Curriculum night

Look who's been sitting in our chairs!

Thank you to all the parents who were able to join us for Curriculum Night.

The children loved reading your notes the next day.

I hope you have a better idea of what it's like to be a second grader at Shaker Lane.

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Here is the video made from your children's poems. Sorry we ran out of time!

 

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Some down time

There's nothing like curling up with a good book.

We read a lot in second grade. Sometimes we read to learn and sometimes we read because it's fun!

On Wednesday afternoons and whenever we have a few free moments, we schedule in D.E.A.R. time.

That stands for Drop Everything And Read.

Unlike structured reading times, this is a time to choose anything you'd like to read, find any comfortable spot, snuggle with a furry friend (if you'd like to) and enjoy a little quiet time.

Our class is quite fond of, and quite good at, PUZZLES!

Since the school year started, three 100 piece puzzles have been completed. The puzzle table is available to students when they finish their work. Puzzles are a great way to work on spatial reasoning and problem solving.

 

 

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Establishing our Classroom Climate

OUR 3 CLASSROOM RULES
One of the most important things we do at the beginning of the year is to discuss what we need from each other in order to make this a successful school year.
We began by reading a story by David Shannon.

In this story, David adjusts slowly to school because he has a hard time remembering that he isn't the only one in the classroom, or the lunchroom, or on the playground. We talked about how his energy and decisions affected the people around him.
Next everyone wrote a rule they felt was an important one for us to have in our class.
After we read each one, we sorted them under 3 headings.

As you can see, most of our ideas fell under respecting others. I guess that means that's pretty important to the people in this class.

First Week of School

We made it through our first week!

Although we did sneak in a little writing and math, this week was about getting comfortable with each other and our surroundings.

We started each morning with a meeting and a greeting. This is a great way to learn each other's names and practice using eye contact when greeting someone.

We shared some fun books this week. Ask your child what they were about.

Now that we're on the second floor, we are up and down the stairs all day every day! We talked about the importance of knowing how to tie our shoes. We read a book, watched a video and broke up into study groups to practice. The video we watched can be found in an earlier post on this blog. There are many other shoe tying videos on YouTube.

The kids did a great job filling and sharing their "ME BAGS". We learned a lot about everyone.

We have a terrific class! I know it will be a great year!