2nd Grade Rewind

Can you remember everything that we have done already in second grade? I was looking at pictures from this whole year this morning and thought I would put a few of them into a little movie that can remind us of what we have done and learned already in 2nd grade. -Mrs. Biles

Merry Christmas!

Hello friends! I miss you all SO much! I wish you all a very Merry Christmas.

All Aboard!

Polar Express Day was enjoyable. Thank you for the bell and Flat Stanley book. We all ringed our bells at the end of Polar Express. Merry Christmas to all -KIERA

merry christmas

Have a holly jolly christmas mrs.biles!!!

Homework Packet for the Holidays

Mrs. Biles,

I was just taking a look at the homework packet for the holidays and want to say THANK YOU! I know it takes a lot of time and energy to put a packet like this together, but I really appreciate it. I think it is very important that kids keep working on the skills they are learning in school so they don't forget them. This packet will be very useful!

Thanks again!
Ana

P.S.: Thank you also to Mrs. Steckman for putting the packets together! :-)

World Holidays

Today we had a great experience learning about world holidays. Though there were a few trouble spots overall it went excellent. Mrs. Quinn and I would like to express the greatest amount of thanks possible to Ana who stayed and helped us all day and Gretchen who helped in the morning. Here are the videos for each holiday that we thought really stood out.

Holi
By Robby and Darrien

Kwanzaa
By Tanner and Kane

Ramadan
By Kiera and Rayna

Chinese New Year
By Reagan and Asia

Hanukkah
By Payton and Berenice

Digital Storytelling

Today we had a great day of learning. One of our coauthoring teams finished their book and shared it with us. We decided to scan in the pictures and have them narrate it on the computer. This is what we came up with. Please enjoy Fairy Story by Morgan and Asia.

Thoughts on 12-6 School Day

Reading: I read Calvin and Hobbes and I posted sticky notes on my school copy. It was fun because Calvin and Hobbes are really funny to me. Calvin does all sorts of funny stuff with his friend Hobbes.

Writing: I worked on my book called Dragons. There is two dragons and one is evil and one is good. The good dragon is pink and sometimes he takes kids for a ride on his back.

Math: I didn't do any math today at school.

Science/Social Studies: I took a small test about Little. There was no wrong or right answers. I like this because we could pick our own answers and this was easy for me. My favorite part of the test was talking about there being no "bullying" around our school.

Specials: We finished our clay dinosaurs and we made our dioramas. We put all kinds of decorations in them. Such as: volcanoes, bushes and palm trees. This was my favorite part of my day at school!

Mitchell

Daily Class Blog 12/05/07

Reading: We read books & we labeled in our journal, c for connections, q for questions, a for answer, v for visualizing, I for inferring & cl for clarifying.
Writing: I worked on my how to Christmas story.
Math: we created a chart by coloring in squares.
Science: We worked at stations & saw & felt the vibration of the different items.
art:we finished our things to our diagrams & made clay dinosaurs.
Ben

Daily Class Blog - (December 3rd, 2007)

Daily Class Blog - (December 3rd, 2007)

Reading:  We didn't read today. We talked about what behavior we should have while working with Mrs. Young's class.

 

Science/Social Studies: In science we went to the smart board room and combined with Mrs. Young's class.  We explored sound by making a high sound on the computer and watching a video.

Writing: We wrote books.  Mrs. Biles said that, if we do a really good job, we will be able to print them for $7.00 from a site called Lulu and they will look like real books. 

Math:  Today we wrote during the math time.

Specials: In art we drew sketches of our diorama.  We also drew the dinosaur that would go with it.

Robby

Investigating Pitch

Today in our pitch lesson with Mrs. Quinn's class you are expected to partner up on these websites. Just click on the name and it will take you there.

I know that

BBC Game

Sound

This video is about how to make a musical instrument. This video is also about vibration. I hope you enjoy this video.

Robby

Practice Ideas About Sound

Daily Class Blog - Nov. 29

Daily Class Blog - November 29, 2007

Reading: We finished Dandelions and edited our dandelion writing.

Writing:We wrote harder in our writing.

Math:We played guess my rule with Michell and Blake.

Science/Social Studies: We wrote what we learned about sound.

Specials:We played with the scooters.

