Field Trip to AYAM

We had a great field trip to our district's art museum. 

We looked at artifacts from all over the world. We even were able to play some different instruments from the different cultures. 

We created our own "clay pots". We used black paper to create symmetrical 2 dimensional pots. The designs represent each individual's interests. 

We had a great first field trip. 

Destiny Quest Lesson

Today we learned about Destiny Quest. 

Steps: open browser-->SBISD home page-->"library resources page" --> destiny quest-->our school

Then log in using your standard computer log in. 

Once logged in, students can see the books that they have checked out and search for books. Make sure they are clicked into our schools catalog. 

In the Destiny Quest app students can see the top 10 books checked out in our library, search for books, make recommendations to friends, and much more! 

Next time we will learn about ebooks-how to use at school AND home. If your child is allowed to bring his/her device they may bring it to class. A parent class will be at the PTA meeting tomorrow. I will email details to parents. 

Welcome Back to School

What a wonderful first week of school!
I am so excited about such a wonderful group of kids. This week I found out that I have a big group of avid readers. We learned 3 of the 5 rounds of Daily 5. I have never had a group take to our stamina practice and so eager before. I'm so excited about what this means for our Language Arts time: more reading and writing, more time for small groups and individual instruction. This week I will begin my beginning of the year Reading Assessment/Records.
We also began our Flipped learning in Math. We set up our math journals and began watching some of the videos that were made by Mrs. Trevino, another RCE 2nd grade teacher. We learned how to take notes while the video was playing, that we could pause and rewind the video when needed, and how to record our questions. We will continue this learning over the next couple of weeks before we begin the videos for homework.
I'm looking forward to a fabulous year!
Don't forget about the parent coffee on Wednesday, Sept 4th 8:15-9:30

Flipped Learning

I've had a fabulous summer! It is surprising to me that there are only 3 more weeks left!
This next school year has already been on my mind as to where I want to go as a teacher this year.  A teaching colleague of mine suggested I read the book Flip Your Classroom: Reach Every Student in Every Class Every Day, by Jonathan Bergmann & Aaron Sams since she knew I was interested in flipping my classroom.

Last year I had all intentions of starting this endeavor during the second semester with my math curriculum. I quickly felt overwhelmed and not sure where to go.
Fortunately, the same colleague that suggested the book is also a teammate. Armed with our own desire to improve our teaching and the classroom for our students, assistance from an expert mathematician (a.k.a. Ricky Mikelman), and a flip camera and tripod we set to work.
Our beginning seemed slow--not sure which videos to record first, being camera shy, technical difficulty, etc, but quickly we began to gain confidence with each video. (Huh, it's good for a teacher to suddenly remember what it is like for a student when presented with something that is new and possibly intimidating.)

We now have a great start to our videos for this year that will be starting in a only a short month away! This will be a learning process for me as a flipped teacher this year, but I already know it will be well worth the days of summer I've spent video taping. Here is a little glimpse into some of the fun that we had while video taping this week.

Thank you to Theresa for the snapping the pictures for us! Go visit her blog!

Thank You Chevron!

We have been chosen to have a grant funded by Chevron through Donor Choose.
We are so excited about our new river tank system, plants, fish, magnifying glasses and safety goggles.

Thank You Chevron!! 

I am...

Today Mrs. Harrell lead us in a fun writing assignment. First we brainstormed and wrote down our thoughts on a shared poster.
Then we wrote our own poems. We have a very talented group of writers!

A New Year!

Welcome back to a new school year! The 2012-2013 school year is going to be great!
This blog will be used to post updates for our classroom, links to extra resources--math, science, language arts, show case work from the classroom, and much more! I look forward to sharing our classroom with you!

