some of these new words in their conversations with you.

Writer's Workshop
One thing that we're working on in writing is third-person perspective when writing factual descriptions. This has been a challenge because most of us are used to using the words I, me, my, we, our, etc. in our writing. You will have a chance to see our factual descriptions about wolves very soon.

Math
We are almost done with our current unit. Later this week we'll begin the unit where we review addition and subtraction and learn more about multiplication and division. It would be a huge help for students to practice their addition and subtraction facts at home, as there isn't much time in class for this practice. As the concepts in math become more challenging, knowledge of these basic facts is vital.

Expedition
This week we will begin creating our class website about wolves. We will use this website as a way to educate the community about wolves and why we should care if they are endangered. We'll even have a guest speaker teach us about creating a website.

Monday, April 29, 2013

I hope you all enjoyed the beautiful weather this weekend! 

This week's IA: PE

Next week's IA: Art

Reader's Workshop

Since we are learning about wolves in Expedition, we are going to tie in reading with this. We will begin our Fairy Tale study this week. Our main focus will be on characters, and specifically, how wolves are portrayed in these stories. We'll compare and contrast these characters with facts we learn in Expedition.

Writer's Workshop

You will begin to see your child's writing coming home in a purple folder. Please take a look at it, and put it back in the folder to return to school the next day. The writing pieces will then be placed in your child's portfolio. Thanks for helping your child make sure his or her writing comes back to school, in the purple folder, the next day.

Math

We are continuing to get more experience with money. Today, we learned how to compare costs of items. The word we paid attention to was "difference." This clued us in to know that we need to subtract when we are comparing costs. 

Expedition

What a wonderful day of fieldwork we had last Thursday!! The Colorado Wolf and Wildlife Center was amazing. We learned so much about wolves, from adaptations they have to how they interact with their habitat. We also learned why we should care if they are endangered. Before we left, we got to interact with the wolves by communicating with them through howling. Such a cool experience! 

Monday, April 22, 2013

And yet another snowy afternoon out the window as I type this. I wonder when it will ever be sunny again???

This week's IA: Music
Next week's IA: PE

*Our field work to the Colorado Wolf and Wildlife Center is this Thursday, April 25th. Students will need their day packs packed with two snacks, a lunch. I will go over the other supplies they need to have packed with them.

Reader's Workshop
We are integrating our expedition with Reader's Workshop. For read alouds, we are reading books that teach us about animal adaptations. While we listen to and read these texts, we are working on determining the important information and summarzing what we learn.

Writer's Workshop
Our writing has improved so much! We are all being more aware of the mistakes we make when we write and fixing those mistakes on the run. We're also choosing some very descriptive words to describe our topics to our readers.

Math
Our next unit, that we will begin on Tuesday, is all about place value and decimal points. We will also spend some more time working with money.

Expedition
Our new case study is well under way. We have spent time reading texts about wolves, becoming experts, teaching others what we know, and learning more from expert speakers. Last week, we had two officers from the Division of Parks Wildlife teach us about wolf adaptations, Thursday at our field work.

Monday, April 15th, 2013

Yet another snowy April day. While I sure appreciate the moisture, I sure would like for our nice Spring Colorado weather to show up and stay awhile.

This week's IA: Art
Next week's IA: Music

Reader's Workshop
Last Friday, I attended another workshop to learn some more strategies for teaching reading. I am very excited about what I learned and can't wait to implement the changes. I will attend the final training this coming Friday. Once I implement the new resources, I'll share more about just what your children will be learning as readers.

Writer's Workshop
The students have really taken to our new approach to Writer's Workshop. They are producing a lot of quality writing. Some of the learning targets we have been focusing on are writing complete sentences (all the time!), naming the topic in our first sentence, using specific adjectives, and varying our sentence beginnings. Their first published pieces of writing will be coming home soon. I just ask that once the writing does come home, please send it back to school so that I may put it in your child's portfolio.

Math
Currently, we are learning about perimeter, area, and capacity, as well as other measurements. I will be talking with the students in class a lot about these words so that they hear and use them frequently, but it would be great if you could talk about these concepts at home too, to really solidify them. Maybe share a time you had to use perimeter, area, or capacity in your home or work. It would be great to hear some of these stories from the students during Morning Meeting.