Kiera

Online Interactive Practice

There have been some parents asking for online interactive learning activities. Here are a few sites I would recommend. Please keep in mind that sites change all of the time and I can't guarantee that the content will be consistent with what is on there today. Be sure to always be in a place where you can monitor what your children are doing on the internet.

http://www.uen.org/k-2interactives/index.shtml

http://www.roythezebra.com/reading-games-word-level.html

http://www.starfall.com/

Daily Class Blog - Nov. 27

Daily Class Blog - November 27, 2007

Reading:

We read part of a book called Dandelions by Eve Bunting and we wrote our thoughts and our questions down. We liked that book so far. -Robby

Writing:

We were writing in our books and thinking about what we were going to write. We learned a new word in writing it was: Effectively. Effectively means working very well and getting the job done. We decided that our job was to learn about writing by doing the things that writers do. -Joey

Math:

We played with the Yekttis and played guess my rule with them. We had to figure out how many different Yekttis there are. We decided that there were 32 different ones. Watch the video to find out more. -Kiera

Science/Social Studies:

We were looking at how different sound centers made sound. And what parts were vibrating.

Specials:

We played with the beanbags in gym today. -Adriana

what I am thankfol for.

I'm thankful for my family & my friends. -Ben

Mad Science

I am doing Mad science. Today I learned how to help animals when oil gets into water. It was fun & I also made a Wave Motion Modulator.

Ben

Thanksgiving

In Thanksgiving I went to my anty and my frens wher ther they wher having fun in the Carnevo that
-Berenice

My Thankgiving braek

In my Thankgiving , almsot my hole familey came. we had appel pie pamkin pie and turkey. After we had turkey we went to Chucky Cheese. -Alejandro

Thanksgiving

I went to my angels house in Colorado springs for Thanksgiving. We ate sufing and turkey and ham and vegetable's. For desert we ate fug and pumpkin pie. It was a good Thanksgiving! -Isiah

Thanksgiving

on Thanksgiving my friends cam ovr and they were tengrs and we had a pumpkin pie and for dinner we had turkey and mashed potatoes, bread and gravy. The teenagers names were Chris and Josh. They were a lot of fun. For the movie we watched Evan Allmighty.
-Mitchell

My Thanksgiving Break

First I went to My Aunt Judy's place for Thanksgiving.Then I played and stayed up late. -Kiera

My Thanksgiving

For Thanksgiving I went to Brekinridge. I ate ham, cranberys,lemmon maraine pie,pumpkin pie. I also ate apples. I played with the sled.I played with my cusins. I set up two cristmas trees.

my Thanksgiving day.

We lit our fire when my Grandma & Grandpa & my Ante Lesa came over. We had stuffing & turkey & cranberry salad on Thanksgiving day. -Ben

Notable People Research

We just finished learning about a few notable people and while we were learning about them we had a fantastic chance to do some research. I am working with Mrs. Quinn this year to produce a video for the school about how we are working towards 21st century classrooms. Here is a little clip of the work we have been doing that may make it into our final video.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope you all are enjoying your Thanksgiving Holiday. If you have a little spare time please share with us what you are doing on your break. If you came to the blogging class then you can create your own post. If not, go ahead and post it in the comments section. This is a great way for students to practice their typing and writing complete sentences. I hope to read your post soon!
-Mrs. Biles

Turkey Trot

We had a fantastic time on Tuesday with the annual Little Elementary Turkey Trot. It was chilly outside, but we enjoyed cheering on the runners! Special thanks to Morgan for taking the still pictures for us. This video has the still pictures and video of some of the kiddos in our class. Way to go!

Sound Lesson 1

Our friend Mitchell had a blast during our first sound lesson. He is exploring with the "Comb Blower" and showing some of that remaining Rockies spirit with Take Me Out to the Ballgame.

Non-Fiction Digital Story Telling

Alex and Alejandro did a fantastic job of putting together their PowerPoint about Cesar Chavez. They are going to be working with Mrs. Roush to hyperlink their pages tomorrow. Great work friends!

| View | Upload your own

Learning with Mrs Biles

Mrs. Biles, thank you for helping me read. I really like to read and I like reading with you. I like learning from you to!!

Ben

Whole School Writing Goals

We are working very hard as a school to help improve our students ability to write complete (and correct) sentences. The area that we are struggling with is conventions. Some specific skills that we are working on in second grade include:

• Showing consistent use of capitals at the beginning of sentences and for proper nouns.
• Showing consistent use of punctuation.
  
• Spelling high-frequency words correctly.
• Showing accurate spelling of previously studied words.
• Demonstrating risk-taking to spell challenging words.

