4 Days and Counting....

This week is a shortened 4 day week.  Therefore, we will not be reading a story out of our Reading Street series and will NOT have our regularly scheduled tests this week. We will be working on our benchmarks that come at the end of each unit.  In Math we will continue to work on skills including: change back, adding & subtracting money amounts, subtraction with regrouping, and multiplication.  We will have an addition & subtraction timed test on Wednesday morning.  There will be NO Home Links assigned this week but I will send home all necessary homework in the communication folder.  Please make it a point to practice the skills mentioned above at home with your child.  Thursday is Field Day and the kids are super excited!  This year it is beach themed so there will be water involved so teachers have been instructed to advise parents to send students in with a change of clothes, a towel, and shoes that are able to be wet.  We will also have lunch in the room on Thursday, and the lunchroom will provide sack lunches only so if your child would like something other than peanut butter & jelly you are more than welcome to send a lunch from home for them to enjoy.  We are looking forward to a great week!

Wizard of Oz Field Trip

  On Wednesday 2nd grade took a Field Trip to Mathis City Auditorium to see the play of "The Wizard of Oz".  The play was very engaging and the students really had a great time.  The cast of the play made it possible for the students to interact throughout the different musical numbers.  In my opinion, this made the students feel as though they weren't just watching the play, but they were a part of it as well. 

     

Book Fair

Last week Dewar had our annual Spring Scholastic Book Fair.  It was so much fun and had lots of good stuff!  Kids and teachers came to shop and found great books!  They even had cool erasers, pens, and pencils for sale.  One of the hot items was the eraser shaped like an iPhone.  Lego Ninjago books seemed to be the hot selling item on the boy's list. The Diary of a Wimpy Kid books were on the top of the list as well.  On Wednesday, we held the Book Fair, a cake auction for our Hugry at Home in Lowndes County, and had family night from 3-6pm.  It was a great success and a wonderful time for all who were involved.  I always look forward to the Book Fair and now I can't wait for next year...I can't ever have too many children's books. 



Graded Papers

A packet of graded papers were sent home today in each child's folder.  Please look through these papers with your child and go over the papers with them.  Praise them for their hard work and take time to review the pages and skills they may be struggling with.  It is important that they use these papers to help them study at home so they can better understand the concepts when we are discussing them at school, as they build on one another.  If you find as you are reviewing at home that your child is still struggling with a specific concept or skill, I encourage you to look that particular skill up on Study Island.  Study Island provides a fun way to encourage students to approach studying skills and concepts they may not understand quite as well as others.  You can access Study Island directly at http://www.studyisland.com/ or from my class website under the "Useful Links" tab.  If you have any questions or concerns about anything your child brought home today, please don't hesitate to contact me.

Celebrating all of my "Things" in honor of Dr. Seuss

In honor of Dr. Seuss' birthday on Friday, March 2nd Ms. Callahan made each student a "thing" placard and then each student that did not have a crazy hat got to wear my Dr. Seuss hat and take a picture.  A few of my little "things" are missing, but most of them are here.  We had a fabulous day celebrating Dr. Seuss' birthday!

 

Crazy Vocabulary Hat Day

We had some very creative and crazy vocabulary hats last Friday in our classroom.  The students really did a great job!  I was so proud of all of them and they were excited to show of their creations too.:)

Dollar & Cents Notation

The students are working very hard to grasp the concept of dollar and cents notation.  On this particular day they worked with Ms. Callahan and created a table that showed them how to properly categorize the numbers they were given in the correct dollars and cents notation and their representations for $1.00.

    

 

STICKing to Good Behavior

As Ms. Callahan made her plans to begin her solo teaching experience, she came up with an excellent plan to reinforce good behavior and making the right choices.  She created a chart with pockets with each student's name.  The chart is titled, We "stick" to Good Behavior.  Students can earn sticks throughout the day.  At the end of the week, the two students who have collected the most sticks in their pocket will earn the opportunity to be the line leader, special desk seating, etc.  Students can only EARN sticks, sticks will not be taken away.  This is strickly for rewarding good choices and behavior.  We will continue to use our Star Chart to track other behaviors.



