End of the Year Fun

Our end-of-the-year countdown has begun and we have had a BLAST each day enjoying activities that match the letter of the day.  We also have been on two field trips! Want to see some of what we've been up to?

 

C is for Camping Day

 We turned the classroom into a campground, complete with 6 different campgrounds.  Each area had a different activity, and students rotated through each activity during the day.  We used our writing time o write about how to make s'mores.

 

 

F is for Flashlight Day

We combined flashlight fun with learning about fireflies! Did you know that each type of firefly has their own special pattern of flashes? Not only did we take time to read with the lights out, but we learned facts about fireflies, created our own firefly patterns and turned off all the hallways lights to make things even darker!

 

 

I is for Ice Cream Day

I'm sure you heard already - we made our own ice cream right in the classroom! Students combined half-and-half, sugar and vanilla, then shook it up in a bag with ice and salt.  Soon it turned to delicious ice cream! We used our experience to kick off our how-to writing - and of course, we ate the ice cream afterwards!

 

 

Field Trip #1: High School Mayfest

 

We took a quick trip to the high school to see the annual Mayfest Arts Festival.  The gym was filled with art of all kinds - sculptures, paintings, photography and more!  It was fun to get to see what the high school students had created - and to think about how our second graders will be doing that, too!

 



 

Field Trip #2: Children's Science Museum

 



Our trip to the Children's Science Museum was the perfect day! Students observed animals, saw turtles and lizards of all kinds, tested their thinking with a puzzle room, met Conny the Whale and even dissected a flower.

 

The last three weeks of school promise to be just as busy as these past weeks have been! Although summer is coming, we're still hard at work in school - but taking time to enjoy some fun, as well!

What's Coming Up?

Hi everyone! With only 24 more school days to go, our days at LES are getting busy!  This post will let you know a little about some of the important events and activities coming up in our classroom.

1.  ABC Countdown

Our countdown started on Thursday - one letter each day and a fun activity to go with that letter.  Thursday was Art Day and we did some "sculpting" with playdough and drawing and creating at the end of the day.  Friday was "Beach Blankets" and we did most of our work sitting on the floor on our blankets.

With days like Camping Day, Electronics Day, Watermelon Day and King and Queen Day on the schedule, we can look forward to a fun end of the year!  Here's our ABC Countdown calendar.  You can click (HERE) to download.








2. Mayfest
  On Wed. May 20, students in grades 1-4 will be traveling to the high school for their annual Mayfest.  We will tour the gym and look at a variety of different pieces of artwork created by our own high school students.  There will be sculptures, drawings, paintings and more. Be sure to ask your child which piece was his or her favorite!

3. Field Trip

The day after Memorial Day (Tues. May 27), second graders in Ms. Gamache's and Mrs. Orga's classes will visit the Children's Science Museum in West Hartford. With a new exhibit on puzzles, an animal room, interactive activities, a classroom program on plants - and of course Cone the Whale! - the day will be filled with fun and learning.  You can click (HERE) to visit the Science Center's site and learn more.



4. Field Day
Always a great day, this year's LES Field Day will be held on June 10.  It will be a day filled with movement, water and fun! Please contact Mrs. Halbardier if you'd like to help out.

5. Spirit Week
Here's a sneak peek at what we'll be doing to wrap up the year at LES - more info coming soon!
Monday June 15 - Extra recess
Tuesday June 16 - Movie Day
Wed. June 17 - Husky Hero/Superhero Day
Thurs. June 18 - Stuffed animal day
Fri. June 19 (last day!) - Fun Friday with music and dancing

Classroom Update!

I absolutely cannot believe it is May already!  We have been busy these past few weeks with so many different topics.  Here’s a peek into our latest classroom fun!
April is National Poetry month and we took this opportunity to learn about a variety of poetic techniques, such as figurative language, similes, alliteration and more.  We read many different types of poems and looked at how the author used mental images and descriptive words and phrases to draw in the reader. We also used what we learned to create our own poems.

 Our math time has been focused on a completely different topic than the number sense and place vale that has been our focus so much this year.  We learned about 2D (plane) and 3D (solid) shapes – using descriptive vocabulary  like edges faces, vertices, and the names of shapes such as quadrilateral and parallelogram.  By far our favorite activity centered around this chart and this bulletin board display we created for the hallway

Verbs have been our focus for grammar lately.  We like to create our own personal anchor charts to use as we study specific skills.

