October 22nd News

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Ms. Arnold’s Classroom News (10/22/14)

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What We’ve Been Up To:

It's hard to believe October is almost over! This year is just flying by!

*Leaf Project: Thanks to everyone for collecting and preparing the beautiful fall leaves that made it into our classroom! With these leaves, each second grader was able to create their very own leaf animal. We have everything from tigers, mice, and rabbits, to turtles, ducks, and dogs! Of course there were quite a few OWLS in the bunch! These fantastic creations now adorn our hallway---be sure to check them out whenever you're in the building!

Logan studying Sohi's Look What I Did with a Leaf! book.

*Writer's Workshop: Students have had a blast bringing their Diary of a _______ stories to life! While merging nonfiction information and narrative storywriting, our class turned their animal research into fantastic picture books! Being challenged to use the illustrator moves we noticed in our illustration study, I was so impressed with the number of techniques they included in their books. Our class has really taken ownership in noticing author & illustrator craft and they are feeling confident that they can take techniques and apply them to their own writing!

 Check out a sample story: Diary of a Coyote by Taylor

     At the end of this week, once everyone has put on the finishing touches, will have a chance to celebrate and enjoy all of these wonderful stories and authors at our first official publishing party! Way to go authors!

     Without wasting another second, we have moved on to an author study to examine the writing techniques that many authors use. Meet our mentor author: Kevin Henkes!

For more information on our mentor author, visit: http://www.kevinhenkes.com/

With great books such as Chrysanthemum, Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse, Wemberly Worried and Shelia Rae the Brave, there's one thing for certain: Kevin Henkes loves using mice characters! We've only just begun, but we'll be using Kevin Henkes to inspire our own mice realistic fiction stories! If they're anything like our animal diaries, they're bound to be fabulous!

Kevin Henkes often uses the same characters in his books and has realistic problems that all second graders can relate to!

*Read Aloud: Yesterday, we finished our third read aloud novel, Poppy by Avi. We were so enveloped in this novel, many didn’t want it to end! This story follows Poppy, a young mouse, to fight against the cruel "ruler"of Dimwood Forest, Mr. Ocax, to acquire new food and land for her family. It was a journey filled with up and downs, but in the end, we were happy that Poppy showed her bravery and learned to stand up for herself and for those she cared about. Avi is the author of many other wonderful stories such as Ragweed, Poppy & Rye, and Poppy & Ereth, which all also take place in Dimwood Forest. While the text itself is too advanced for second graders to read independently, these stories make fantastic read alouds.

Our Poppy poster is added to our collection of read aloud murals.

*Poetry: Students have been working hard on building their reading fluency and have memorized their first poem! Today, they proudly recited Harry Behn’s poem Trees to the entire main office! They were SO impressed! Check out our rehearsal video below!

*Parent Conferences: With eight weeks of school under our belt, I am eager to meet with you to discuss your child’s progress thus far and develop individual goals for the remainder of the year. Reminder slips were sent home last week. Please arrive on time for your conference as many of the conference slots run back-to-back. I look forward to seeing you and discussing your fabulous child!

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Coming Up:

-Early Release: Wednesday, Oct. 29th (Parent Conferences)

-Pumpkins for Holey Pumpkin Day Due: Wednesday, Oct. 29th
-Holey Pumpkin Day Celebration: Thursday, Oct. 30th, 1-2pm

Oct. 11th News

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Ms. Arnold’s Classroom News (10/11/14)

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What We’ve Been Up To:

We've been a bunch of busy beavers (owls?) here in 2AA! The learning and fun never ends!

*Science: Continuing with our life science unit, we have moved from our study of plants to a study of animals. We spent the week classifying animals and discussing the characteristics of each of the five vertebrate groups: mammals, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and fish. To begin our unit, working with their table teams, students created collaborative posters to remind us which animals fit with each animal group.

Here are some fun online games that practice sorting animals:
Animal Class Game: We played this one on our interactive whiteboard!
Science Net Links: A Touch of Class
Child U: Grouping Animals: This site looks at other ways animals can be grouped.

Next, we began looking at animal adaptations. We used a fun book to start this conversation, What If You Had Animal Teeth. This book got us thinking about how teeth are adapted to the types of food an animal eats. We couldn't resist having a little fun seeing what it would look like if we had animal teeth!!

 Some chose tiger teeth because they are super strong (tigers can pull 5x their weight with their teeth!), others chose shark teeth because as soon as you loose a tooth, another one is already there to fill the gap (a wishful hope for some of our toothless second graders!), while others chose rattlesnake, vampire bat, or camel teeth!

