2H Class Blog!: October 2018

On Friday, we celebrated the fall season with our very special "Leaf Celebration!"

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 snakes, cats, and fish, to birds, dragons, and deer! Of course there were quite a few OWLS in the bunch! A huge "thank you" to all those who were able to join us for this wonderful celebration. It is so nice to welcome families into our classrooms :)

While the leaf celebration was definitely the highlight of our day, the second graders had a wonderfully, jam-packed morning visiting each of the second grade classrooms to participate in a fall activity. Check out some of their great work and be sure to ask them about our Second 2nd Grade Swap Day!
*Pumpkin Life Cycles with Ms. Bucklin!*

*Candy Corn Place Value with Ms. Donlon!*

*Fall Poems with Mrs. Page!*

*Scarecrow Art with Mrs. Murphy!*

All in all, it was a great day all around!

Have a wonderful, last week of October! This year is truly flying by!

Check out these 2nd Graders who have GROWN LIKE BEANSTALKS! On Tuesday, we enjoyed a grade level celebration of all the amazing reading work we have done so far this year!

Highlights from our week:

*Reading: After enjoying such a wonderful Unit 1 Celebration, we jumped right into our second unit of study this week: Becoming Experts! Students learned that reading nonfiction allows us to grow our knowledge! We began by practicing paying careful attention to details and adding our new discoveries to our existing knowledge. Before unleashing our skills onto nonfiction books, we had a great time reading some unusual nonfiction materials. A big highlight of the week was shopping for nonfiction books for our book bins. We learned that "just-right" nonfiction books are a little different from "just-right" fiction books, as we can obtain a lot of information from diagrams and photographs in nonfiction texts.

*Breakout Box: Our Global Read Aloud work took us on a VERY exciting adventure this week! Breakout Boxes are designed to teach critical thinking, teamwork, and problem solving. The puzzle we were challenged to solve involved our GRA book: A Boy Called Bat! Students had to work together to solve a series of puzzles in order to unlock a series of locks to uncover what was hidden in the mysterious box The catch? They only had 45 minutes! Would they be successful? We truly didn't know!! I was extremely impressed with the perseverance and determination displayed by the Owl Class! It was truly magical watching them problem solve and celebrate as they reached success!! We look forward to trying additional Breakout Boxes in the future!

*Gardening: On Wednesday, with the most beautiful weather, we headed out into our garden! The Owls were put to work planting and harvesting. We are so fortunate to have this beautiful learning space at our school!

*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 will be sent home on Monday. 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!

*Leaf Project: Just a friendly reminder that pressed leaves are due to school on Thursday, 10/25. You're welcome to join us on Friday, Oct. 26th, from 1-2pm as we create a fun, fall craft with these leaves! Thanks for your continued support!!