And finally, we just finished up our reading unit on folktales.  We read these three tales and read versions of each from different culture.

Then we compared and contrasted story elements, themes and story structures.  The Anansi stories were definitely our favorite!

With only 7 weeks left of school, we'll be turning our thoughts to plants and gardens, telling time and reviewing everything we have learned.  Our days will continue to be busy, busy, busy!

You are Invited...

It's almost that time!  We have been spending LOTS of time in class - in all areas - working on getting our Wax Museum project ready to go.  This week we planned our costumes by looking at pictures of our famous Americans.  We talked about what we would need to look like that person and what each person would be holding or have near them to represent what they had accomplished.

We are also creating an INTERACTIVE  timeline of famous Americans in PowerPoint.  Each timeline point will be a hotspot and when you click on the spot, it will pull up a video (of the student in costume!) telling about that person.

In order to do this we had to practice making a video - that was fun!  We did a practice run and had one person hold the ipad while videotaping someone else talking about themselves.  We watched the videos together and learned A LOT about how to make a good video.  We created our "Top Ten Tips" and posted them on the whiteboard the next day, before we tried again.

Our videos were MUCH better the second time around!  Next week we'll spend time writing our quick informational speeches for both or wax museum and our videos.

If you didn't get the invitation to visit our Wax Museum (sent in Friday folders this week), here's the information:

NOTE:  The Wax Museum is the project Ms. Gamache's readers are doing.  If your child is part of Mrs. Dunn or Miss Carta's reading or writing classes, they have a different project planned :-)

Visitors to the Wax Museum will be treated to an interactive display of famous Americans throughout history that come alive with the touch of a button.  We hope you can join us!

Biographies - Part 1

What do you know about Jackie Robinson?  Amelia Earhart?  Have you heard of Ruth Law?  Or Thurgood Marshall?  These are just some of the famous Americans we've been learning about and boy are we excited!

We've been spending our reading time focusing on biographies, specifically talking about personality traits (character traits) and how the person responds (or responded) to challenges. 

 

After reading a few biographies about famous Americans, we generated ideas for some describing character traits.  We also learned some new words we could use to describe many of the people we were learning about.



We went back to the texts to find things the men and women said and did that supported our ideas.

We worked on locating key details by color coding texts and looking carefully at the illustrations and in the text.

We "walked the room" reading fact cards and finding main idea and details.

And we did some online research, too!

We learned SO much about so many people and can't wait for Part 2 - a fun biography project we'll be starting next week! Stay tuned!

Peek at Our Week

Woo-hoo!  We FINALLY had a full week of school last week!  Would you believe it has been SIX weeks since that has happened?  (Longer if you count the December break!)  We were really busy this past week so I thought I'd share a bit of everything from our classroom world.

All this snow has left us really looking forward to spring!  Our beautiful amaryllis plant gave us quite a show with its bright read flowers - and it was HUGE!

Have you seen these books?  We are CRAZY in love with them all!  Each book has facts, photos and more information abut what it would be like to have certain animal parts.  We used these books as a start to our opinion writing and we're almost done with a big display.  Check back next week for the reveal!

The winter months can get a little boring, so we change up our class celebration chart.  Rather than go with a marble jar for great class behavior, now we earn one of the valentine cuties (ready to change for March!).  Earning all 12 cuties means a mini-celebration for us!  We just met our goal again at the end of last week so there will be time in the coming days for a drawing party!

It's time for some Math Missions!  Complete with "Mission Impossible" music and magnifying classes to find clues, we've started on our subtraction with regrouping unit!  (You may know the skill as "borrowing" when subtracting.)  It's important that students understand WHY they regroup ones and tens before they start the actual paper and pencil work - otherwise it's easy to know what to do, but never really understand it!  We'll be taking lots of time - with different math missions! - to practice this skill.

Mr. Putter and Tabby anchored our final week of reading with a friendship theme.  These two characters are great for comparing and contrasting, talking about character traits and seeing things from different points of view.  We read lots of other friendship books and focused on the big question of "How do friends show they care about each other?"