In our classroom we are focusing on the first two goals right now. Please take the time to have your child practice their writing skills. With the PowerPoint below you can click on the hyperlinks on the last page and they will take you to online games that will help strengthen your child's skills. Play with them to get a feel of how well your child is mastering this concept.

| View | Upload your own

Skip Counting in Second Grade

Daily Blog 11-9-2007

Daily Class Blog - November 9, 2007

Reading:
Today in reading we read books and looked for interesting sentences. We practiced writing them and remembering capitals and punctuation. We also talked about subject and verb in a sentence. -Adriana

Writing:

We were writing our books and we had to remember capitals and punctuation. It was fun! -Mitchell

Math:

In math we figured out how many laps we ran this week in running club. And we chose games that we could play: Make 50 Cents, Close to 20, Roll a Square, or Story Problems. -Alex

Science/Social Studies:

We studied about our notable people. We had a sheet that we had to fill out (and we had to fill out ALL the lines). It was fun, but kind of hard. We were researchers today. We used books and the computer to find information. -Isiah

Specials:

Today in specials we did karate. People taught us how to do karate. We had to jump over a pool noodle and if we didn’t jump fast enough then he would hit us and he kept hitting Blake. We talked about how many karates there are. There is one called martial arts, and one called taekwando. -Angie

How to play Roll a Square

Daily Blog - Thursday 11-08-2007

We recently had some classes about blogging, and the kids will be blogging on their own about our day sometime soon. As a whole class we are using the format that they will be expected to use. Enjoy...

Daily Class Blog - November 8, 2007

Reading:
Today in reading we did CogAT. Ms. Hawkins was here and she read us questions that we had to answer. They were all kinds of questions. They were how to match the puzzle. -Tanner

Writing:

We read The Whales by Cynthia Rylant and Gentle Giant Octopus by Karen Wallace. We listed the descriptive words from those books, and after that we wrote in our normal books. We were expected to use descriptive words in our own writing. -Isiah

Math:

We played Roll a Square again, then we played Close to 20 with wild cards. The wild cards can be any number we want it to be (1-10).

-Berenice

Science/Social Studies:

We studied Susan B. Anthony or Cesar Chavez. It was kind of fun because we got to study more and we got to find out what happened at the end of their stories. It was kind of hard to read some words, but it was still fun. -Amber

Specials:

We stretched first and then we did relays. Relays is like: first we do running as fast as we can, then shuffling, then galloping, and skipping, and then karaoke. And then we ran as fast as we can on the track for one whole mile. We get to count it on our running club! -Joey

R Controlled Vowels

Check out this PowerPoint about R Controlled Vowels. Click on the links on the last page to practice your skills.

| View | Upload your own

Daily Class Blog

Daily Class Blog

Reading:
Today in reading we did the CogAT test. We filled in circles that were the right answer. -Kristine

Writing:

Today in writing we wrote about the tree that is by the parking lot. We wrote about how the tree changes. I liked the tree writing. Then we wrote our normal books. We focused on describing words, periods, and capitals. We also learned two new words: subject and verb. The subject is what the sentence is about. A verb is the action. -Robby

Math:

Today in math we did a new game called “Roll a Square.” I liked it because it was fun and it really helps you get smart with math. I also worked really well with my partner. -Siavash

Science/Social Studies:

Today we learned about Cesar Chavez and Susan B. Anthony. We listened to stories about them. We have to think about which one we want to choose to learn more about. -Kiera

Specials:

Today in specials we went to gym. We climbed the rope (actually we did stretches first.) -Ben (and Alejandro)

Thank you

I had fun at bloging class. It was very fun.

Thank you Mrs. Biles.

Ben

What Amazing Bloggers!

What amazing bloggers we have in our class! It was a lot of fun to teach parents, grandparents, and students how to blog. Try to help us stay focused on school topics for most of the blog (it is a classroom blog) but I welcome kids excitement about anything. I look forward to hearing more from parents and kids on the blog. With more involvement we are certainly making the blog a fantastic form of communication.
Thank you for your support.
-Mrs. Biles

My New Book!

I am making a new book for Thanksgiving,what book are you going to make? Kiera

Reading

My son Mitchell has been doing a fabulous job at reading. He owes this to his hard work and to Mrs. Biles working on his reading skills. I am proud of the reader he is becoming!

His Dad,
Rick

Ben's writing is improving!

I am amazed at the improvement I am seeing in Ben's writing. WAY TO GO BEN!! Thanks Mrs. Biles : )

Susan Stearns (Ben's mom)

Kiera's learning at school.

Kiera is learning many things at school. she has had great teachers at Little Elementary and they are teaching her about many subjects. She is also learning to type and about computers. This is a great thing in today's world. Fred

David

I go to David's house and play Lego Star Wars video game. I also play Lego's. He is my best friend.

Mitchell

swimming

I was playing and my sister said "We can go to the swimming pool?" and I asked my mom if we could. She said, "Yes". We put our swimsuits on and we were ready. We went to the swimming pool. My sister jumped in the pool. We was fwere having fun. I splashed in the water. It un.

Berenice

toys

I like to play wiht my Transformers.
I like to play with my Star Wars toys
Isiah

Star Wars

Star Wars is really fun because there is allot of fighting.
Ben

soccer

I play soccer.I am good at it because I am fast.I like to be goaly.Alex used to play with me.Isiah used to play soccer with me.