Expedition
Wow! The kids are so excited for our new case study!! Last week, we revealed that we will be studying wolves. I will explain, in more detail, at a later date just why we are learning about wolves. Thank you to everyone who volunteered to drive for our Field work in a couple of weeks. I will email all of you to confirm. Here are some pictures of the kids taking a more in-depth look at wolf artifacts to build their background and spark their curiosity.

Wednesday, April 10th, 2013

Welcome back!

I hope you all enjoyed your Spring Break, including our extra day! I spent time with my family and read and relaxed. It was wonderful!

This week's IA: PE
Next week's IA: Art

Today we began our Science Expedition. To kick it off, we viewed our mystery piece. This mystery piece included artifacts, photographs, maps, audio, and text. Students observed the pieces, then worked independently to try to figure out how all of the pieces fit together and what our science case study might be. Tomorrow, students will work collaboratively to continue to try to solve our mystery. Check with your child tomorrow to see what his or her thinking is.

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

*Just a reminder...we DO have school this Friday, March 22nd. We do NOT have school on Monday, April 8th. Students return to school on Tuesday, April 9th.

This week's IA: Music
IA when we return from break: PE

Reader's Workshop
Students have found much joy in searching nonfiction texts for nonfiction text features. We feel like detectives when we try to find headings and subheadings. We've found that some nonfiction texts don't even have headings and subheadings. Interesting!

Writer's Workshop

Students will begin having their published writing displayed in the classroom. Here is our first set of published writers! Look at that craftsmanship and attention to detail. Bravo!

Math

We took our test on the fraction unit today. The students really enjoyed delving into the world of fractions. I can safely say that we have ALL deepened our knowledge about fractions over the last couple of weeks. 

Expedition

Before we start our Science Expedition, which we will do after break, we are working like meteorologists. Each day, we record our observations about what the sky looks like, what the air feels like, what the temperature is, what the humidity is, and what the air pressure is. Some of our data we get just from being outside. Other data we receive from weather.com. Tomorrow we will be making barometers, so we can record data from our very own weather instrument. How exciting! 

Tuesday, March 12th, 2013

We are back to our regular schedule this week, after TCAP last week.

This week's IA: Art
Next week's IA: Music

Since our schedule was so crazy last week, we ended the week on a good note. At the end of the day, we went down to Ms. Jody's classroom to meet with our Kindergarten buddies. First, we read Dr. Seuss books together. Next, we practiced some doubles cup stacking. This was a real challenge for us! To help us calm down after cup stacking, all of us practiced some yoga! What a great afternoon we had with our buddies!

Reader's Workshop
As we begin our work in science, we are focusing our reading strategies around nonfiction text. Specifically, we learning how to pay attention to and determine importance from nonfiction text features. Currently, we are reading books about weather and adding to our knowledge about weather and climate. This is connected to some work we are doing during Expedition.

Writer's Workshop
I am very excited to get the children going in our new Writer's Workshop format. I will be meeting with every child, every day during small groups in writing. This is different and we're all getting used to it. You will begin to see published pieces of writing coming home after Spring Break. While I will be sending these pieces home, I will expect that the pieces come back to school, to add to your child's portfolio. All children are currently working on descriptive writing.

Math
We are a few lessons into our fractions unit. Though these sound daunting at first, the children are really grasping the concepts around fractions. Today, we worked on equivalent fractions. We're all having fun with these math concepts!

Expedition
We have not started our full Science Expedition yet, but we are starting some of our science stand-alone studies. Today, we created a Weather Log. We will be recording weather data each day to look for patterns in weather. We are having a great time working as meteorologists. We also talked about what scientists do and how they work today. To begin our study, we talked about the Scientific Method. We learned that scientists ask questions, do background research, construct hypotheses, test hypotheses, analyze results, and share data. We love being scientists!

Monday, March 4th, 2013

Here we are, already at March 4th. How did that happen? We are ready though, to march forth :) Time just doesn't stop, does it? Even as much as we might want it to. I have so enjoyed getting to know all of your kiddos this year and look forward to sharing all of their amazing accomplishments with you at Student Led Conferences over the next couple of weeks. If you did not receive my email to sign up for a time, please let me know.

