Wally for President

     This week we went through the election process.  After reading Grace for President, we decided to have our own election.  First, our class split into two.  Each group nominated a candidate for President at a convention.  The "closet" group nominated Teddy, the Red Sox bear and the "rug" group nominated Wally the Green Monster.  The two candidates then had a debate.  Wally wanted there to be more gym in school and longer school days.  Teddy wanted to keep the school day the same but add more art.  Students made campaign posters for their candidate of choice.  After Friday's election, we have a clear winner.  Wally won with 14 votes, while Teddy only got 4.  We also wrote about what we'd do as President.  Hope you liked the campaign buttons we made summarizing, Grace for President.

     We also read the Rough-Faced Girl, one of my FAVORITES, and Mufaro's Beautiful Daughters.  They are Native American and African versions of Cinderella.  We used these stories to practice our comparing/contrasting skills and adjectives.

     In math we have been working on addition with regrouping and place value.  I think we are getting the hang of it but have our work cut out for us.

     Halloween was a HUGE success.  We shared stories, paraded, partied and had FUN. Students should use this weekend to recover from all the excitement, and SUGAR they've had.

     Reminder, no school Tues. Nov. 8th for Election Day and Friday Nov. 11th for Veteran's Day. 

Going Batty

     This week's theme is bats.  We have read Stellaluna by Janell Cannon and Bats by Gail Gibbons so far.  We were able to learn great facts about bats in each although they are very different.  One is fiction and the other is nonfiction.  Ask your child to tell you about them? 

     The author used lots of strong verbs in Stellaluna.  She did a great job picking verbs that really painted a picture for the readers.  We charted some of them on a chart and we wrote our own sentences using them.  I'm hoping we will retire some weak verbs and start using strong ones in our writing. 

     Students sorted sentences about bats into two categories, fact and opinion.  They followed that up by making a bat, with a fact on one wing and an opinion on the other.

     Students also started reading Horrible Harry in 2B.  Harry has done, or tried to do, some horrible things.  His Stub People didn't work out as he planned.  So far Harry is bad news. 

     In Vampires Don't Wear Polka-Dots, Melonie and Eddie just broke into Mrs. Jeepers house to see what is in the box down in the basement.  We have our ideas on what it could be.   This is a Bailey School Kid book.  There are lots of other similar titles to check out if your child seems interested.

     I hope students are practicing math facts with their magic hats at home.  Extra math is a great way to practice them as well.  Today we got into groups to count out 100 mosquitos.  Lots of different strategies were used by the groups.  Here's why we did that.

A bat can eat 600 mosquitos an hour.

     We also created some fact families.

Candy corn fact families

     Mrs. Maloney delivered our new rug on Tuesday.  It's a map of the continents and very cool.  We love it.  I have lots of pictures to post to edline but it's just doesn't seem to be cooperating with me.  Check in often and hopefully our rug pictures will be posted. 

   

   

Kevin Henkes and Spiders

     Last week we read quite a few Kevin Henkes books, made predictions and compared characters.  This week are are all about spiders.  We have learned so many spider facts and realized that we had some misconceptions about spiders.  We will read a fiction story or two about Anansi the spider later this week.  He's such a trickster.  Wait until you see what he does to his friends.

     Sentences need capitalization and punctuation.  We KNOW that, although forget quite a bit.  We have been identifying and sorting different sentence types and should be masters by now.  Students have also been solving math word problems like crazy.  They are tricky but we will not give up.

    
     Half of us are publishing our writing.  Which means it's been edited and they are copying it over to a neat sheet.  I haven't had a chance to meet with everyone yet but hopefully I will by the end of the week.  BUSY BUSY BUSY

     Monday the PTO treated us to an ANTI-BULLY magic show.  Very fun!!

   

Edward the Emu

     This week's mentor text was Edward the Emu.  We also used the internet to learn more about his friend Edwina.  It all started last Friday when I made our EMU poster and the children saw it.  They were all buzzing, "What's an emu?".  It got us excited for Monday.  On Monday, we talked about how good readers make predictions before and during reading.  We then started the book, BUT I didn't read the ending.  We wrote our predictions in our reading notebook and had to wait until Tuesday to confirm or adjust our endings.  Well, I don't think that anyone got the exact ending but great predictions, using text and picture clues were made.