Robby

Map making

I made a map on Sunday. My map is of my neighborhood. It shows our school and it shows Parr preschool. It took a long time to make it. I had to think about where things were.

Robby

Learning to blog

We are learning to blog this morning, so I imagine that soon this blog will be full of test postings and interesting tidbits from the kids and even some parents. I am interested to see what shows up here now... Good luck Little bloggers!

- Robert (Robby's dad)

writing

writing is fun because we get to write what ever you want .
by alejandro

Halloween

Halloween was such a blast with the kids. Of course most of our day was "normal" as much as possible, but they were so excited! Share some our excitement with us by watching our movie of pictures and experiences.

Pumpkin Day Movie

I am sorry it took so long to get this video up, but I hope you enjoy a little extra clip from Pumpkin Day:

Flat Stanley and News

We had quite a few Flat Stanleys come back today. It was fun to read about what adventures they went on.
You can tell that many of the kids are excited about Halloween. There is already quite the buzz in our room about the events that will take place on Wednesday. We will be having a regular day of school on Wednesday, but at 2:00 students will change into their costumes for the parade and party. If you would like to come to the parade it will begin at 2:15.
We have been working really hard to learn about maps and all of their elements. Some students are working on a "Map Report" and they may be asking to do some research at home. Please sit with them or at least be in the room when they are researching online. I gave them three sites that are appropriate for kids (www.maps4kids.com, www.nationalgeographic.com/homework) but as we all know sites that are appropriate may lead us somewhere we don't want to be. Thanks for your help and support.
-Mrs. Biles
Info on "Blogging" classes will be coming soon!

Pumpkin Day

We enjoyed this morning carving pumpkins and learning about circumferences and weight. We certainly were very appreciative of the parents that helped us out. We couldn't do it without you!

Pumpkin Day was a blast!

Compound Words

This is one example that I shared at the share fair yesterday. It was playing as teacher librarians came into the workshop that Mrs. Roush and I presented. They liked it as an example of how to be using the SMART board in small groups.

There are so many interesting things that I stumbled upon yesterday that I am excited to use in our classroom. Some of that is a new way to video record what we are doing on the SMART board with the classroom audio. That way I can post the main points of a lesson and if a child is absent they can watch it at home. We can also use it as a review.

A classroom update:
Our focus for October in reading is Questioning Strategies. We have learned that asking questions deepens a readers comprehension. As students start to pay attention to what they are thinking while they are reading they are internalizing comprehension strategies that they can apply to other situations. Tomorrow I am excited to share a questioning web where students pick a question that they want to dig deeper into and then 'web' some answers and where they got those answers.

We are also focusing on fluency (reading like you speak). It is important that students are able to orally read grade level materials, attending to phrasing, intonation, and punctuation. To help students grasp this concept we will be learning a variety of October poems and paying specific attention to those aspects of fluency. I wouldn't be surprised if you started hearing the poems at home. The kids really do love them =-)

Writing has been a blast lately. Our author studies have turned out some amazing work. We will be beginning an intensive study about conventions. This includes things like: Use complete sentences, use capitalization at the beginning of sentences and for proper nouns, use correct punctuation, use correct spelling of high frequency words, regular plurals, and phonetic spelling for difficult words. We will also be talking extensively about proofreading your own writing and noticing and correcting errors. As a second grade team (and part of our staff focus on writing) we noticed that our students were particularly low in the conventions area across all grade levels. Because of this we are jumping right into what our kids need most (right now) to be proficient writers: conventions.

In math we have learned to play Close to Twenty, which I keep meaning to get a video of kids explaining how to play. We are also talking about counting strategies. Today I asked, "How many student legs are in the room?" We talked about using the strategy: Count by 2's because everyone had two legs. As it turned out there were 38 student legs in our classroom today. We will also be talking about multiples of 5 and counting by different groups in an effort to prepare kids for counting coins and coupons. If you have some time have your child count the change that you have in a purse or a drawer. Pay attention to if they know what the coins are and how to count them.

Next week we start learning about mapping. It has been so much fun getting responses about our Flat Stanleys and we will be using that to help us learn more about maps and why they are useful. Students will get the opportunity to locate the places that their Flat Stanleys have been.

Typing club will continue for another week and a half though there will be no typing club on Halloween Day. I am still working on a schedule for November and December groups to learn more about PowerPoint, MS Word, and Blogging. During the December/January break students will be expected to share their special moments on our blog. That's right, they will be doing the blogging! Parents will also be invited to join us for these classes so you can support what we are doing at home. Look for a schedule to come out soon.

