The sound of snow

Our music program this year is amazing.  Watch as EVERYONE gets the chance to play an instrument as they "read" a book called "Snow Sounds: An Onomatopoetic Story". 

Dictionaries

Every year Rotary Club gives every third grader a dictionary. It's a very exciting time of year, especially here in Room 9 because they generously gave the 2nd graders one too!  This morning we spent some of our reading time exploring all that a dictionary can teach us.  Here is what we found.

 Then of course it was time to write thank you notes and share all the things we now know we can learn from a dictionary.

And now I just gave them a choice between reading and exploring some more for the last 20 minutes before lunch.  Usually reading wins.  Now I can't seem to get them to put the dictionaries down!!!
Thanks so much Rotary!

Counting Pride Tickets

We are trying to earn a pajama day for the last day before break so we can just be cozy and read all day and drink hot chocolate.  Here you will see a year's worth of Pride Tickets counted up with some serious math. 

And here is some of the conversation that took place...

Today in Math

Here is a one minute summary of our math learning for today:

Loch Ness Monster

Our study of the continents has brought us to Europe and the elusive Loch Ness Monster.  Here is some of our close read action.

 

sNOw day

It snowed from 8-10.  Did we have a snow day? NO!  Only 19 of us braved the roads to make it to school today.  We decided to play in the snow, examine snowflakes, write about the Loch Ness Monster, and do some winter art.

Workshop time

We had a 25 min workshop today where students could make a Daily 5 choice: Read to Self, Read to Someone, Work on Words, Work on Writing.  Here is a look at what everyone is working on.

Turkey Tradition!

Every year we make these.  Every year I am reminded why I love working with these kids!  It's one of my favorite days of the year because everyone is so thankful to be together and excited for the upcoming holiday.  Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

 Ms. J wanted to make turkey hats too so....

 We had a visitor come work with us.

What's happening today?

Some rounding, In and Out Machine, time telling, fractions,adding, subtracting, and talking about math...

The Mayflower, timeline for the first Thanksgiving and ship drawing to Jazz.

Now we are reading and writing.  A good morning all around.

Close Reading

Close reading is a way of showing your reading, learning, and thinking while reading non fiction text.  We have been practicing it with our Continent study this year.  This week students tried it out in small groups as we did a project on Penguins. 

Here are the steps for close reading and how to mark the text with your thinking.

We put this in our Interactive Reading Notebook and have a bookmark as a reminder as well.

Then everyone got to work on their project.  As usual we are not done yet but should be finished up by Tuesday!

 Here we are marking the text.

 Measuring the penguin size.

 Making our penguins to scale.

 Working together.

 Here's a video of what it looks and sounds like during work time.

 And another one you might enjoy!

 Having a good time!

Ask your kids about Close Reading.  We will work on it all year, see what they know now, and compare to how they develop as the year goes on!

What is a Line of Symmetry?

Yesterday we made Symmetrical Sugar Skull masks for Halloween/Dia de los Muertos.  Today we are furthering our understanding of symmetry and having some fun discussions too!