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

Creating Our Class Rules

A couple weeks into the school year we began talking about what our hopes and dreams might be for the new school year.  Some of us were looking forward to reading more books, others were excited to write poetry and nonfiction books, and many students were excited to perform science experiments.  Some second graders were hoping to make more friends or learn how to share and collaborate with others.  We brainstormed and charted a list, coming back to it every so often to revise our goals for the year.  After about a week, students drew pictures of their own Hope & Dream and wrote a few sentences about it.  We shared our Hopes & Dreams with one another and displayed them on our bookshelf.  We discussed how this will be one of several goals we create throughout the school year, and that we will be revisiting our initial Hope & Dream to see if we've reached our goal and/or if we need to revise it.

Our Hopes & Dreams framed & displayed on our Library shelf.  The other side showcases their writing.

Once we each came up with a Hope & Dream, we began to discuss what class rules we will need to fulfill our goals.  We brainstormed as a class and came up with a long list of rules, ranging from "Do your work" to "Don't hurt other kids' feelings."  After a few days of brainstorming, we went over our list and thought about how to frame our rules in the positive.  "Don't hurt other kids' feelings" became "Be kind to each other."  We noticed that each rule could fit under the following categories: "Self", "Others", and "Environment."  After organizing our rules into each of these categories, we thought of how we could condense the rules under each heading into just one rule (it's easier to remember just a few rather than 20!).  We came up with the following three:  Take care of everyone, Take care of yourself, and Use materials nicely and safely.

Our 3 Class Rules, with student illustrations of what it looks like to be following each of these rules

Since formulating our rules, we've been constantly referring to them, pointing out when we see students following them and also forgetting about and breaking them.  Louise and Caroline find opportunities to model the rules for students and often ask kids to model doing the same.  We take the time to reflect throughout the day as to whether we are following the rules as a class, what we're doing well and what we need to work on.  We continue to remind them that together as a class we've created these rules in order to fulfill our Hopes and Dreams and need to take them seriously.

Please ask your child about our class rules... perhaps he or she can explain them to you and reflect on whether they see students following the rules during the school day.

Happy long weekend:)

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