This idea has been BIG in our room this week.  It's the VIP buckets!  VIPs are students who go beyond just what they are supposed to do - in their work and their behavior - WITHOUT having to be reminded.  The VIP (or two!) get to keep the bucket at their seat and use gel pens, smencils, stickers and mechanical pencils.. they get to was at lunch with the smelly soap (love!) and choose their workspot (camping chair or lap desk, anyone!).  Sometimes we have two VIPs, sometimes just one and sometimes none... it just depends who's doing their best ALL the time!

 

 

Wow!  We really were happy that we had a full week of school and could finally try to get back into a routine!  This month of March means focusing on famous Americans and biographies, subtraction with regrouping, possessive nouns and how to have a great conversation.  We are ready for spring!

Making Inferences with Picture of the Day

Take a look at this picture.

What do you notice?  Did you know that by making observations, asking questions and making inferences about this picture, you are actually doing what a good reader does with text?

These three skills are important for readers to use.  Good readers think carefully about what they are reading, and use what they know to "read into" what they are reading.  We have been working on an activity we call, "Picture of the Day" to help us become better readers.  Want to join us?  Here's what we do:

1.  Make observations.
Observations are what you see with your eyes.  They are things you notice.  Here are some examples of observations we made abut this picture:
- there is a boat
- the man is wearing shorts and is barefoot
- the sky is clear
- his leg is bent and his hands are in the air
- he is smiling
Notice we couldn't say, "He is jumping into the water."  We don't know that by seeing it with our eyes.  But we can INFER that's what he is doing from what we see.

2.  Ask questions.
Here are some of our questions:
- why are his hands up?
- is it hot?
- is he at a lake?
- is that his boat?

Finally, we use what we noticed and asked to make inferences.
3.  Make inferences
- We infer that it is hot because he is wearing shorts, has no shirt on and is barefoot.
- We infer that he is jumping into the water because his leg is bent and he is stepping off the boat.
- We infer he is not at the ocean because the water is calm and there are trees in the background.

Good readers do the same things when they read.  They notice what the author is saying, ask questions to themselves and draw conclusions and make inferences based on that information.  Soon this activity will become part of our reading rotations each morning.

The next time you are reading with your child - or see a great photo somewhere! - try making inferences.  You may be surprised to find out what your child is thinking!

My Pet Whale - Or Not?

These last two weeks have been busy in our classroom!  We spent time last week reading a story called Dear Mr. Blueberry, all about a little girl who is convinced she has a whale in her pond.  Her teacher, Mr. Blueberry, is convinced that there could not possibly be a whale there.  They communicate through letters, each expressing their own opinion.

Not only did we do some whale research, but we also started thinking.... would a whale make a good pet?  We brainstormed the characteristics of a good pet

 

and then shared our own reason why a whale would or wouldn't make a good pet.





Then we wrote an opinion piece, using an opening sentence, reasons with details and a closing sentence. 

 

What do you think - would a whale make a good pet?

"Snow" Much Fun in the New Year!

Happy New Year!  2015 has arrived and we are back at school ready to take on everything that winter has to offer.

This week, we used the book Snow, by Cynthia Rylant, to review figurative language and talk about the tone of a text.  Then we compared that book to another snow-themed book, called Snow Dance.

 While both books we about snow, they had very different tones and word choices.  Snow was more calm and peaceful, filled with figurative language and imagery that made for great visualizations!  Snow Dance on the other hand, was a book with rhyming lines than bounced along and made you smile and want to go out and play in the snow!

We continued the theme of snow during book groups.  Snowflake Bentley and Poppleton in Winter were the choices here. 

We also read one of our Scholastic News magazines to find out how this amazing ice-covered lighthouse was formed.  Be sure to ask your child about it - amazing!

We kept the snow going with some math and our Snow People glyphs.  The parts of each glyph tell about the person who created it.  For example, you can tell by looking at the nose if the best part of a snow day is having no school (round) or playing in the snow (triangular).  Here are some of our finished snowy friends!

We then "read" the information from the glyphs and analyzed the data. 

The snow this week definitely helped to add to our topic! Let's hope next week gives us a full five day to be able to start our adventure to the North and South poles.... I wonder what we'll find?