This week's IA: PE *We are climbing this week and are in need of belayers. If you have been trained, and are available to help us, we climb from 9:55-10:45, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. I know other crews would appreciate your help too. So, if you can volunteer more of your time, that would be wonderful!

Next week's IA: Art

Our Winter Voyage was a HUGE success! I hope your children expressed the same sentiments! The kids did an amazing job of showing ALL of our character traits. I was so impressed with everyone. Your children will be sharing their reflections from Adventure Education with you at their student led conferences. Here are a few pictures from our time together in Larkspur.

The week before we left on our Voyage, we had the honor of presenting our findings and graphs from the Starlighting to a panel of representatives from the Castle Rock Chamber of Commerce. Better late than never. Our graphs we very well received and they are excited to use the information we collected for them to help with planning future events. Talk about an authentic purpose and audience! 

As you know, I attended a writing conference last week. I am so very excited about the changes that will be coming to our classroom in writing! I will be showing you where your child is as a writer and where they're going, during student led conferences.

Wednesday, February 20th, 2013

Good snowy afternoon!

I apologize for not getting this to you yesterday. Better late than never :) Especially since there is so much important information in this week's addition.

This week's IA: Art
Next week's IA: Music

We have been busy preparing for our Voyage the last couple of days. Today, we played a game called "Airport." This game gave us a chance to practice collaboration, empathy, and trust. One student was the pilot while another student, the air traffic controller, guided the "blind" pilot down the runway using only verbal cues. After we all had a chance to participate, we talked about how we can use what we learned from this experience in the classroom and on our Voyage next week. 

Today, we also went over our gear list and talked about packing. I will be out on Monday and Tuesday at a Writing Conference. So, students will not bring their gear until next Wednesday morning. I have told the students that I am trusting that they will make sure they have packed all their gear and won't be missing any essential items. Please make sure to have their daypacks packed with a sack lunch and 2-4 snacks, packed separate from their lunch, labeled with their names. On Wednesday morning, students will leave their duffel bags and other gear outside by our bus. There will be 3 buses in the same area, as other grade are leaving the same day. Please be sure to find the sign with 2nd grade on it, and place your child's gear by the correct bus. Students should come into school with their daypacks. Plan on arriving at the normal time on Wednesday, there is no need to be early. If you have ANY questions about gear, please don't hesitate to email me. I will resend the gear list today as well. 

*In addition to the gear that is on the packing list, please write a note to your child for them to read on Wednesday night before they go to bed. These little reminders from home are a wonder to help with homesickness. You can tuck these letters in their gear bags. 

Monday, February 11th, 2013

Hello!

*Our Crew will be sharing our community poems and spirit read at All School Meeting this Wednesday morning at 9am. We would love for you to be a part of the audience, if you are able to attend!

*Our Valentine's Day Party is this Thursday at 3pm. Please have your child only put his or her name on the valentine cards in the "From" section and leave the "To" section blank. This makes passing out valentines much easier. Students will need to bring in a valentine's box on Thursday.

This week's IA: PE
Next week's IA: Art

On Friday, we created our Crew Life is Art Project that will be available during the auction at Life is Art on Saturday, March 16th.

Reader's Workshop
As we get further into 2nd grade, we will focus on supporting our thinking with examples from the text. This evidence will be visible in our Reading Journals. We are currently learning how to write complete sentences and include good conventions (capitals and end marks) in our writing during Reader's Workshop as well. We're learning how to begin our sentences with words like, "I think, I wonder, I infer, I predict..."

Writer's Workshop
Now that we've finished up our poetry genre study, we will begin learning about our next genre study, non-fiction. We will read many different examples of non-fiction text before we begin thinking about how to compose our own non-fiction piece. This will connect very well with our new science expedition, which we are also beginning soon.

Math
Our new unit is all about patterns and rules in numbers. We will review skip counting as well as continue to work on differences between 2-digit numbers. In this unit, we will also learn how to analyze data using mean, median, and mode.

Expedition

Thank you so much for supporting us last week at our Poetry Reading Night! What a wonderful evening we had. Before we launch our science expedition, we will be learning about personal financial literacy. During this brief study, we will learn about short and long term goals, as well as decisions that must be made with finances.