Polar Bears Plight

ABC News’ Ron Claiborne reports: They are magnificent, captivating somehow, even magical. Churchill, Manitoba, Canada calls itself, “the polar bear capital of the world.” On a wind-blasted, icy tundra hundreds of polar bears come out of their summer-long torpor and head to shores of Hudson Bay waiting for the water to freeze over so they can go out on the ice to hunt seals. But, sometimes a polar bear will come right into Churchill. Wayward bears who wander into town get “arrested” captured and taken to “bear jail.” After several days of incarceration, they’re taken out, tranquilized and blindfolded, in case they wake up too soon Then they’re air-lifted away to the wilderness. “What’s happening is we’ve had successive years where the sea ice in the bay has melted much earlier, so bears are coming ashore much earlier in poorer condition and coming into town more often,” said Geoff York, a polar bear expert and head of arctic species conservation for the World Wildlife Fund, which is leading research into the bear’s habits and habitats. It is backed by a $2 million grant from Coca-Cola. York said earth’s warming climate means it takes longer for the ice on Hudson Bay to form and it is thawing earlier meaning a shorter period when polar bears are be out on the ice, feeding. Without enough to eat, they may not last the summer. “Polar bears are definitely threatened, and they’re threatened by habitat that now is shrinking on both ends,” York said. They’re hungry because they haven’t had anything to eat since coming off the ice last July. And once again this year, the ice has been late forming. “We’re late getting them to their meal this year and they were early getting off. Their meal window is shrinking on both ends,” York said. To find out more on how to help the polar bears, go to the World Wildlife Fund and ArcticHome.com Click here to see a video clip Polar Bear in Churchill, Manitoba

After watching the short video clip, please comment with 2 things that you learned.

Challenge For The Week

Trading Card

www.bighugelabs.com

Kids can go and create a trading card on something that they are an “expert” in. They may use Picaso, Flickr (if the picture is not copyright protected) or a photo that they have taken, or one taken by an adult. Unfortunately, they may not use a picture with the file extensions: .gif, .png, .btm It must be a: .jpg.

I have told them that they can either email me the trading card or print it out. If they do so, they will earn 10 tickets!

Healthy Leaders

Please vote for our class in the Del Monte Cash for Classroom contest.
If we win we will win a $1000 prize so we can host a taste off for the school and purchase some technology for our classroom! You can vote once per day and the awards will be given out each Monday for six weeks. Voting begins on Monday, September 26th. So vote, vote, vote!! THANK YOU!!

Contest details

Homework

Each week your child will bring home a weekly homework sheet. There will be an assignment due each day Tuesday-Friday. Each week the main homework topic will be the same however the activities will vary.

Everyday-Reading for 20 mins and recording on the reading log.
Monday- Spelling words written in the correct spelling patterns. Due on Tuesday.
Tuesday- Math worksheet or other math assignment. Due on Wednesday.
Wednesday- Spelling words-- written in a sentence. 8 sentences are required but extra practice with the rest of the spelling words is encouraged. Due on Thursday.
Thursday- Math worksheet or other math assignment. Due on Friday.
Every Friday--the reading log that has been kept all week is also due.

We are encouraging the students to keep track of their exercise as well. This data will be used some weeks for math, writing, and science activities. They can log their football practice time, dance practice, karate, riding bikes, etc.

The back of the homework page is set up as a place for your child to use to record his/her spelling homework for Monday and Wednesday nights. If additional paper is needed have your child attach it to the paper when bringing it back to school.
If you have any questions about homework, please let me know.

Classroom information

ROADRUNNER Folders:
Your child's take home folder is a multi purpose folder. This folder will house classroom information: class schedule, class list, and contact information. It also houses a pocket to hold the weekly homework and a pouch for notes and lunch money.

Classroom Rules:

1.     Feel free to do anything that does not cause a problem for yourself, others or the world. If you do, I’ll ask you to fix the problem. If you choose not to or can’t  I will do something about it.

