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!