Halloween is once again on its way and the second graders will spend next Friday, October 26th as Pumpkin Day. We will be doing all sorts of reading, writing, math, and science activities with pumpkins that day. I am looking for 4 medium sized pumpkins to be donated to pumpkin day as well as extra parent volunteers that can help us for as much of the day as possible. Look for a note to be coming home about that.

I know I've been long winded and I hope you have made it to the end here. If you have then: Way To Go!
Thank you for your support.

Lots of Learning!

Typing Club online
Here is a great website to practice your typing club at home. Just click on the blue words and play the game.
Today I am spending the day with Mrs. Roush learning from other teachers and teaching others how to use the SMART Board. Over the last week we have done some wonderful learning.
We spent an exciting morning yesterday learning about reading strategies. We dissected a one minute video of Adriana reading and the kids were pointing out the strategies that they saw her use.
I hope that your day at school was successful and you learned a lot! We will be back tomorrow.

Wonderful Kids

We are so blessed to have such a wonderful class of kids. Today we had a writing assignment where they had one hour of silent writing time to respond to a prompt. Next week the teachers will sit down and evaluate where are kids are as a whole and have some discussions about what we need to do next to help our writers grow and learn more. All of the kids were wonderful at sitting for that long time and working. Of course we got a little squirmy toward the end, but we were successful at finishing the prompt.
We had a lot of fun yesterday focusing on nouns, and today we focused on consonant blends. The 'cr' in 'crab' is a consonant blend. If we can recognize these right away we don't have to be sounding out every word.
For writing today we also learned a new song to if your happy and you know it:

"If you want to write a letter start at the top.
If you want to write a letter start at the top.
If you want to write a letter then you better, better, better;
If you want to write a letter start at the top."

So many kids are forming their letters incorrectly (starting at the bottom) and the third grade teachers are having a hard time teaching cursive. Help us fix this problem now by helping your child in their writing.
What wonderful kids are in our classroom. Thank you for an enjoyable first night of conferences.

Today

What did we not do today? I was trying to think of a title for this post but we did so much that I was at a loss of words.
Today we started out focusing on high-frequency words. Those are words like "the" and "and" that are used a lot in our language. We got to play with the SMART Board Speller software and record our voices into it.There was also a reading group that worked on compound words on the SMART Board.
We had some great learning about nouns today as well. We learned that a noun is a word that is a person, place, or thing. There are also different kinds of nouns. There are common nouns and proper nouns. Common nouns are for general words like "girl." Proper nouns state a specific noun like "Mrs. Biles" and those need to be capitalized. There are also singular and plural nouns. A singular noun describes just one person, place, or thing. A plural noun describes more than one and ends in -es or -s. If it ends in -es you can hear the /e/ sound - like in boxes. If it only ends in -s you can only hear the /s/ sound - like in hands. We also talked about how an 's' or and 'es' added onto the end of a word is called a suffix.

Can you believe that we are having these kinds of conversations in second grade? What smart thinkers we have!

Typing

Typing has really taken off in our classroom. I am impressed with the kids dedication and enthusiasm that they have for it. We will continue to work on typing, but through the month of Novemember and December we will be doing week long "camps" where kids work on projects in PowerPoint, Microsoft Word, and learn how to blog.

So much learning.

As a teacher you never really feel like you are caught up, and if you do feel that it is quite a short lived feeling. With so much learning going on there is not a moment that can be cast to the wind. As I now sit at "the end" of my day here at school I am remembering all of the exciting learning we did today, and I wish I had pictures. It was one of those days though where you go, go, go and taking pictures is something you don't remember.
We started our morning by reading a book that has a math connection. It was called Two of Everything and is a Chinese Folk Tale about a magic pot that doubles anything that gets dropped into it. It was quite a blast later in the day when the kids got to make up their own math stories about something that fell into the magic doubling pot. If you are interested in the story there is a version online if you Google the title.
Our reading comprehension strategy for October is questioning. We have been talking a lot about the questions that we have as we are reading. Some of these questions get answered later in the text, some we answer with our background knowledge, and some we get answered through other sources.
Lately in writing we have broken up into groups to study authors. We are looking at what things an author does consistently across different books they have written. Once we have learned about the author the students are expected to "Stand on the authors shoulders" and write something that was inspired by the author. That may be a topic (David Shannon writes a lot about himself when he was young, I'm going to write about something I did when I was younger), or it might be an illustration craft (Eric Carle uses collage, I will do that in my book). It has been fun watching students learn and grow in their writing by studying real authors.
We took our plants test today, so look for a second plant to be coming home soon. What great scientists we have in our room! They knew that a plant can grow from a bean and they had the evidence to back it up. They were also able to tell me that a plant needs air, water, and light in order to be healthy and strong. Way to go kids!