Monday, February 4th, 2013

Hello there!

I hope everyone got out and enjoyed the beautiful weather last weekend. I enjoyed a nice long, though brisk, thanks to the wind, walk on Saturday.

This week's IA: Music
Next week's IA: PE

*Ms. Diana is wondering if anyone can let her borrow a costume police hat for next week. She said a child's costume hat would be perfect. Please let me know if you might be able to help her out with that.

*Our Poetry Reading Night is this Thursday, 2/7, at 6pm. I am hoping that all students and their families will be able to attend. If you have any questions, please let me know. You will be receiving a sign-up genius in the next day or two for that evening. Our Crew will need drinks, plates, and napkins for that night. Also, if anyone has plastic table cloths we can borrow, that would be great! I will need 5 of them. Your children have worked so hard on their poetry about community, I can't wait for you to hear all of their hard work!

Last week during All School Meeting, Mr. Doug hosted our annual Cup Stacking Tournament. I'm very proud to announce that our very own Keanan won the tournament!! He beat every other student in the tournament. Way to go, Keanan! In class, we talked about how this proves how much perseverance pays off!

Monday, January 28th, 2013

Good afternoon!

This week's IA: Art
Next week's IA: Music

Reader's Workshop
Currently, we are paying attention to how readers infer while reading. We are reading many poems and using our background knowledge along with the text clues, to infer, or guess, what the author really means. We've discovered how much fun it can be to be detectives while reading these poems that use such great word choice. Here's an example of one of the poems we read today:
From the book, If Not for the Cat
By: Jack Prelutsky
Boneless, translucent,
We undulate, undulate,
Gelatinously.
We had to use our background knowledge and the text clues to figure out that the poem was talking about jellyfish. We also had to discuss the vocabulary of this poem. We learned the meaning of translucent and undulate.

Writer's Workshop
Since we are spending so much time reading poetry, we are trying our hands at writing poetry. Our main focus for poetry is to include descriptive words that really paint vivid pictures in our readers' minds. We have started the publishing process for our poems. Some children are choosing to publish by hand while others are choosing to publish their poems on their Kidblog sites. We will share our poetry with you at are Student Led Conferences coming up in March. Just wait until you see how descriptive our writing has become!

Math

Last week, we began using Khan Academy as a way to practice our math. The kids have been super motivated to use this tool! I hope this will help the students practice their basic math facts as well, as I've noticed that not knowing these facts has made the tougher addition and subtraction problems even harder.

Are those Legos? Yes. What do they have to do with math? Let me tell you. Today, we began learning about multiplication. We used Legos to help us begin thinking about this concept. I introduced arrays. We will be using arrays to help us visualize multiplication. Legos are perfect examples of arrays. Arrays are anything that have equal amounts of objects in a certain number of rows. So, the top Lego is an array that has 4 rows with 6 dots in each row. This is a 4x6 array and has 24 total dots. 4x6=24. The bottom Lego (same Lego turned the other way) has 6 rows with 4 dots in each row. This is a 6x4 array. 6x4=24. If you have Legos at home, this would be a great way to practice multiplication.

Expedition
As we are wrapping up our Community Expedition, we are beginning to work on our final product, community poems. We are writing poems that show all we know about community. We will perform these poems for you at a special Poetry Reading Night on Thursday, February 7th at 6pm. This will be held in our classroom and all families are invited. The students will also create a visual presentation to go along with their poetry, which we will show that evening as well. Be on the look out for a Sign-Up Genius for this night. I like to make it a very special night with hot chocolate and treats for the kids.

Tuesday, January 22nd, 2013

Hello! I hope everyone had a wonderful four-day weekend!

This week's IA: PE
Next week's IA: Art

*Please mark your calendars for our upcoming Poetry Reading Night. This will be on Thursday, February 7th, at 6pm. This is a night for students to perform their poetry about community in front of their families. I will send out more information soon.

Our kiddos sure did an amazing job leading the All School Meeting last week! They received many compliments on their professionalism. It takes a lot of courage and perseverance to get up and speak in front of that many people, and everyone of the students showed exactly that. I apologize for the quality (or lack there of) of the photos and I apologize that I wasn't able to snap a photo of each student in action, but please, enjoy the following glimpse into All School Meeting.