Field Trip to Shelburne Farms!

The Firefly Team finished off the month of September enjoying the last two Red Clover books we had left to read- Wonder Horse and Mirror, Mirror.  Today we voted on our favorite and the winner was Born Yesterday.
In Readers Workshop we continued to learn about what good readers do and began Guided Reading Groups.  We practiced our rules for bonus letters (ff, ll, ss) and reviewed glued sounds in Fundations.  In Writer's Workshop we continued to talk about how writers get their ideas and finally finished our Bink and Gollie books.  We spent this afternoon sharing them with our classmates.
We were introduced to six new workstations and created a Churn Dash quilt in math this week.  Next week we will finish up our first unit of the year talking more about growing patterns.  We will begin Unit 2 the following week, which will be an integrated unit called "Hungry Ants".  This unit will focus heavily on problem solving.
Wednesday was Fire Prevention Day.  We had a visit from "Fireman Steve" and "Fireman Brian"-who happens to belong to the KillKelley household.  They taught us about fire safety, helped us crawl through a smokehouse and practice "stop, drop and roll".  We also got a chance to climb into the new Shelburne Firetruck and take a seat.  It was a fun morning for the Firefly Team.
Today we went to Shelburne Farms for a teambuilding field trip.  We spent some time exploring Shelburne Farms and participating in a scavenger hunt, then went to the farmyard in small groups to spend time with the animals.  It was a fun morning for everyone.  A big thank you to our parent chaperones on this trip!

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More Red Clover Books

Firefly Second Grade has spent the week reading more Red Clover books.  This week we read A pig Parade,  Nabeel's New Pants, and Art & Max.  These were all funny stories with beautiful illustrations.  We talked about how author's tell their stories through illustrations.  Art & Max was a perfect book for this discussion.  Next week is the last week our team has the Red Clover books.  We will be reading the last few books and voting on our favorite.

In Reader's Workshop we talked about how readers choose books, reviewed choosing "Just Right Books", reviewed fiction and non-fiction text features, and practiced finding our special quiet place to read during Reader's Workshop.  We will begin reading groups next week.  We reviewed digraphs and blends and ways to make the /k/ sound in Fundations.  We also reviewed closed syllables and took our Unit 1 test.  Next week we will begin Unit 2 which will review bonus letters (ff, ll, ss), glued sounds and vowel teams.

We continued to explore growing patterns during math this week.  We created a growing chart showing "Nostrils".  Yes, that's right, nostrils!  We needed to create a pattern that grew by twos and the class voted on drawing nostrils and counting them since every nose has two of them!  We used this to complete a hundreds grid counting by twos and discovered a variety of patterns that existed on our hundreds charts.  We spent the past two days sorting objects and creating Venn Diagrams showing different ways to sort various objects.

Wednesday was our last day for Imagination Playground.  This was a wonderful experience and gave everyone opportunities to practice some of the social skills and group work skills we have been learning about in the classroom.  Everyone who shared this week did a terrific job of talking about how they have used these skills in their lives.

 

This Wednesday will be Fire Prevention Day and on Friday we will be spending our morning a Shelburne Farms doing team building activities.  We will be back at school in time for recess/lunch.

In my last post I forgot to thank all the parents who helped make Salsa last Friday, so a big thank you to all of you for providing such a fun experience for our class!

Imagination Playground and Salsa!

The Imagination playground was a hit this week!  Our class visited twice and will have one more opportunity to go next week.  The kids had a terrific time working together to create a variety of playground structures to play with.
We had so many terrific examples of working together during share time this week.  Gracie, Sam, Claudia, Ian and Olivia all shared about their experiences working with others and learning to compromise.  We also celebrated Benjamin, Jack and Sam's birthday's this week.  We certainly have a lot of September birthdays in our class!
This week our Red Clover books were I Know Here, Bink and Gollie, and Born Yesterday.  During Writer's Workshop we have been creating accordian books for I Know Here, and writing a Chapter 4 for Bink and Gollie.  Next week we will continue to read more Red Clover books.  In Reader's Workshop we have been talking about what readers do and how to use our reading journals.  We will continue with mini-lessons about what good readers do next week.  This week we learned about blends and digraphs in Fundations.  Next week we will be learning about c, k, ck and rules for using these letters, and closed syllables.
Our math lessons this week focused on growing patterns.  We have been working in groups using structured math talk to discuss patterns, make conjectures about them and extend them.  An example would be looking at a pattern that shows us the first five arrangements and then trying to figure out what the tenth arrangement would be.  The following are links to the Bridges website that you might find useful this year.

