City Government Work

Last week we had our city government work induction. Each department brainstormed logo ideas and created their own ID badges that they will need to wear each time they go to work. We think they did quite a good job designing them!

Department of Transportation, Parks and Rec, Health, Sanitation and Animal Care & Control

At the Department of Sanitation, the workers answered calls from the public about trash on the street, questions about recyclables, etc. They got to work solving the problems and completed their work orders after marking the site of the problem on the NYC map.

  

The four workers in the Animal Care and Control Department received calls about stray animals on the street, injured animals, sightings of a coyote in Battery Park and answered questions about where to foster animals. The dispatched workers diligently completed the public's requests and all injured animals were brought to a city shelter to recuperate.

At the Department of Parks and Recreation, the workers answered calls about broken play structures, fallen trees after a bad storm, when the sprinklers would be turned on, etc. They also set up a team to plant new trees and plants in a couple of communities. 

The Department of Health received many calls asking about healthy lifestyles. Our workers went into schools to teach them about healthy food options and ways to keep active. We were also sent out to inspect restaurants where we used a checklist to ensure they were up to standard and running a clean restaurant. The workers assigned letter grades to the restaurants based on their inspection. 

Some of us worked for the Department of Transportation. We received calls about broken traffic lights that were causing chaos on the FDR. They also received many calls about pot holes in many places throughout NYC. The team then answered calls from the public asking for someone to come out to inspect the bridges and tunnels. We got straight to work!

Our city department workers have been working hard over the last few weeks. They deserve their three day weekend. Stay tuned to see what we'll get up to after the Memorial Weekend!

City Department Neighborhood Walk

We kicked off our new social studies until two weeks ago with a neighborhood walk. Our inquisitive second graders had one task - find as much evidence of New York City Departments as possible. Equipped with a clipboard, pencil and spying-eyes, we hit the streets looking for signs. 

Here are some of the things we found...

                           

   

                                Department of Buildings                               

Department of Sanitation

Department of Transportation

The Barber shop had a Department of Heath sign

                               

                         

We even found a NYC Department of Youth and Community Development
logo on Evan's soccer shirt!

                          

Department of Parks and Recreation Rules

When we got back to the classroom we charted our findings. We then talked about what we think each of the departments do for the public. 

Children then choose what department they would like to work for in our class drama. 

Stay tuned for the fun that will happen when we go to 'work' in our departments!

Poetry Jams, Flower Planting, Chess and Drawing under the Willow Tree

We are very fortunate to have access to the community garden on 9th and C. We took our class this morning to celebrate the wonderful poetry they have written. We had an action packed morning there!

First up was our Poetry Jam. Five children read aloud their own poems in front of the audience at our 'poetry venue'. Over the next few weeks the rest of our poets will get their chance to read their poems into the mic. There was even time for a questions and comments session afterwards! 

After our Poetry Jam we took the opportunity to plant some flowers in our EVCS flower garden behind the steps. This was a fun start to our new plants unit in science. While some kids planted flowers, others enjoyed a game of chess in the beautiful weather, and others sketched nature drawings under the willow tree.

A fun morning was had by all!

A Visit from A Poetry Expert

Over the past three weeks we have been learning a lot about poetry. We have written many poems and are in our final stages of publishing our very own Second Grade Anthology. We are very excited!

Last week we had the chance to listen to Sylvie's dad, Anselm Berrigan, read some of his published poetry. What a treat!

Anselm showed us that poetry can be written in various
shapes to complement the topic of the poem. One poem that he
wrote about the moon is written in a circular direction
just like the surface of the moon. He added the
print to his tote bag!

Some poems can be so small they fit on a tiny book. Poems
can even be made into baseball cards with the poet's picture on 
one side and their poem on the other!

Poems can be co-written with someone you love.

Funer's Hardware Store

Last week we introduced our Second Graders to Funer's Hardware Store. The store sells centimeter bricks for construction. The blocks are sorted in singles, rods of 10 bricks, and flats of 100 (they are easy to load on the forklift!). 

Job posting found in our classroom

Funer's Hardware Store sells centimeter bricks in singles,
10-rods and flats of 100.

We saw a flyer looking for part-time workers at Funer's Hardware Store and decided to give it a go! We got the job! As soon as we got to our desks, the phone orders started coming in. "Hello! Funer's Hardware Store. How may I help you?" "Funer's Hardware Store!" "Hello! We're here to take your order!" were heard throughout the classroom. To make it easy for the workers in the warehouse, we drew pictures of how many singles, rod and flats they needed to get for each phone order. 

This worker received one order for 342 bricks, which she sorted into
3-hundreds (flats), 4-tens (rods) and 2-ones (singles) and another order
for 750 bricks, which she sorted into 7-hundreds (flats) and 5-tens (rods).
Her sorting made the warehouse workers' jobs so much easier!

Funer's Hardware Store was very busy on Friday. We took nearly 100 orders! Tomorrow we will continue to take more orders - but with much larger numbers. We are becoming experts in identifying how many 1's, 10's and 100's are in numbers up to 1,000! 

It's a new year!

We welcomed 2015 in style this past week in second grade.  On Monday, we decorated "snowpeople" name tags for our door and made a toast with a bottle of sparkling apple cider.  Students came up with their own toasts like "Here's to a fun & fantastic year!"  On Tuesday, we made creative melting snowpeople to hang on our bulletin board (check them out on Friday if you can!).  We took a break from the classroom on Thursday and headed to the Queens Museum of Art to learn more about NYC geography & to check out the spectacular panorama of NYC (if you haven't been, it's truly a must-see!).  For the remainder of our time in the classroom, we began a Writing unit on Fairytales and continued our work with measurement in Math.  We're also loving our second Roald Dahl book, Fantastic Mr. Fox!  

And as a bitter-sweet end to the week, we said "goodbye" to Julia, who is returning to Italy with her family.  Our students made a beautiful book for her with their photos and messages of well wishes.  We will miss her a lot but look forward to keeping in touch.  Ciao, our dear friend!

Now... here's to a super second week of school of 2015!

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Student creations of city blocks @ Queen Museum of Art

Panorama as seen from above