We will shift our conversation to looking at animal habitats next week.

*Writer's Workshop: We've been hard at work trying out illustration techniques and each student is now beginning to write & illustrate a book based on Doreen Cronin's Diary of a Fly! Tying in our animal unit, students chose a NH animal and began conducting research. On day one, we focused on using print resources to highlight and record important information. On day two, we used the iPads to access the NH Fish & Game website and National Geographic Kids to collect even more facts! After that, it was time to learn about the writing craft of narrative nonfiction. They learned how authors can tell a fiction story while also delivering nonfiction facts. With their research complete and writing techniques learned, this week we'll begin drafting our stories!

Research is hard work!

*Holey Pumpkin Day: On Friday, you received information regarding our holiday celebration, which will take place on Thursday, Oct. 30th. After a day filled with pumpkin activities, our class will be creating special pumpkin lanterns!

     Please send your child in with one small carving pumpkin by Wednesday, Oct. 29th. Please have the top cut (around the stem) and the insides scraped (but guts still intact!) before sending the pumpkin in. If you have any questions, please don't' hesitate to ask!

*Speech/OT: We've been very fortunate to have speech pathologist, Jen Snow, and occupational therapist, Patty Dukeman, join us each week. On orange days, Mrs. Snow and Mrs. Dukeman join us for morning meeting and teach us how to be aware of our body and help us maximize our learning. We've covered everything from expected and unexpected behaviors, to whole body listening, to "tools" that can help us ready our brains and bodies for learning. On Friday, we learned about how our feelings can affect our behavior--and that our feelings naturally change throughout the day! Using Leah Kuypers' Zones of Regulation, we learned about the four "zones" of regulation our bodies encounter each and everyday:

The Four Zones

The Red Zone is used to describe extremely heightened states of alertness and intense emotions.  A person may be elated or experiencing anger, rage, explosive behavior, devastation, or terror when in the Red Zone. A person is described as “out of control” if in the Red Zone.
The Yellow Zone is also used to describe a heightened state of alertness and elevated emotions; however, one has some control when they are in the Yellow Zone.  A person may be experiencing stress, frustration, anxiety, excitement, silliness, the wiggles, or nervousness when in the Yellow Zone.
The Green Zone is used to describe a calm state of alertness. A person may be described as happy, focused, content, or ready to learn when in the Green Zone.  This is the zone where optimal learning occurs.

The Blue Zone is used to describe low states of alertness, such as when one feels sad, tired, sick, or bored.  
*taken from the Zones of Regulation website

Next week, Mrs. Snow & Mrs. Dukeman will be back to teach us different tools to use when we enter each zone. "You used a tool (clap clap clap clap), now aren't you cool (clap clap clap clap!)"

*Scholastic Book Order: Last week, another Scholastic Book Order was sent home. October book orders are due on Wednesday, Oct. 15th. Each flyer came with a free book coupon (worth $5 when you place an order of $10). If ordering, make sure you take advantage of this coupon! Orders can be placed online using our class code HXF8D, or sent into school with a check made payable to Scholastic Reading Club.
*Fall Leaves: Don't forget that pressed fall leaves are due to school on Tuesday, Oct. 14th! A lot of students have already brought their leaves in and they look great! We'll look forward to creating our leaf animals later this week!

Hope you all had a great, long weeekend!!

Oct. 5th News

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Ms. Arnold’s Classroom News (10/5/14)

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What We’ve Been Up To:

Happy October! It's hard to believe we've already been in school for over one whole month together! Time flies when you're having fun!

*Words Their Way: We've completed our first unit in Words Their Way! Units run in two-week cycles. On the first day of the cycle, the sort is introduced. Students explore and analyze the words to discover patterns and consistencies and to establish rules. The first week of the unit is done completely in class to build independence. The second week of the cycle is when you will see the word sort come home. Practice will now happen in both the classroom and at home and students will be given a "spelling review" on the spelling pattern on Friday. On these reviews, students will be given five words chosen randomly from their sort list, as well as three "challenge" words that were not on the sort list, but do follow the same pattern. The purpose for Friday's review is to determine if students have mastered the spelling pattern and are ready for a new pattern, or if they need some more time on the current pattern. I will share their spelling review booklets with you at parent conferences. While this program is quite a shift from rote memorization, one thing's for sure: the kids have been having a blast with the work!

Using letter tiles to write out words

Stamping out those words!

Using spelling task cards. Their first task? Write your words in bubble letters!

