Election Day in Room 40

 We have been learning about elections the past two weeks.  We read books about elections and completed activities.  Yesterday was the big day!  We voted for president.  After checking the students' voter registration card, I let the students pick up a ballot.

Next they took their ballot to our private voting booth.  We know that who we vote for is personal and that we don't have to share with anyone.

After they completed their ballot (no names, of course!) the students put their ballot in our ballot box.

After we all voted we tallied the votes.  In our classroom President Obama won.  He also was the winner in our school-wide election.  We knew that we could be happy if we voted for President Obama but that we wouldn't make too big a deal of it so people who voted for Governor Romney would be unhappy.  It was a great learning experience and the kids had fun!!

A Chance to Donate

Here are two chances to donate to our classroom!  

So many of you already help out, but I thought I'd share two projects I'm working on in case you or a grandparent or a friend is looking for a great project to help fund:)

Do you have any personal CD players that you don't use?  You know those listening devices we used back before the days of the ipod and iphone?  We can use them at school.  They become a mini listening center!

Here are some friends of mine from last year.  They are reading to each other with books from our classroom library.  Currently I have a project up on DonorsChoose.org to get more "boy" books into our classroom.  You can click on the link above or the button on the side of my blog to read more about it.  Every little bit helps! Some companies even offer matching gifts.

Thanks for ALL you already do:) 

Happy Halloween!!!

 We had a spooktacular time at our Halloween party!!

The pictures tell the story!

We made a neat pumpkin craft!

 We played an awesome mummy game!

 

We played a terrific ring toss/witch hat game!

We also played a chocolate-frosting-on-your-nose game! 

Our treats were wonderful!  Our round table was spread with healthy and yummy food!

THANK YOU to Mrs. Danca for planning and organizing our party.  

Thanks also to Mrs. Duray, Mrs. Hubbartt, and Mr. Tyler for helping at our party.

Storybook Characters

We had an awesome time sharing our storybook characters today!  It was so fun to see everyone's different character and how they made it.  It was also interesting to hear about the character!

 Our storybook characters are on display outside our classroom.

 You can also catch a look at our "haunted house for sale" final drafts and designs.

The kids had a great time with both projects and are very proud of themselves!!  I am proud of them too:)  Thank you for your help in creating your child's storybook character!

October is Fire Safety Month

Firefighters from the Gurnee Fire Department visited our class today.  We played a game with Mrs. Sniegowski's Class to review the fire safety guidelines.  Several students spoke for us and called on friends to speak.

 We had a great time!  The students know lots about fire safety.  They remembered Stop, Drop, Roll, and Cover Your Face.  They know to have several places to meet with family outside if there is a fire in the house.  They also know that it is important to have more than one way to get out of the house.

We had fun and talked about important things!   Be sure to review this important information with your child.

Stop, Drop and Read!!

During October, Elementary West is celebrating reading by holding a "Stop, Drop and Read" time once a week.  During this time the students get to pick what they want to read, pick a place to read, and spend time enjoying their choices.  Here are a few snapshots of us enjoying reading!!

September!!

September was a busy month for us!  We spent time getting to know each other, learning the classroom routines and LEARNING!!  

In reading we reviewed and practiced the strategy of a story's structure and the order of the story sections.  We are now moving on to figuring out the main idea and supporting details of what we are reading.  The two pictures show kids reading one of the stories we investigated last week, "Fighting the Fire."

In math we are working on our fact fluency to 20.  This is a skill that we will work on all year.  It's important that students understand the concept of adding and subtracting.  The next step is to become fluent in the facts so that we can move on to more difficult problems.  I really suggest that parents buy two sets of flashcards with facts to 20 to practice at home.  (You would have to get two sets, addition and subtraction.)  I will be sending the teens paper facts home later this month also.   We have been working hard on word problems and will continue that throughout the year also.  Next week we start our unit on measurement.  We start most days in math with our "Number of the Day."  Ask your child what we do during that time!
In writing we are busy working in our journals.  We are learning to find ideas to write about, brainstorm about the ideas and then write.  We also wrote the Stripes projects that you saw at Curriculum Night.  Coming soon is a fun Halloween writing project that I know the kids will LOVE!
In Social Studies we reviewed and extended our learning from first grade on mapping and communities.  The students learned that there are three main types of communities: rural (farming), urban (city), and suburban (where we live).
Thank you so much for your support of our classroom!  Together we are making a difference in your child's life!

What a fantastic group of second graders!!

*********

We are enjoying getting to know each other, reviewing ROAR guidelines and academics, and having fun:)  It has been such a joy getting to know each child!  We started our year talking about our hopes and dreams for second grade.  Then we made posters for them that are displayed in our classroom.  The posters will help us to remember all year what we want second grade to be like.  We also wrote our own classroom rules to help us achieve our hopes and goals.  The rule poster is below.  (You can click on both pictures to make them larger.)

Hopefully the worst of the hot weather is finished after today!  It has been very hard to concentrate and learn when the rooms are so hot.  (No, we don't have air conditioning.)  We have been drinking water and taking air conditioning breaks for the past several days.
Please plan on attending our Second Grade Curriculum Night!!  The date is next Wednesday from 6:30-8:00.  This is a very important night where you learn about your child's second grade year.  The students always love when their parents visit.  (Remember, only adults come to Curriculum Night.) I look forward to seeing you there!!

Welcome Back!

Welcome back to school!!  I can't wait to meet all of you and your families.  We will have a GREAT year together!!

