Friday, August 31, 2012

Reading Kick-Off Day!

Every year at Bill Arp we celebrate our reading program by having a Reading Kick-Off Day! Our theme this year is "Wild About Reading" so we celebrated by decorating lion cookies.




Nouns!

Last week we reviewed how to identify nouns and use them in sentences. To begin, students created a "Noun Town." The town had to consist of people, places, and things that you would find in a town. Students were really creative with designing the towns. Here is an example of a Noun Town picture and Flip Book with the list of people, places, and things that were used.


Verbs!

We have been working on identifying and using verbs in our writing this week. First, we used the song from Madagascar, "I Like to Move It," to play a freeze game. While the music played, students moved around the room and showed different actions of their choice. We kicked, danced, twirled, sang, hopped, skipped, clapped, and jumped. When the music stopped, students had to freeze and share the verb they were acting out. We had lots of fun listening and moving to this fun song!

Our task at the end of the week was to create a new "action" hero to save the world. Students designed, named, and wrote about their action hero using nouns and verbs. They had a lot of fun coming up with verbs that made their action hero special. We all know that Superman wouldn't be famous if he couldn't fly:)
 Here is an example of a completed task...


Blends Song

We have been busy reviewing the sounds that blends make. In this video, we are working on the blend /bl/. We came up with several examples of words that start with /bl/. The students were still rocky on the words, so please ignore my awful singing in the background:)


Saturday, August 11, 2012

First Day of School

 We had a great first day of school in 2nd grade! Here is our first class photo!
 ...and our silly class photo...

We learned how to stand in a 3 "S" line (straight, single file, silent). We did an awesome job learning all of the rules and procedures in Mrs. Cooper's class. We are going to have a great year!

Thursday, August 2, 2012

Tour de Classroom

Here are a few photos of our classroom on the day of open house.
 All of Bill Arp's classrooms have had Promethean boards installed! What an exciting and useful tool for teaching and learning.

 Desk and Calendar Area
 This is our Calendar Math Board. We use the Calendar Math program, "Every Day Counts." We work on a variety of math skills during calendar everyday.
 Our "Chirpin' Chores" tree is where we display the class helpers. We need all students to pitch in and work together to keep a safe and clean classroom environment.
 The back of my closet door is used for our behavior management system, our weekly schedule, and lunch choices.
 This was the gift I gave my new students at open house. I am so excited to get the year started!
 Our "TREE"mendous Class! (outside the classroom display)
 This display is for our school wide reading program, "Wild About Reading." Students will move to each "destination" based on the number of books they read. Each destination has a reward that the students earn. They really enjoy this program!
I am looking forward to working with you and your child this year!