http://mathlearningcenter.org/files/media/Parents/UnitIntros/B2Unit1Parents.pdf
http://mathlearningcenter.org/media/Parents/MathWithYour/B2_MathWithYour.pdf
http://mathlearningcenter.org/media/Parents/Vocab/BridgesVocab2.pdf

This afternoon the Firefly team made salsa.  We cut up all kinds of veggies to create a delicious salsa.  Here's the recipe we used courtesy of Stony Loam Farm for those of you who would like to make it at home:
4 large ripe tomatoes, diced
4 garlic cloves, finely chopped
4 peppers or 1 hot pepper seeded and diced
1/2 cup onion, diced
4 tablespoons chopped cilantro/ and or chopped parsley
salt to taste
juice of 1-2 limes or 3-4 teaspoons apple cider vinegar
Combine the tomatoes with their juice, garlic, peppers, onion, cilantro/parsley and 1/2 teaspoon salt in a bowl.  Add the lime juice or apple cider vinegar and taste for salt.  We also added cucumbers, corn and black beans to ours.
Just a reminder that this Wednesday is picture day. We will be having our pictures taken at 10:10 am. 
Have a great weekend!

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Pictures of the Second Week of School

A big thank you to Elissa Best for taking all of these terrific photos this week!

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Hands On Nature and Red Clover Books

We spent this week getting back into routines and getting used to our new schedule.  We have been reading Red Clover books and introducing Reader's and Writer's Workshops through them.  We spend most of this week reading and doing activities connected to Who Stole the Mona Lisa.  We acted out lines from the book and pretended we were different characters in the book.  Our final activity was creating our own books telling the same story from a different character's perspective.  Everyone did an amazing job with this activity!  Today we read Stand Straight Ella Kate.  This is a story about a woman who had gigantism and how she was able to turn something that made her cry as a child into something that made it possible for her to lead a remarkable life.  Next week we will continue with this story and activities that support understanding of this story.  We have been reviewing letter sounds and formation in Fundations this week.  Next week we will begin Unit One which reviews digraphs (sh, th, ch, ck and wh), blends (sp, scr) and closed syllables, and teaches spellings of /k/ sound.
We have begun Unit One in Math this week.  We began the unit learning about glyphs and creating our own glyphs.  This unit focuses on patterning, sorting and number.  We were introduced to our first math work stations and have had time to explore with the materials we will begin using next week for a variety of activities that reinforce our learning in this unit. 
Our Hands On Nature lesson this week was about insect life cycles.  We watched a puppet show, learned about simple and complex metamorphosis and worked in small groups to reinforce our learning.  This lesson tied in nicely to some learning some of our second graders are doing about fireflies.  A big thank you to our HON parents for this fun learning experience.
Homework will begin next Friday for Firefly Second Graders.  Students will be be asked to choose three activities from a tic-tac-toe board to complete each week.  My intention is for these activities to give students opportunities to apply some of the learning we are doing in school.  Please feel free to give me feedback if this is not working for your family.
During the month of September, students in grades k-2 will have the opportunity to build, explore and play with the Imagination Playground.  Please check this week's Friday Folder for more information about this.  Please make sure to return the permission form by Tuesday or your child will not be able to participate when Firefly goes that day.
It was so nice to see so many families at curriculum night.  I know it is a very busy time of year and we really appreciate everyone taking time out of their busy schedules to attend. 
Have a great weekend!

The First Week of School

We had a fantastic first week back to school!  We have spent the past three days doing team building activities and getting to know our new friends Griffin and Mira.  We created our Hopes and Dreams for second grade and made self portraits.  Today Jordan and Sam's Moms came in and worked with us in the gardens.  A big thank you to them for giving us that opportunity today.  We also spent some time looking at Tia's Sailing Blog and posted a comment to her.  I am shocked by how much everyone grew over the summer!  It has been so nice to settle in with the same group of students for a second year.

Next week we will start to ease into our regular schedule.  Firefly has the Red Clover books for the month of September so we will spend September reading them and using them to launch our Readers and Writers Workshops.  The new titles for this year can be found on Shelfari on this blog.  This year's books are terrific!

We have started the school year without our wonderful Miss Claire.  She broker her ankle in three places last Friday and will be having surgery next Friday.  We are hopeful that she will be back in December, but it may be January before she is able to return to work.

A huge thank you to everyone for sending in school supplies.  We should have plenty of tissues and pencils to get through the new school year.

Have a great weekend!