2nd Grade is on FIRE for reading!!!!!

At the beginning of the year, the 2nd Grade teachers sat down to decide on a SMART WIG (Wildly Important Goal) for our kiddos. We wanted it to be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and met by a certain Time. After quite a bit of thought, we decided our goal should be:

"As a grade level, we will read 120,000 minutes by the end of 2nd Grade." 

Each week, we tracked how many minutes we read and contributed to our goal individually, as a class, and as a grade level. This was an easy task since we write down how many minutes we read each night on the calendar in our homework packet. After much tracking and even more reading, we (to no surprise) met our GOAL!!!!!! Not only did we meet our goal, but we met it after ONE SEMESTER!!!! If that doesn't call for a celebration, I don't know what does! We are so proud of ourselves!!! When our principal, Mrs. Jessop, and assistant principal, Mrs. Bailey, heard we met our goal in half of the time we had hoped, they wanted to join in on the celebration, too! We went to the gym one morning where they read a book to us and played Pacman with us. It was a BLAST!!! 

The kids loved having a story read to them since they obviously are wild about books! Playing Pacman in PE is always fun, but throw a few teachers in there with the principal and assistant principal and you have yourself a serious CELEBRATION! Check out the pictures below of our goal tracking and celebration!!!

GOAL TRACKING

Individual tracking in our Leadership Notebooks

Our class is in FLAMES!!!

2nd Grade is on FIRE for reading!!!!

CELEBRATING!

Mrs. Bailey and Mrs. Jessop reading to 2nd Grade

The game of 

Pacman 

begins!

Mrs. Jessop playing Pacman!

Mrs. Bailey playing Pacman!

We are BACK IN BUSINESS

After a few LONG months of having our classroom library closed for renovations, it is now officially back OPEN!!! When you have a classroom full of kiddos who love to read and an extensive selection of books they love, you end up being asked every day how much longer it is going to take for the library to open back up. As a teacher and fellow lover of books, not a single part of me was ever upset at this question, no matter how often it came! I am so thankful to everyone who has donated books to make our library as big and exciting as it is more than I can put into words! Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU!!!! My class was so excited when I finally announced that the library was back up and running that we decided to drop everything and read for a little bit. I know I have an amazing bunch of students, but looking up to see all of them reading without me asking them to do so made me even happier that I get to be their teacher this year!

          

        

CAUGHT: Students who LOVE books!!!!!

"The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go." -Dr. Suess

Fun Friday (a little late)

We had a blast the day before Valentine's Day! We kicked off the morning with our annual fun run which was a huge success. Each of the kids ran MORE than the 36 laps they were able to get pledges for. We are so proud of them and how much money they raised to help purchase educational resources for the school and can't wait to see the new track put in at our campus as well! A huge thank you goes out to the Apex Team that came into our classrooms each day to motivate our kiddos and teach them valuable life lessons. We enjoyed each lesson and loved getting bracelets to add to our wrists each time they were over!

That afternoon we had our Valentine's Party where they kids made ice cream sundaes and exchanged notes that put everyone in a good mood. It was a happy day all around! :)

The kids running strong

Fun Run Bracelets!

Happy Valentine's Day from Mrs. Story's Class!

1 Cent, 2 Cents, 3 Cents...A DOLLAR!!!

What are goods and services? Ask us! We're experts now! Goods are things people make or grow and services are things that people provide for others. As consumers (people who buy goods and services), we can buy all of these things from producers (the people who make or sell goods or services). After weeks of learning all about goods and services, producers and consumers, etc. we realized we knew enough to become producers and consumers ourselves! We turned our classroom into a shopping mall full of school supplies. (One of our classmates' parents VERY graciously donated several supplies to our class since we were running low! We are so thankful!) 

Different partner groups opened shops around the room with the supplies they were selling (pencils, erasers, glue sticks, scissors, hand held pencil sharpeners, and more!) and played the role of producer. They would set the price of their good based on supply and demand and could change it as the supply and demand also changed. The other students would then go around and shop (using the plastic coin sets we use in math) and purchase goods. The goal was to see who could buy the most amount of goods for the least amount of money. What a challenge! We switched roles as producers and consumers, of course. :) It was so much fun seeing the creativity of each shop with how the producers decided to set up and market and even more fun to actually KEEP the goods purchased!!! Here are a few pictures of the classroom economy we created:

Pencil Sharpener Shop

Eraser Shop

Producers and Consumers Trading Goods

Oh Mr. Sun, Sun, Mr. Golden Sun, Please Shine Down On Me

The past few weeks we have studied different objects in the sky. Last week we studied the sun and went outside to see how our shadows changed from the morning to the afternoon when the sun was in a different position in the sky. We discovered that our shadows were HUGE in the morning but were much smaller in the afternoon when the sun was almost directly above us. We had so much fun tracing our shadows and then coming inside and figuring out how to make different animal shadows with our hands in front of a flashlight! From what we learned about the Sun, we knew that the hand shadows would be bigger if our hands were further away from the flashlight. 