     We filled in facts on that EMU poster the children saw, later in the week after reading about real emus.  We also identified and fixed sentences from the text that were scattered around the room.  No-one should forget that sentences start with capital letters and end with punctuation now.  We're experts.  For more sentence writing fun, we took boring sentences and STRETCHED them, not tugged, STRETCHED.

     We have also been reading some Cynthia Rylant stories and even took turns reading Mr. Putter and Tabby stories as plays.  The children got excited when they got to be Tabby.  He always had important lines to read.

     Math has been fun with some computation practice, missing addends and word problems.  We used dice to add three numbers with friends.  Word problems can be SUPER tricky.  I try to get students to picture in their mind what's being asked and when they finish, to think about if their answer is reasonable.

     Next week we can look forward to taking the story that we started planning on Friday and creating a draft.  Those are the first two steps in the writing process.

   

   

   

Bad Case of Stripes

      This week we have been using Bad Case of Stripes by David Shannon as our mentor text.  Which means, we have been using this story as a spring board for lots of learning activities.   Ask your student what happens to poor Camilla and how she was cured.  If your child has never tasted lima beans, try this week.  Camilla Cream LOVED them maybe he/she will too.

     We described Camilla, learned new vocabulary words, made lima bean abc order books, learned about summaries and even drew Camilla in a lesson!  Lots of activities and games. SUPER FUN

     We read another cool story titled Daddy, Can I have an Elephant?  In this story Tony asked for some crazy pets.  

     The students played a dice game enriching reading fluency, a rhyming game and arranged some beach theme words into sentences.  One of them was TRICKY! 

rhyming

     If you haven't logged into Edline yet, you are missing out on some first day of school photos.  You have to turn you head because I couldn't (didn't have the time to) figure out how to spin them.  It's on my "to do" list.  Which pretty much means it may or may not ever get fixed.  YIKES

First Week

     It was a great week.  I'm pretty sure everyone is happy and settled in.  Whoo hoo!

     We had music today.  The students seem to really enjoy Mr. Liquori and his class. I know my two boys, Derek and Jason are huge fans.  After music it got HOT in class.  We tried to keep cool by relaxing a little with friends and books.  Luckily, I had a handy squirt bottle to help out a little.

     We also went to computers today.  Everyone logged onto IXL math.  I'll be sending home info and passwords next week so your child can play at home.  It's great math practice.
   
     I like having learning centers in class.  This week we had two different ones, syllable sort and sentence writing.  These centers really make learning fun.

     Some upcoming dates for your calendar: Thursday, Sept. 15 is back to school night 6-8 , Thursday, Sept. 22 is a half day.

     Never miss a post by signing up for an email each time this blog is updated or follow me on twitter @kpotamis.   Be sure to check Edline soon.  I hope to post some photos from the first day of school this weekend.  If you are having trouble logging into your edline account let me know and I'll get the info you need from Mrs. Cannon for you.

Day One

Phew, we made it through the day.  I seriously had doubts that I would when I woke up this morning. It's not easy getting back in the swing of things.

We had a GREAT day!  We started with a simple connect the dots to break in our new crayons while we all got settled.  Then, we played a fun getting to know each other game.  We walked around asking each other questions to get our papers filled in.  Apparently, I'm the only one who wears glasses, so I initialed that box a lot.

We read First Day Jitters.  The story has a fun twist.  Although we read that story last year, I was surprised that not many students remembered the ending.  We then wrote a bit of what gives us the jitters.  We also wrote about some of our favorite things and brainstormed about second graders.

Luckily, the rain stopped in time for outdoor recess.  The students had gym and we went to the computer room. My students were the best fire drill practicers I've ever seen. There is also a rumor that we MAY have broken the world record for the quickest I have/who has game with 1 minute and 16 seconds.  Remarkable.