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!!