Tens Go Fish

How to Play Tens Go Fish

It is very important that we continue to play Tens Go Fish and Turn Over Ten every night. We have talked about why the number 10 is so important in our base ten number system. We are discovering great things, and the kids that are continually playing these games are picking it up quite fast =-)

Click To Play

Flat Stanley

You wouldn't believe the great response that we have gotten from Flat Stanleys all over the world. Thanks to your wonderful friends and relatives this is quite a success! We even had one Flat Stanley come back to our classroom with a full presentation from his host family.

Growing and Learning

In science we have been studying all about George Washington Carver. He was a man that helped farmers learn about crop rotation and he discovered many uses for the peanut and sweet potato (even shampoo and ice cream!). Once we had researched a little about him we made PowerPoints as teams and will get to share them tomorrow. Each student took home a print out of their PowerPoint today, so you should ask to see it if they haven't pulled it out yet.

In math we have been introducing all of the concepts that we will be focusing on all year long. One of the activities was to write numbers on a number strip. Some students made it to the 600's! Wow!

Click To Play

Typing Club has also been a fun experience for the kids. Watch this short movie about the "rules" that the kids thought were the most important to remember when typing. =-)

Typing Club

Thanks to all of the kids who joined typing club during September. We were quite successful at learning all sorts of things about the computer. We will keep working on our skills in the classroom. Starting next week, October 1^st, we will begin round 2 of Typing Club.

For the morning session (every day) from 8:00-8:25 I would like to invite: Kristine, Siavash, Mitchell, Angie, and Berenice.

For the afternoon session (Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday) from 3:15-3:45 I would like to invite: Asia, Adriana, and Blake.

I have 2 more spots for the afternoon group if there are students who would like to continue to do typing club. Let me know if your child is interested. Thank you for your support. We are making gigantic leaps in our learning. =-)

-Mrs. Biles

Channel 4 News at our school

Here is the Channel 4 News Story about our classroom. You can either click on the blue letters and follow the link, or read it below. The video that was played on television is also there. I am working on getting a digital copy of it to post, does anyone have it?

Teacher Pays It 4ward To Help Students Learn

Smart Boards Preferred At Little Elementary In Arvada

Written for the Web by CBS4 producer Libby Smith

Suzanne McCarroll
Reporting

The idea behind CBS4's Pay it Forward Colorado project is to give $1,000 to a Coloradan (or group of Coloradans) who will use the money to change someone else's life. Below lies CBS4's Sept. 20 report.

ARVADA, Colo. (CBS4) - At Little Elementary School in Arvada, Amanda Biles teaches reading, writing, and arithmetic to second graders. The walls of her classroom are covered with full bookshelves and writing reminders. It looks like most any other classroom, except at the front of the room there's a new piece of technology that Biles says helps her connect with her students.

"Chalkboards were introduced over 100 years ago, why would we still be using the same tools we used 100 years ago?" Biles asked.

Biles and the other teachers at Little Elementary prefer to use a "Smart Board" to teach their classes. The "Smart Board" is computer driven, interactive, and appealing to a new generation of students.

"This is the way they're experiencing life at home. They have computers. They have their video games. If you're trying to lecture kids, they're not going to get it," Biles said.

Teachers at Little Elementary are using "Smart Boards" to teach English, math, science and writing. But they only had one board for 18 classrooms. That's when Biles wrote to CBS4 and asked to pay it forward to her school and her students.

"By giving them the opportunity to learn in a way that makes sense to them is helping them grow as people," Biles said.

A "Smart Board" costs $1,500. They're made by CSS Presentation Systems. When Biles contacted them to buy one for her school, they gave her a $500 discount so that our $1000 covered the entire cost.

Now, teachers at Little Elementary are sharing two smart boards with the hopes that they'll be able to add more in the years to come.

Channel 4 News at 10

For all of you interested in the spot that Channel 4 did about the SMART Board in our classroom it will be playing tomorrow night, Thursday September 19, 2007. It will run during the 10pm news cast, so I'll be sure to catch it on tape so the kids can see it later.
Channel 4 Pay it Forward website - Be sure to check it for the written article about us!

How to play Turn Over Ten

It is very important that we play Tens Go Fish and Turn Over Ten every night. Once students know their math facts to ten they can figure out the math facts to 100. Great work!

Click To Play

SMART Board Video

Here is the SMART Board video that I made last year with my class. We will be making a new video this year about how we are using technology in our classroom.

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Great Days!

We have had some great days this week. In our reading workshop time we have been focusing on Text-to-Self connections. This is where the reader connects a part in the story to something that they know or have experienced in their own lives. We will continue working on connections all throughout September.

Math has been a grand exploration of pattern blocks and geoblocks. We have been working on attributes of the blocks by talking about how many faces or sides does it have, how many corners, size, etc.

