Our 1st Grade Writing Buddies came to our room for their first time and we loved having them. We each shared our Opinion Writing pieces with each other. Mr. A.J. from Playhouse came for the Pre-show on Wednesday for the upcoming performance "What Do You Do With an Idea?" He was very engaging! We can't wait to see the play next Friday. Our Celebration for finishing the Read Aloud: Because of Winn-Dixie I don't know who loves reading to kindergarteners more- our 2nd graders or the kindergarteners! They have made true friendships this year.
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When I say 2nd Grade Kindness Shop, I truly mean it because our 2nd Graders created every aspect of this shop from start to finish. They came up with: the idea, the items to sell, voted on the name and where the money would go, created signs and posters, marketed and advertised for the event, set up displays, helped customers shop, made change, gave receipts for purchases and tallied what they sold!! I truly feel this was a learning experience they will not forget about for a very long time. A student came in this morning and said, "This is like Dollar Tree for Kindergarteners and 1st Graders!" Another student said as the shop was closing up, "Do you think we can sell to 3rd graders tomorrow because this shop was so much fun!" We will continue to reflect on this experience and how it connects to our Central Idea. Please take some time to have your child share the experience with you and how it connects or what they learned from this experience. A special thank you to all the parents who sent in materials to make this day a success. The 2nd Grade Kindness Shop is all set up. Look at the creative ways they came up with to display their products. Take a look at our first shift workers: 12:25-1:10pm Welcome 1st Grade Shoppers! During their break time between open shopping hours they got the chance to make something that we were selling for themselves. Take a look at our second shift workers: 2:00-3:00pm. Welcome Kindergarten shoppers! Other News and Events at CIS recently... At the K-5 Morning Meeting on Monday, February 10th the Mandarin teachers celebrated Chinese New Year with several presentations representing students from every grade level. They even got a few teachers to dress up- Guess who is in the panda and dragon costume?
CSU Basketball Game Fun Khalil caught a free T-shirt at the game! Monday Morning Meeting Presentations from students for Black History Month and a special visit from the author Tricia Springstubb. When you match your principal of course you need a picture of it! Sharing our Opinion Pieces with our 1st Grade Writing Buddies. Natalie's mom came in to share their family tradition with us. She baked a cake and hid a coin in it. The person who gets the coin in their piece will have a year of good luck. Our lucky person this year was Jackson but the cake was very yummy too!
This month we:
Natalie and Hazel have started making a paper chain that has peaked the interest of many students. Sydney took action by creating her own chart that relates to our current Central Idea.
There's no pictures to share but THANKS for coming to Student Led Conferences (A Day and Time to Reflect) this week! I hope you enjoyed going to the stations in the room. Make sure you are connected on Seesaw. Remind them to share something they have learned or are working on each week on Seesaw if they haven't posted anything already. They will be working on 5 Seesaw Challenges to get them used to all its features during reading stations so you will be receiving them each week. Check in with them every day/week on conversations we had at my station. Last week Case Western Nursing students came in and showed us how to use breathing techniques to calm us down when we need it. They made a lot of connections with the mindfulness techniques we already use. I can't wait to see them take action and use them when they need it. Our Class T-Shirts FINALLY Arrived and they look great on them! The JUNGLE BOOK Play even made some connections to our new theme Sharing the Planet. It talked about how humans change the environment. I wish you could see them interact with their 1st Grade Writing Buddies. They hold each other accountable during these 15 minutes. They ask each other for ideas, read their stories to each other, help with editing and even teach each other writing strategies. Lots of Action and Living the Learner Profile going on during this time. We also got to share Informational Texts with our Kindergarten Reading Buddies Thursday afternoon. Just look at how focused they are! 2nd Graders work on their reading and fluency while kindergarteners get to work on their listening, comprehension and vocabulary skills. We also get to be leaders that they look up to. When we pass them in the halls their eyes light up and they give each other huge smiles.
We celebrated Learner Profile Award winners at our K-2 Morning Meeting on Monday, October 7th. Congrats to Cortland for winning the Principled Award and being a self-manager! We researched Ohio to see what good information we can include about our state on the postcards we are sending out to all 49 other states in our POSTCARD EXCHANGE Project. Ask them what we've learned so far. Mandarin Lesson on Greetings Mr. Eric came for the Playhouse Pre-Show to get them ready for the play, Jungle Book, that we will go see next week. The Inquiry Cycle has started in our new theme Sharing the Planet. To get us thinking about our next Central Idea students worked in groups to create animals in different environments (air, water, urban, rural, dessert and forest). Then we created a list and discussed whether these animals are still around. That brought up the word extinct so we made a list of animals we thought were extinct. This discussion led to different levels of extinction. During this "Tuning In" time I accept all ideas and during the "Finding Out" stage we will research to see what was factual. We had a Publishing Party with our 1st Grade Writing Buddies! We each got to share our final narrative pieces with each other. After we did that we shared compliments about what they saw in their partners stories. We also did our Final On Demands on Narrative Writing that will be shared at Student Led Conferences and took our next On Demand on Informational Writing to see what we remember from kindergarten and first grade. Cerenity's mom stopped by at Lunch Time for her birthday. She also dropped off an awesome healthy birthday treat for each of her classmates. We ended our week dancing at the Dance-a-thon and then had the announcer of the Cavs and the Cavs Scream Team come and celebrate the total of all of our donations in the afternoon. I chose Kenny to represent 2nd Grade on the stage because his dance moves were non stop and amazing at the Dance-a-thon. He did a great job and earned himself a Cavs T-shirt! THANKS to all the families that donated! Our efforts to be kind are now posted on our door. As we walk in and out of our classroom it will remind us to Always Be Kind. We also plan on holding ourselves accountable with the pledge we wrote on our hearts.
