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.

Click To Play

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!