Large

Morning

Shadows

Small Afternoon Shadows

Buddy Time

We always love spending time with our buddies! Last week we stopped by the music room after recess to see what our buddies have learned to play on the recorder. Mrs. Leonhardt read a story and they played the tune that was on several pages of the story when she would turn to them. Afterwards, they showed us their recorders and taught us how it makes different pitches! We can't wait to learn how to play the recorder when we're in 4th Grade. :)

Clean Up, Clean Up, Everybody Do Your Share

I told my kids the custodians will be short staffed today and it will just be Mr. W here after school. The next thing I knew (without me even asking them to do this) they were ALL on the floor picking up trash and WASHING the floor and desks!!! Not even joking. They were on their knees scrubbing with paper towels they got from the sink and made little “wet floor” signs to put up all over the room. I turned off the lights to start our Friday Habit Hero video and they grabbed the flashlights from our science lesson on stars to keep going. I heard one kid say, “I want to give back to him because he does so much for us.” Oh. My. Goodness. I believe I have a classroom full of little leaders! :) These kids sure ended my week with a smile and a happy/proud heart!

 

 

100th Day of School

Yesterday was an extremely fun day that was all about ONE HUNDRED! Our fun events and activities could only be completed by really smart, hardworking kids who had made it through 100 days of school. ;) 

We began the day synergizing to build our fort that we decided we would have class under in order to celebrate achieving our "Here on Time" school WIG the day before. Then, on to math where...you guessed it...everything was about the number 100! We colored pizza toppings according to a key and then practiced our graphing skills by graphing the number of each topping. At the end, we added up all of the different toppings and found out we had 100 toppings on our pizzas. We also timed ourselves to see how many addition facts we could answer correctly in 100 seconds... It was TOUGH!

During our daily class meeting we challenged ourselves with things like:
-Sitting in complete silence for 100 seconds
-Having a stare down with a friend for 100 seconds without blinking (this one was hard!!)
-Thinking of a hilarious joke in 100 seconds to share with a friend at lunch (The friend we told at lunch wrote the joke down when we came back so we can make a class joke book!)

For Writing, we wrote stories about different things such as: "If I were one hundred years old..." and "If I had $100 I would buy...". The kids were very creative and had some hilarious stories about their lives at 100 and very touching stories about what they would spend their $100 dollars on.

We had so much fun yesterday and found out today that we have met another one of our goals and get to celebrate even more!!! (See our next post for details. :) )

Synergizing to build our class fort

Using our graphing skills on the 100th day of school

Celebration Station

Today we had a lot to celebrate! Our class won 1st place for turning in the most box tops this week AND we achieved one of our school's WIGS (Wildly Important Goals)!!! We earned a really fun trophy for our box top achievement and will celebrate our "HERE ON TIME" achievement tomorrow by wearing our pajamas to school and bringing blankets to turn our classroom into a giant fort for the day! We have fun in the Forest. :)

1st Place for Box Tops!

We reached our goal!!!

Virtual Pen Pals

That's right! Our class has virtual pen pals! Why write letters and waste paper trying to explain the projects we've done and things we've learned when we can talk to other students and SHOW our projects and tell each other about the things we've learned face-to-face!?! Our class loves technology. :) And so does Mrs. Richardson's class in Wesley Chapel, Florida! Wesley Chapel is right outside of Tampa, Florida. We can't wait to get to know our new friends better and see the things they are learning in Florida and share what we are learning here in Texas over Skype. Last Friday we reviewed what we have learned about adjectives and introduced ourselves to each other by telling our names with an adjective that describes us. For example, I was Mrs. Silly Story! The kids had a lot of fun coming up with their adjectives and sharing them with our new friends. We also shared our classroom leadership roles with our pen pals and let them know how each of us has an important role in making our class as successful as it is. We have a lot of information and ideas to share to inspire each other and make learning even more fun than it already is! Here are a few pictures of our first time Skyping with our virtual pen pals: