Books from Kiwanis and Scarecrows

Thursday was a very special day at Alpine Elementary because Alpine Kiwanis donated a book to each and EVERY child at our school.  WOW!!!!  The kids LOVED their books and asked to read them all afternoon.  Some of the kids even brought them out to recess! Thank you, Alpine Kiwanis for your generosity!

We did a little art this week and drew and painted these scarecrows to welcome fall into our classroom.  Aren't they adorable?  We have some very talented artists in Room 2!

Superverb!!!!

It is all about verbs in Room 2 right now! We are learning all about these action words and are doing some activites to help solidify the concept.  What a better way to learn about verbs than through music and movement!  We did different actions like clap, blink, smile, kick, run, walk, and leap all while dancing to "Let's Move it!"  We talked about action heroes are like verbs, always doing actions.  Then we made these super cute "Superverbs!" 

Powerful Sentences, Read to Self, and a Noun Hunt!

We had another fantastic week of school!  The kids are doing a great job with "Read to Self" during the Daily 5.  They have been introduced to reading into an iPod to help work on their fluency.  They are encouraged to read a page, play it back and listen to themselves read, read it again, and listen again until they think it sounds perfect.  What a great way to build reading fluency!

We are also learning to build "powerful sentences" during Writer's Workshop.  Check out this very powerful sentence we wrote about a mouse:

We are all about nouns in Room 2 right now!  On Friday, we went on a "Noun Hunt" around our room.  We worked with a partner to distinguish if the noun we found was a person, place or thing.  

The Best First Week EVER!!!!

I think that this may have been the best first week I have ever had in my teaching career.  I am totally and completely in love with thirty precious children.  They are so sweet, kind, smart, and very respectful.  I am feeling like one very lucky teacher!

Here are a few things we did this week:

We discussed and charted our goals for the year and did this adorable "craftivity" to go with it.  I love that Kennedy said her goal was to be proactive which is one of our leadership traits.  The one that made me laugh was to find gold at recess and turn it into the office!  And guess what???? The next day two friends did find gold on the playground and turn it in to the office.  Miss Denise said they could keep it.  Lucky boys!

We also wrote about our first day of school.  I eased them into writing before I tortured them the next day with a writing assessment which I will have so much fun grading this weekend!!!

We read the book, Stand up Tall, Molly Lou Melon and made these sunflowers describing why we are special just like Molly Lou.  (Thanks, Amy Lemons!)

Okay, I know I already went on and on about how great my class is but I had no idea they would actually live up to this bulletin board. (Thanks to Teacher Wife for the BB idea!) They are the SWEETEST!!!!!!  Here is what happened today to prove it:  We had a few minutes of free choice at the end of the day (which they desperately needed after all of their hard work) and about six kids were playing dominoes.  They spent quite awhile lining up the whole tub in an elaborate arrangement.  When they were done, they had the obvious problem of who was going to get it knock it down.  BUT, there was no arguing, only unanimous consensus that Elias (who was playing legos at the time) should get to knock it down since it was his birthday!  The group called him over as well as the entire class and we sang Happy Birthday to him before he had the honor of tapping the first domino. I was one proud teacher!

We ended our week by making "The Snack Mix of Champions."  We have been learning about what it means to be a champion all week by talking about the Olympics and singing a super fun song.

Here we go!  I am so excited to meet my new crop of second graders today. I have a fun week planned of learning our classroom procedures, setting our goals for the year and establishing a student centered learning environment   We will be kicking off our school year with a thematic unit on the Olympics!