How Full is your Bucket?

Yesterday we re-read one of our start of year books, How Full is you Bucket? during our read aloud time. Our focus was to think of ways that we can be bucket-fillers each day. 

For those of you who have not read this book, it is about a little boy, Felix, whose grandfather tells him everyone has invisible buckets. When we are happy our bucket is full. The story takes Felix through a day at school. It starts out rough, people are mean to him, he spills cereal on the floor, his sister knocks over his blocks. His bucket is almost empty. Suddenly, Felix's teacher compliments him for a well written story and his friends clap and celebrate him when he reads it aloud. Felix's bucket starts to fill up. The more nice gestures Felix makes, the more full his bucket becomes, meanwhile he fills the bucket of those he is being kind towards. 

After our read aloud, we wrote a response that answered the question: What are some ways you can fill someone else's bucket? Afterwards we shared our reading responses with one another. The students seemed excited and proud to offer their thoughtful suggestions.

To build onto this sentiment, we created an 'Acts of Kindness' chart that children can add to throughout the day. When a student sees another student being kind to someone, they can write the act of kindness on a post-it note and place it on the chart. As these notes go up we celebrate the kind gestures.

Classifying Objects and Materials

From many conversations with our students, we are hearing that science experiments are high up on their 'excited-about-second-grade' lists! So, last week we had our first glimpse into what it looks like to be a scientist - an introduction to the scientific method. 

Our objective for the lesson was for our scientists to learn about the characteristics of common materials and the vocabulary for describing and comparing materials. Together in our mini-lesson, we came up with descriptive words to describe the objects the teacher showed the class. The initial vocabulary list we came up with included: rough, smooth, hard, soft, round, gooey, wet, wooden, plastic, metal, shiny, dull, fluffy, edges, sides and more. 
Now it was their turn. Eagerly, our students went into their groups where they recorded, using drawings and labels, the characteristics they noticed by looking at and feeling their objects. As the exploring continued we added to our vocabulary list! Caroline and Louise circled from group to group asking the students to explain why they put the object in their chosen category.

This was a fun introduction to what scientist do. We are looking forward to many more explorations!

Sorting objects into categories (rough, smooth, dull or shiny).

Drawing objects from the tray and choosing words from
our vocabulary list to describe it.

Scientists busy at work!

A Message from Stephanie our Music Teacher

Dear Families,

Our second and third grade students are very excited to share a short song to celebrate the start of the school year during this Monday's School Wide Morning Meeting.  Our SWMM on Monday 9/29 starts at 8:50am.  We would love for you to attend!  The 2nd and 3rd graders will be sitting on stage for the entire meeting, so you will not be able to sit with your child during next week's meeting.  We hope to see you there!

Thank you,

Stephanie Nantell

Music Teacher

Writer's Notebooks

Hello families!

We hope you had a nice weekend with your children and got to enjoy the beautiful weather this weekend.

We will be introducing our writer's notebook this week. One of the first things we do is decorate the cover, both front and back. Please help your child find pictures, photos (printed on paper to make it easier to stick on the notebook), magazine art, etc. that reflect what they like to do and/or people, places, interests that are special to them. We will decorate them this week.

When you go through the pictures, magazines, etc. with your child, a suggestion is to discuss the photo, or special memory attached to it. This will help get their creative juices flowing! Inside this notebook will be the beginnings of great ideas and drafts that will develop into wonderful writing pieces!

This is also a perfect way for us to get to know each child a little more. For apprehensive writers, it helps us know what writing topics will spark interests - a great aide in the writing process! 

Enjoy the rest of your Sunday evening. We are looking forward to another great week!

Louise & Caroline

Our first week was a success!

Hello families!

We are happy to announce that we had a very successful first week in second grade! Our first week focused mostly on learning new routines, community building and cultivating new friendships. This is so important to help us create a caring and safe environment for our kids to learn and thrive in. For us it looked like team building activities such as organized group games, learning new songs, movement breaks, empowering students to demonstrate effective ways to perform classroom routines as well as model ways to use shared materials. Here at EVCS, we are implementing the Responsive Classroom First Six Weeks of School. Some pictures below illustrate the new rules and routines the children have been practicing this week. We are sure if you ask your children to describe some of the images, you'll be impressed by how well they can explain them to you! We even received a huge compliment from our District 1 Superintendent, Daniella Phillips on how well our second graders were transitioning from our classroom to the school yard! She happened to be watching close by. Way to go, second grade!

Here are some of the well-loved read aloud books we read and discussed as a class together this week:
First Day Jitters
Will I Have a Friend?
Wemberly Worried
How Full is Your Bucket? 
Dog Days of School

Members of our Second Grade Class

These are our expectations when we are meeting
at the rug area. (We are getting really good
at these! When our classmates take turns speaking,
 we are working to face the speaker and listen carefully.)

When we arrive in the morning, we put our
backpack in the closet, take out our lunchbox
and water bottle and place in the lunch bins,
then put our homework folder in the basket.

Before home time, we pack our folder, lunchbox
 and water bottle in our backpack and
sit on the rug for Closing Circle. 

This chart helps us remember
who our line partners are.

Families, meet 'Timmy Tip Toe'. He comes out to remind us
that we need to be quiet in the hallways so we do not
disturb other classes learning. When we do a good job,
we get a THUMBS UP!

This chart allows us to know where our classmates are
at all times. Whenever we leave the room, we put our
velcro name square beside the specific location card.

We have also been busy creating some artwork. Stay tuned for these beautiful illustrations! Tomorrow is Friday already...what a fun week we've had!