The Cup Stacking Challenge taught us to listen to each other, don't be afraid to try new things and we can all be successful when we help each other. Conflict Posters and the 6 Teams that Worked Together to come up with their best Resolutions We had a guest speaker from The Cleveland Sight Center this week come and talk to us about ways people who are blind can communicate. We learned: who started braille, what a braille cell is, how a brailler works, and looked at books coded in braille. This connected to the biography on Helen Keller we are reading this week and our year long Central Idea: Communication takes on many forms. Case Western Nursing students came in and talked about how we can T.H.I.N.K. before we say things and other resolutions we can use when we are being treated meanly or how to approach others when we feel we are being bullied. They performed a few skits and sent them home with a little reminder of what it means to T.H.I.N.K. Take a look at what we have learned since August about solving conflicts using resolutions. This assessment strategy is called First Word- Last Word. The KINDNESS Bus stopped by Campus this week and Bob and Bogart presented on the importance of being KIND and how easy it is to do and how much our world needs it. Thank you to our PCO for making this event happen. I've seen this bus around my neighborhood and always wondered how it started. Our school is going to count how many acts we can do this year. Let the challenge begin!
Hey, Little Ant Reader's Theater Noticing Spelling Words with the glued sound -ing while Reading to Self Father's Day Walk 2019 Thursday, September 19th INTERNATIONAL DAY OF THE DOT BY PETER REYNOLDS HOW DO YOU MAKE YOUR MARK ON THE WORLD? WHAT IS CREATIVITY TO YOU? INQUIRY OF THE WEEK:
WHAT IS THE NAME OF THIS INSECT? HOW WILL YOU FIND OUT ITS NAME? We started our week off at our first K-5 Morning Meeting. Mr. Levy's Band performed a couple songs for us, Ms. Beers went over the Essential Agreements, The Birthday Board and Ms.O'Rourke discussed Actions students took over the summer. Our Sydney got up and shared how she helped the environment. Students love to share during our Morning Meeting time. This is a great way for them to practice speaking in front of a group and allows us to get to know them better. Each week they will learn a new greeting and practice greeting each other by looking at the other student, using a friendly voice and greeting them with their name. In our classroom we will learn to work with every one and respect each other. It will allow us time to practice being a communicator, caring and being open-minded. In Writer's Workshop this week students watched as I created "My Strong Feelings" Chart. They then got to create their own after they finished their heart maps. These are another tool they will use when writing their narratives. Students presented their Me Museums to their classmates. They got to use the microphone if they wanted to. This was an excellent way to get to learn about each other and an opportunity to practice speaking in front of the group. I was right there to help them if they needed it but they did a great job and I'm so proud of them for being courageous enough to share a little bit of themselves with us. When they were finished presenting to their classmates they got to set up their ME Museums and the other 2nd grade classrooms got to walk through and ask questions about their items. We also visited the other 2nd grade classrooms to visit their museums and practice being inquirers. This week we had a bus evacuation drill and a fire drill. We also spent a lot of time talking about why we do these drills, different scenarios to help students with more questions and how we should know these drills at our homes as well. Please take the time to practice this at home because many of them shared they don't have a plan yet. Leaders in our classroom, like Kenny, lead us though daily practice on letters, sounds, blends and digraphs. We got to meet our kindergarten reading buddies on Thursday. We will be reading with them on Thursday afternoons for 15 minutes. This will help not only our kindergarten friends but also help us with our fluency and reading skills. The students in Ms. Albanese's classroom were so happy to have us and asked us to come back. I was very proud of my 2nd graders as they eagerly chose a friend and a spot in the room and got right to reading to them. Another way I've been showing them how kids can be inquirers and be curious is through Mystery Doug. Check out the site when you get a chance.
This is my bird feeder in my backyard in the morning on Saturday and then in the evening. Who do you think ate all of that bird seed? and what can I do to make sure that doesn't happen again? What is Inquiry? Inquiry is talking about what you see, thinking about what it makes you wonder about or connections you have with it and coming up with questions you have based off of what you are inquiring about. Inquiry is NOT giving students the answers but giving them the skills to find the answers and the practice to ask more questions. Students got to look at pictures and artifacts from two different places I went to this summer. When I asked them to come up with questions they might have the ONLY question they could think of is "Where did you go?" I had to spend a lot of time modeling questions that an inquirer might ask. We are going to be spending a lot of time this year practicing being an inquirer and learning NOT to expect me to answer their questions they can research and find answers to themselves. Writer's Workshop How do you get children to love to write? Provide them with examples they can use when they are asked to write. Students worked on Their Heart Maps and Strong Feelings Charts after watching me create my own. I know these are going to be very helpful as we write our narratives this month. I love Action Takers and I'm so glad they feel comfortable in our classroom already! To be so young and wanting to share with their peers is just AMAZING! |
AuthorMrs. Humphrey
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