2.     What I do will depend on  the special person and special situation.

3.     I will treat you with respect so you will know how to treat me.

Birthday Treats:
We will be participating in the Oliver Kids Team this year. Since we will be promoting healthy choices we will no longer allow sweet treats for Birthday Celebrations. Instead your child can choose a healthy snack to bring to share with their friends. Ideas for treats are...sugar free Jello packs, sugar free pudding packs, yogurt cups or gogurt (this can be frozen for a healthy icy treat), apples or other fruit with a fruit dip, etc. Thank you for helping the children make healthy choices!

We Are Bucket Fillers!!

We have learned about how to be bucket fillers. Bucket filling is a term that we use when we are talking about being kind and respectful to others. We read the book Have You Filled A Bucket Today? by Carol McCloud.

We also extended our lessons with the book How Full Is Your Bucket? for Kids by Tom Rath

I challenge the students to use the lessons we have learned from these two books each day in and out of school. We discussed how filling someone's bucket by being a good friend, daughter, son, student will also fill their own bucket. I can already tell you that your children are FABULOUS bucket fillers!!

This will be a daily practice throughout the year to make us better friends, classmates, students (and teachers), and citizens in our own community. Each Monday as the kids enter they will draw a classmate's name from our classroom bucket and that person will be your child's bucket buddy for the week. Each student will need to make sure that the person's name that was drawn has their bucket filled each day--by helping, using kind words, writing a bucket note for their personal bucket in the classroom, and just being a great friend! 

First Week of School

Wow! What a fabulous first week of school!! I believe I have been given the best group of kids this year! :)
This week has been packed full of activities, learning, and routines. Because there is so much to tell you about the week I will be adding posts giving more details about our first week learning over the next week.

This week we learned about:
Daily 5--our Language Arts time. We practiced our stamina for Read to Self throughout the week and begain Working on Writing at the end of the week. We will continue this practice until we understand the expectations of all of the activities. We still have to learn about Read to Someone, Working on Words, or Listening to Reading.
Bucket Fillers (social studies)--being kind to others. Understanding that what you say and do to others effects their feelings.
Classroom Rules (social studies)-- expectations for our classroom.
Math--Problem solving practice, we took a math facts tests and a math assessement. The assessment will be used to help me put students into small groups for math.
Science--what do scientists do, safety rules and expectations for our classroom experiements, created our science notebook to keep a record of our data and observations from experiements.

Welcome to the 2011-2012 School Year!

This is a Prezi ("Presentation") that I created for back to school. I'm so excited for our school year to start! We are going to have so much fun learning together!

Bye Bye Summer, Hello New School Year!

I've had a wonderful summer--time with my fun nieces, family and friends, vacations, and flip flops! :)
Even though I will miss the fun and sometimes lazy days of summer I am so excited for the new school year to begin! I ventured into the classroom earlier this week to look at the blank canvas:

I'm so excited how much it has changed in just a few days and can't wait for the new class to venture in for a fabulous new year!!

Yee Haw! Happy Rodeo Day!

The kids were dressed their best and looked so great in all of their rodeo duds!

They looked like they had so much fun dancing and singing. I saw several of you there so I know you already know how adorable it all was. Incase you missed it here are a few pics.

Happy Valentine's Day!!

What a wonderful party we had! The kids had fun with all of the crafts and passing out their valentines to each other. I hope everyone enjoyed their Valentine's Day!

Webinar with NASA

We participated in a webinar with NASA on Friday, January 28th. We learned about the moon--First we listened to legends from around the world about the moon and searched for pictures within the moon's surfaces.

We also learned about the various phases of the moon. We used Oreo cookies to make the different phases.

We are Geologist too!

We have been exploring rocks and minerals. We learned about how rocks are made over the years from sand, other rocks, minerals, and fossils. Geologist find fossils from animals and plants inside rocks when they are broken apart. In order to mimic the process of exploration of a geologist we used mock rocks. Mock rocks are hand made rocks from sand, flour, salt and water. We discovered some of our own little treasures inside our rocks.

We reviewed our safety procedures and once we were all fitted with our safety goggles, work mats and tools (pick and magnifying glass) we began the process of exploring our rocks.