Dr. Seuss Crazy "Vocabulary" Hat Day

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!

On Friday, March 2nd we will celebrate Dr. Seuss' birthday by having Crazy "Vocabulary" Hat Day

How can I participate?....I'm SO glad you asked!  You can purchase a hat or use a hat you already have laying around the house.  Choose a vocabulary word that you would like to define and illustrate on your hat and start creating!  Be original and creative in your thinking when you are making your hat.  If you're not sure about a vocabulary word, I would invite you to use one of the words that we are studying this week or a word that we have studied in the past.  You need to make sure that you know your vocabulary word and are familiar with its meaning/definition.  This is a school-wide contest!  There will be 3 grand prize winners selected.  Those three winners will receive a Bruster's Icecream certificate and a free book!  Each homeroom winner will receive one free book check-out from the media center.   

Back to our Regularly Scheduled Program

This week has been full of unit and benchmark assessments for the students and I have been so pleased with their results!  They have truly been working hard and doing a wonderful job!  Thankfully for them and for Ms. Callahan and myself we will get back to our routine as normal next week.  In Math, we will begin our study in unit 10 of decimals and place value.  In Reading, the students will begin unit 5 in our Reading Street series by reading "One Dark Night".  This means that on Friday the students will have their regularly scheduled tests (i.e. spelling, vocabulary, and language). 



Also beginning on Monday, Ms. Callahan will begin her solo teaching experience.  This is the time where her college professors advise her to have 4 weeks inside a classroom envioronment where she is given the opportunity to plan and implement instruction with the students. Ms. Callahan has been with us since the beginning of January and has proven herself and her ability as a natural teacher.  The students enjoy her and respond to her very well.  I look forward to the great experience that this is going to provide for her.   During this time, I will be in and out of the classroom helping with the instruction of our small groups. 

Teaching Capacity with Gallon Guy...or Girl

One of the more difficult topics to teach in the Measurement unit is the topic of capacity.  In my years of teaching, I have witnessed it being taught a multitude of different ways but being a hands-on learner myself I wanted my students to have something they could not only see, but also experience themselves.  I stumbled onto Gallon Guy one afternoon while thumbing through a magazine and knew I had to have him!  He came in and I have been using him since then.  My students love him!  When constructing Gallong Guy each student gets at least one piece to place on Gallon Guy as he is being constucted.  Construction begins with the largest capacity unit: gallons, which makes up his torso and then continues with quarts which create his arms & legs.  The pints help create his hands and finally the cups help create the look of fingers.  Although Gallon Guy is not anatomically correct, he is a great way to get the students up and moving and involved in the process of learning the topic of capacity....AND once we make one as a class, they get to create their own.   

 

In Math the students have been learning so much about Measurement.  I have been amazed at all their little minds have grasped!  They have learned about the metric and U.S. customary system of measurement including centimeters, inches, feet, yards, meters, and kilometers.  They have also learned about area & perimeter.  Using the illustration of Perimeter Road going around Valdosta, the students quickly began to differentiate between area and perimeter knowing that we live inside Valdosta which represented the area, and Perimeter Road runs around Valdosta allowing the students to know that perimeter always means the distance around an object. 

The students began a review over this unit today and will complete the review tomorrow in class.  Students will be tested over Unit 9 on Friday, February 24th.

In Reading this week, we are reading one of our stories from our Text Talk series entitled, "Grandpa's Teeth" by Rod Clement. In this story a grandpa wakes up to discover his teeth have been stolen. He suspects that everyone in the town is guilty of stealing his teeth, so the townspeople must always smile to show their innocence. The students will read the story to solve the mystery of the stolen teeth this week. :) There will be NO spelling, vocabulary, comprehension, or language tests this week.