An Award!

Thank you to Ann from The Caffeinated Classroom for this wonderful award!  To see all the great blogs that I'm giving this award to check out my other blog here!  Be sure to check out Ann's blog; it's terrific!

Happy Summer!!

Hello, Friends!!  I hope that you are enjoying a wonderful summer!  I wanted to take the chance to let all of my students know how proud I am of them.  I miss them already!  We had an awesome first and/or second grade year together.  It is amazing to reflect on how much everyone learned and the fun we had!  Thank you for a special time together.

Lots of NEWS!!!

Open House was wonderful!  It was fun to see your kids interacting with you! It's always such a special time to celebrate their work.

FIELD DAY is next Wednesday.  The P.E. Department is still looking for volunteers to help.

You are INVITED to share our last Oral Language Speech with us.  The date is Friday, May 25th, at 11:15.   So many students have done a wonderful job speaking this year.  It will be fun to share with you.  An added note: Feel free to take your child home with you after our event.  The office has let me know that if any child is signed out before 11:50 it will be considered a half day absence.  If we are finished early, you are welcome to stay with us until that time!

Please see the other important dates to the right.

We started SHARK WEEK.  Ask your child what we did today:)  We will be learning about sharks all this week.

Congratulations to these AWESOME kids who completed a "Screen Free Week" last week. 

Leaders are Readers Day

Mr. Hernbrott, manager at Rinkside was our first reader.  He brought along Rinkside's mascot!! He read us a book called Dino's Little Egg and talked with us about his job at the ice rink.  He is general manager there and a coach.  He coaches one of our students for hockey.

Our next reader was Mrs. Drinka, librarian and program director at Warren Newport Library.  She read  a fascinating picture book, Blackout, to us.  The book was a Caldecott Honor Book this year and we all had many text-to-self connections with the story.  Ask your child what it was about!

Our third reader was Tanya Uddin, the college sister of a student in our classroom.  She read a favorite book, Where's My Teddy?, to us.  She talked to us about how important it is to work hard. She told us if we set a goal then we can work to achieve it!

Our last reader of the day was Mr. Skelton, father of a student in our classroom.  He shared a wonderful story about adventure, The Little Gray Mouse Goes Sailing.  He talked about traveling with his job and visiting other countries.  We were very interested!

Thanks to all our wonderful readers!!  We so appreciate that they took the time to come visit us!  It was a great day.

Our tadpoles are here!!

Our tadpoles are here!  We have one toad tadpole and six frog tadpoles. We did lose one toad tadpole, but the others are going strong.  We have been learning lots about frogs and their habitat, a pond.  Be sure to ask your child what he/she has learned so far.

Other Updates:

April is National Poetry Month and we are reading and writing poems.

We are looking forward to Leaders are Readers Day on Friday!  We have four special readers coming in to share their jobs and books with us.

We finished reading My Father's Dragon.  We loved the book and making the lapbooks.  We are reading the sequel to the story, Elmer and the Dragon.

We finished our unit on subtraction and will be learning about fractions next.

Our Oral Language Speeches are next week on Friday!

Our Open House is May 3rd!  Be sure to plan time to come and celebrate a wonderful year.  The Westside Film Festival is that night also.  Come and see all the West School movies your child has seen at ROAR assemblies this year.

Full Speed Ahead!!!

We had a busy time in March getting ready for our student-led conferences!  The time spent was well worth it.  It was wonderful to see the students share their work with you and reflect on their time at school.  I enjoyed seeing all of you.
April is going to be an exciting month for us!  Today we started our Frog Unit.  We set up the tank to get ready for our tadpoles on Thursday.  The kids are super excited about it and so am I!
We also started a new novel unit today.  We are reading My Father's Dragon and making lapbooks as we go.  We started the lapbook today.  It will help us to think about and remember the important parts of the book.  We are excited to be able to pilot this unit as all 2nd graders may do it next year!
In math we are continuing our work on subtraction.  Please continue to study the facts with your child. Soon we will be working on three digit subtraction and knowing the facts quickly helps the students to be more efficient and accurate.
Full Speed Ahead!!

A Quick Note

Hello!  Just wanted to let you all know that I was out yesterday.  The substitute sent home all the work they did yesterday.  I don't know if it was graded and I apologize if it wasn't. 

Math-a-Thon!!



We had an awesome time at our Math-a-Thon! In the morning students went through 7 centers all about different math concepts.  The center above was our money center.  Students had to find different ways to make the same money value.

This was our pattern block center.  We worked to find different ways to fill the same shape.

We completed a 100 piece puzzle.

We played a game called Tantrix.  We also worked with pentominoes.

We played a game called "Head Full of Numbers."  In this game we worked to find different math equations from a set of 6 numbers.

We played Smath.  This game is a lot like scrabble.  You make math equations instead of words!

In the afternoon, Mrs. Young taught us a great lesson about geoblocks.  We worked together in teams to sort and solve problems.

We had an amazing day!  Thank you to all the families who sent in a donation to help me buy games for our Math-a-Thon.  (We will also use these later in the year.)  Thank you also to Mrs. Moriarty and Mrs. Vrabel for their terrific help during our morning centers.  Many thanks also to Mrs. Young who taught us an awesome lesson in the afternoon.!

Reminder!

The oral language reports on a president are this Friday.  Last Friday we spent time looking at two websites that can help the students get information.  I sent the materials home in your child's folder.