Highlighting the vowels

Everything's better together! Playing memory

*PE: Our second graders are hard at work in their soccer unit. Ms. Locke sends us a friendly reminder that PE will almost always take place outside from now until the end of November. Please make sure your child is dressed for the weather. They are more than welcome, and encouraged, to keep a spare pair of shoes and socks in the classroom. As we have PE first thing on yellow days, the morning dew keeps the fields quite wet leaving the second graders with soaked feet for the rest of the day--not fun!

*Read Aloud: *Read Aloud: Last week, we finished our second read aloud novel, Gooney Bird Greene by Lois Lowry. This was a very inspiring story to our classroom of budding writers because Gooney Bird is quite the storyteller!  Gooney Bird is the star of several other book like Gooney the Fabulous and Gooney Bird is so Absurd. We started a novel fitting of the owl class: Poppy. This story tells of Mr. Ocax, the great horned owl, who rules over Dimwood Forest, and the mice family that lives in fear beneath him. Poppy is jam-packed with action and keeps us on the edge of our seats day after day---we can't wait to read what happens next!                             

 *Fall Leaf Project: Don't forget to be on the lookout for fall leaves! Students need to collect 20-30 leaves of different shapes and sizes for our fall project. Using Morteza E. Sohi's Look What I Did with a Leaf!, students will be challenged to create beautiful animal pictures using only the leaves that we collect! Check out some samples to help get an idea of the types of leaves to be on the lookout for--the more unique the better!

Remember, leaves need to be washed and pressed before coming to school. Leaves may be sent in as soon as they are ready, but please make sure they are in by Tuesday, Oct. 14th. Thanks for your help!

*Homework: Great job to students and families with beginning the homework routine. Nights sure can get busy with afterschool activities, but with your help, our second graders will begin developing great homework habits to set them up for success! Just to clarify a few questions that have come up:
-Reading Logs: Reading Logs are sent home on Fridays and are due the following Friday. There are five slots to record reading as it is my hope that they are reading at least one weekend day. Please have your child turn in their reading log each Friday, even if not all of the slots are completed. Also, as your child develops as a reader, they will be reading longer, more challenging texts. It would not be unsual for your child to be reading the same book each night and thus recording the same title in each box (some of the kids thought they needed to read a different book each night, but I did clarify with them).
-Word Sorts: Word sorts will be sent home the week after they have been introduced in class. You can expecct to see word sorts every other week.
-Math sheets: Math sheets will be given out several times per week. They are due the following morning as they specifically correlate with the lesson of the day and are meant as a reinforcer. If for some reason your child doesn't complete the worksheet, please send in as soon as it is completed. If they are showing difficulty in understanding the math skill, please just write me a note and we will go through the worksheet together.
Homework is not meant to be a stressful experience for any involved! If you ever have any questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to contact me.
*Math: Last week we completed our first Everyday Math Unit. This first unit serves as a review of first grade and to establish the routines and procedures of the Everyday Math program. Without wasting any time, we delved right into Unit 2: Fact Strategies. This unit focuses entirely on math fact fluency. By developing fact automaticity, students will build a base foundation that will make more complex operations so much simpler! We will be introducing several strategies for practicing math facts this week. Some great web-based activties to try at home are:
Online Flashcards
     Math Facts Basketball
     Math Playground: Tons of Math Fact Games!
*Writing: We completed our first unit of writer's workshop ("Launching") and had our first celebration! Students have been learning about where writing ideas come from, drafting tons of small moment stories (small, true stories that have happened to them), and choosing one to bring to publication. Everyone enjoyed sharing their story with the class and placing it in our "Owl Authors" bucket. Just like published authors, our young authors deserve a place on the shelf!

After publishing small moment stories, we began our "Authors as Mentors" unit. Looking to published authors and illustrators, we will notice their techniques and try them in our own writing. We started this week with an illustration study and it was amazing to see the things they noticed and were willing to try in their own work! After another week of experiment with illustrations and how they can add to a story, we will then look to writing techniques and how they can improve our stories.

*October UA Schedule:

Sun	Mon	Tues	Wed	Thurs	Fri	Sat
28	29 Music	30 PE	1 Art	2 PE	3 STEM	4
5	6 Library	7 Music	8 PE	9 Art	10 PE	11
12	13 NO SCHOOL	14 STEM	15 Library	16 Music	17 PE	18
19	20 Art	21 PE	22 STEM	23 Library	24 Music	25
26	27 PE	28 Art	29 PE	30 STEM	31 Library	1

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Coming Up:

- No School: Monday, Oct. 13th (Columbus Day)

-Pressed Leaves Due: Tuesday, Oct. 14th