Today our little bean seeds started to pop out of the soil. It was quite exciting because this morning they hadn't come out, but after lunch we noticed quite a few that were.

As our study of How-To text continues we have learned a number of things from books and have made a bunch of crafts. Tomorrow we head to the computer lab to start mapping out our ideas for our own How-To writing.

Talking Fish

Today we started our writing study about How-To texts. We were able to learn that the reader of a how-to text has to be able to be successful at completing the task that the writing is about. We decided to put this learning to use and see if an Origami book could actually teach us how to fold a talking fish. Boy was it a hit! We made over 60 talking fish! We have another exciting lesson for writing again tomorrow, and when we get through with this week everyone will have started their very own "How-To" book.

The after school typing club started today and we learned quite a lot. Please make note that if your child is a part of the after school group they will not meet on Wednesdays. This is because of Staff meetings and Early release days.

We have started off on another wonderful week! Please remember to reread the baggy books every night (to help with fluency) and play Tens Go Fish or Turn Over Ten.

Dissecting Beans!

Wow! What a day! We have been starting to learn about plants this week and today we got to dissect a bean. Some kids were so excited about it that they are bringing home extra beans to show you at home. When you dissect your bean at home look for the three parts: the skin, the germ, and the cotyledon. We learned all about these parts of a seed and even drew pictures and labeled them. We certainly have some scientists in the making in our room!
We were also excited today because some of our beens that we put in cups and started watering on Tuesday have started to sprout. A few of them are peeking out of their skin!

We have begun studying geometry in math this week. We have had a lot of fun with the pattern blocks and the geoblocks. We even learned what 2-D, 3-D, sides, faces, and angles all mean!

Our writing this week has stepped up to the next level. We have three kids now who have printed out the words to their writing on the computer and are working on the illustrations. Way to go!

Reading during the last few days has been a lot of fun as well. We have been spending about an hour focusing on text-to-self connections and writing down what we are noticing about books. We really do have great thinkers in 2nd grade!

Because typing club has been quite the buzz in our room I have decided to open up another "session". I have asked Tanner, Kristine, Morgan, Ben, and Alejandro if they would like to join Typing Club after school for a half hour. They were quite excited and will be coming to ask you if that would be all right. Remember that Typing Club is a completely optional activity for the kids to work on their keyboarding and computer skills. The afternoon session will be from 3:15-3:45 in my room. This is in addition to the morning session and those kids will continue to come at the same time.

We had a great week and look forward to another awesome one next week! Have a great weekend!

Writing Like Eric Carle

Today we had Amber take an idea from Eric Carle and try it in her writing! Way to go Amber!

An Exciting Week Ahead!

We are going to be starting to learn about schema in our reading lessons this week. Schema is just a fancy word for background knowledge. We are going to be focusing on making connections from the text to the knowledge and experiences that we have from our own lives. This is one of the first steps in deepening comprehension. As you read at home with your child find out if what they are reading reminds them of something in their own life.

We are focusing our study of writing this week on: Where do Writers Get Ideas?
This is a fun study where we get to look at published authors and see what they have said about where their ideas come from. We will be looking at book jackets, dedications, blurbs from the author about the idea, and even watching some author interviews. It is unfortunate that we don't have enough time to watch all of the excellent author interviews this week, but I would highly recomend that you go to ReadingRockets.org and check out some of the interviews that are posted there. Just click on the author's name on the left hand side. Some of the author interviews I would recommend are:

• Tomie dePaola
• Mark Teague
• David Shannon

Are you playing Tens Go Fish and Turn Over Ten at home? Students will not be receiving "math homework" in the traditional form during second grade. Instead, please make it a regular activity to be playing these card games and writing down the 'matches' or number sentences that you are making. When it is clean up time ask your child to sort the cards to make sure that there are 4 of each. That way they are learning the responsibility of taking care of their manipulatives and you know if you need to replace a card for future games.
This week we will continue playing the card games as well as take our first look at pattern blocks and geoblocks.

Isiah asked me last week, "When do we get to do science?" How about right now? This week we get to start our exciting unit on Plants! We will be investigating if a plant can grow from a bean. We get to dissect a bean and start growing our very own bean plants.

We have an exciting week planned and I can't wait to find out what I will learn next from such an amazing class!

Our First Full Week

It has been an amazing first full week of school. We have had so many successes that I am even more excited than ever to be teaching. What great kids you have! I am so lucky to have them in my room and have the opportunity to teach them and learn from them.

