Happy Thanksgiving!

We have had a fun-filled week in second grade learning about the first feast of Thanksgiving. I hope you have a wonderful celebration with your families!

Drew adds details to our Wampanoag vs. Pilgrim Venn Diagram

We created 'thankful pumpkin centerpieces' for our Thanksgiving Day tables!

Students worked on adding sums to color turkeys in Math Workshop

We celebrated earning all of our feathers. We showed GRIT!

Personal Narrative Stories!

Our class has been busy throughout the months of October and November working on our personal narrative writing unit. We started generating ideas for writing by discussing small moments that matter. We compared a big overarching topic to a watermelon, and a small moment to a seed. Each child started a list of small moments in a ‘tiny topic’ notepad in their Writer’s Notebook.

Personal Narrative Anchor Chart

We started our own narrative stories by choosing one small moment and stretching it out. We practiced planning our story across our fingers, remembering details from our personal experience. We then mapped out our story with short phrases across our pages. Next, we added detailed pictures to our phrases. We worked hard to write the words to our story and look at mentor texts to study author’s techniques and how to craft a detailed narrative.

We wanted to take our finished product to the next level by creating an audio recording! Mrs. Klipfel helped us use the Book Creator app to take pictures of our illustrations, record our voice reading our story, and add a fun title page. 

Rider, Sage, and Ava take pictures of their illustrations using their ipads

Quinn records his voice using the Book Creator app

Students are so excited to share these projects with you! Enjoy!

Happy Veteran's Day!

This morning we celebrated Veteran's Day with a special assembly to honor all the men and women who served our country in the armed forces. We participated by singing songs and sharing card-bundles with our local veterans. Mrs. Costa asked all veterans to line the front of the room, and students were asked to raise their hand if they knew a veteran. It was an amazing sight to see!

We were so lucky to have Mr. Erickson, an army veteran, help us out for Writer's Workshop today! Will was so excited to have his Dad in. Thank you for your service Mr. Erickson!

Empathy

Last week Mrs. Edelstein, Ms. Kezer, and Ms. O'Donnell met with our second grade girls to talk about empathy and what it feels like to be connected with each other. They read the story The Invisible Boy and talked about the steps to communicating empathy. This week in class meeting, the girls taught the class about what they learned.

Maggie shows the class the 'look, assess, decide' chart

You can model empathy by talking to your kids about what it feels like when others make an effort to connect with you. You can also start infusing the word empathy into conversations about social situations or about books you are reading together!

Here is a link to the book: The Invisible Boy

Mrs. Edelstein's Feelings and Friendship Flick: Empathy

Fundations: Syllable Chunking

This week in Fundations we started talking about how many words we know now that we are in second grade! Now, our second graders can use word parts and sounds they know to spell multisyllabic words. We practiced these skills with some fun stations.

Students shared their work in a 'fishbowl'

Addison and Emily work on a syllable sort activity

Students try spelling multisyllabic words using the 'chunking' technique

Veteran's Day Assembly Song

We have been discussing Veteran's Day here at Steward and why it is important to acknowledge and pay our respects to our country's veterans. Each year we have an assembly where we honor veterans past and present, near and far. This year, second and third graders will be contributing to the assembly by singing a song. We have practiced as a grade and in the classroom, but if you would like to practice at home as well I have posted a link to the nicertube video that includes the lyrics.

Veteran's Day Song

Happy Halloween!

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's... the second grade super hero vowel team!

Happy Halloween from your favorite second graders! Thank you to those who donated to our Halloween Party with delicious food or games. A special thanks to our room parents for organizing our event and all the parents who helped during the big party! We look forward to our next celebration in December!

G.R.I.T.: Earning Feathers

It is hard to believe it is already November! We are kicking off this month of Thanksgiving with a new incentive plan in our classroom. Over the next couple of weeks, students will be working to earn feathers for their own Native American headdresses. Did you know that Native Americans used to earn feathers by doing good deeds for their tribe? Sometimes the chief of a tribe would have a very long ornate headdress! Our second graders will be earning feathers when we show the characteristics of guts, resilience, innovation and teamwork. We can't wait to show how we use G.R.I.T. in the classroom!

G.R.I.T. feathers

Students brainstormed a chart of ways they can earn each feather.