Just a few notes of interest:
No School Monday - Labor Day
Parent Information night (with free pizza and daycare) is on Wednesday the 5th. This will be something you don't want to miss!
Friday the 7th - Book Orders are due

I am going to be starting a "Typing Club" next week just for fun. I'd like to introduce the kids to keyboarding and using the computer more independently, but I just don't have enough time with them during the day. So many books to read, so little time... So I decided I'd hold Typing Club from 8:00 to 8:25 every morning in my room. Kids will be selected depending on a number of things and will join the club for a full month. During the month they are assigned to we will be working on a number of different skills. Some days the will simply be playing a keyboarding skills specific CD-rom by themselves, other days we will do a whole group lesson. Though kids will be assigned a month, they don't have to come every day. Remember, this is just for fun - not required by any means. The more they are able to come to typing club the more they will learn and progress, so keep it in mind as a good use of time. If you don't want your child to participate I don't have any problem with that.
The kids that I am hoping will join me for Typing Club for the month of September are:
Robby, Kiera, Asia, Amber, and Alex.
I'll keep an updated list on the blog, so you can be aware of when your child could be a part of our club. Every child will have an opportunity to be a part of this during the school year.
If you have any questions please feel free to contact me. The best way is via email or the comments area on the blog. Thanks for your support!
-Mrs. Biles

Great Day!

Today we learned how to play Turn Over Ten for math. We have been playing Tens Go Fish also. Cards and rules were sent home today for both of these games. You will not be getting any "worksheet" type homework for math, but it is VERY important that you play these games with your kids as often as you can (nightly if possible).

Having Channel 4 news here was a success. The segment will air in about 4 weeks. I'll let you know the specific day when I hear back from them.
Great learning is happing in our classroom!
Keep reading every night for 20 minutes!

Bad Case of Stripes

Today we heard the story "A Bad Case of Stripes" by David Shannon. We watched it from http://storylineonline.net
Now you can go there and watch it again!

Don't forget that you need to bring 3 stamped and addressed envelopes to school by Friday! Our Flat Stanleys will soon be traveling around the world!

Also, look for book orders coming home soon. Those will be due back next Friday, September 7th. It is a great way to get high quality books, and it helps me to get books for free that I can give to kids on a regular basis (like the "Fantastic Frogs" book and Friday kids will get to keep a copy of "Flat Stanley"). Being able to give every kid a copy of a book like that is only made possible through your book orders.

What a fantastic day! We look forward to having Channel 4 news in our room tomorrow.

Great Learning!

We had a very successful day today. As we started reading "Flat Stanley" I let the kids pair up and buddy read. What a success! Today we learned to play the game "Tens go Fish". It is played just like go fish, but we are putting together pairs that equal ten. What great math brains we have in our room!

What a Start!

We are taking off like a rocket ship in our classroom. It has been amazing to see what my students know. We have been talking a lot in our room about Justice and its synonym Fairness. Through many conversations about about how we demonstrate justice in our classroom we have agreed that we will all follow the four school rules: Respect, Responsibility, Kindness, and Learning. As long as we follow these four rules we will have a community of learners that feel safe to try new things.
Many of our conversations about books have been revolving around how to read like writers. It might sound like a funny idea at first, but suddenly we are noticing not only what the book is about, but how it was written. Some of our noticings have included: repeated lines, words within pictures, pop-ups, lift the flap, books without words, and genres of texts. It is quite amazing that even though we are only beginning second grade, we are already thinking about books in a way that allows us to learn from them. If you get a chance to stop by the hallway outside our door you will notice traces of these writing styles in our own writing. I'm sure it would enthrall you to hear about why one student used a repeating line or how another wrote only in questions. Not only are they noticing these things in published books and trying them in their own writing, but they can tell you WHY they tried it.
Math has been a great adventure as well. In second grade we will be focusing on tens. We have started learning that you can group tens in many different ways through the use of manipulatives. It is important that students begin to not only understand, but apply the idea of base ten. We will soon be sending home two card games: Tens Go Fish, and Turn Over Ten. Please make a special time where you can play these games each day with your child. The cards (that will be run off on card stock) will be used over and over again throughout the year, so make sure you find a safe place for them!
In other exciting news: On Thursday August 30th Channel 4 News will be visiting our classroom. Through a program that they do called "Pay it 4ward" (http://cbs4denver.com/payit4ward) they will be observing and interviewing some of the kids and myself about how we are using technology in the classroom. They will then be giving us a check to go towards a new SMART Board (www.smarttech.com) for our school. If, for any reason, you do not want your child to be a part of this please let me know and I will make arrangements for your child to visit another classroom during that time. I don't currently know when it will air on TV, but keep your eyes open for it and if I find out before hand I'll let you know.

Welcome Back!

We had a great first week of school! We learned everything from how to do lunch count to reading and manipulating blocks into groups of ten. We also had a birthday celebration. With such a great start we are sure to have a great year!