It's hard to cook when you have a little one to look after. At least this was the case with the Three Bears. Their porridge was too hot so they went on a walk to let it cool leaving an empty house for Goldilocks to explore! What gave Goldilocks a troubled night's sleep? Find out in this episode of room 105 talk shows.
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This afternoon, our classroom transformed into a T.V. studio that hosted our first talk show, The Three Little Pigs. Everyone likes bacon right? Well, that was one thing we took from today's show. Concluding this show, we reviewed and talked about what went well and what we could improve when filming the next talk shows. So here it is, The Three Little Pigs. Stay tuned to room 105 for more to come!
If you haven't noticed, most of us have been living in fairy tale-land recently. We have been studying this genre in reading and writing workshop by reading traditional and fractured versions of favorite tales and writing our own adapted versions. Most of us are starting the final draft phase of writing. We are going to take our time to publish a quality book and I would LOVE extra volunteers to help with the publishing process. Please contact me if you have any time to devote with us during the school day in the next couple of weeks. Move over Ellen-we have some new talk shows in town! This coming Monday and Tuesday our classroom will transform into a studio where we will welcome the cast of characters from Cinderella, The Three Little Pigs, Golilocks and the Three Bears, and Little Red Riding Hood. All characters will be played by the students of room 105. After analyzing the four fairy tales, we looked at each story seperately and created thought-provoking questions for the characters of the stories. We then broke into fairy tale groups and designated a role for each student (each group has a "host"). Each character (AKA your child) received a list of questions that will be asked of him/her during the talk show. They are to take the perspective of the character and think critically to answer according to what they know about the character and connect it to the story. The responses should be well thought out and rehearsed so that it sounds convincing and allows the talk show to run fluidly. Some of the questions are tough and we love that! I really enjoyed reading the questions our students came up with. Here are a few examples: The first two little pigs: What are you going to do now that your houses are destroyed? Wolf: After you found out where grandma lived, why didn't you just eat Little Red Riding Hood first and then go eat grandma? Little Red Riding Hood: Why did you divulge so much information to the wolf? Mama Bear: Why was your porridge too cold while papa bear's was too hot? Baby Bear: Do you think you and Goldilocks could be friends? Cinderella: Why didn't you ever stand up for yourself? Fairy Godmother: Why did you choose mice, lizards and a pumpkin to use as a horse-drawn carriage? Prince: What would be different if the glass slipper had fit someone other than Cinderella? And there are plenty more where those came from! I am still in awe from such a beautiful Zambia fundraiser event that was thrown last Friday. It was an informative opportunity to hear from Dwankhozi Hope founders Beth and Matt MacLean and get a history of the organization and QAE's partnership with Dwankhozi. The event recruited the insightful QAE staff who went to Zambia last year and shared their experience and classroom connections with their Zambia relationship. This night has really jump-started my excitement for our late June travels and the learning potentials it will bring back to QA. Thanks to you and my past classroom families, more than enough money was raised to send me on my way! I am left touched and appreciative of your generosity and shared excitement. It's time for me to brush up on my Nyanja so I'll say it again, zikomo, zikomo, zikomo...thank you, thank you, thank you!! A huge zikomo to Erin K. Heidi Roth, Kristi Barnes and her in-laws Dr. and Mrs. Barnes for hosting such an event! And to the Canlis family and those whom donated eats and drinks. You really out-did yourselves! I apologize in advance if you end up with a 7 or 8 year-old in your bed at night. We have been learning about money-identifying, spelling, counting, adding, and some even finding change for money amounts. And, we even found that the Googies will pay money to buy little children. On Friday we read the poem by Shel Silverstein and found how much it would cost to buy certain combinations of children. We left the day trying to find out how much it would cost to buy one of each kind of child. Our answers were varied and while some strategies were shared, we did not agree on one answer. The challenge remains, how much would a googie have to pay for one of each child. Any student that does the math and brings the correct answer to school (along with the work to show the answer), will receive a "surprise" from me. We were however, able to draw the conclusion that in this particular case, it pays to be bad! We had a fun ending to our week. We celebrated Theodore Geisel's birthday today. He wrote by the pen name Dr. Seuss. A HUGE thank you to Ms. Heidi for making some fun snacks for us to enjoy- Cat in the Hats (strawberry and banana skewers), Green Eggs and Ham (pretzels with a little melted white chocolate and a green M&M), Bar-ba-loots (chocolate Teddy Grahams), One Fish, Two Fish (goldfish crackers) and Lorax juice boxes (complete with a removable mustache). You had us all saying, "A fan I am!" Telling TimeWe have spent the week learning to tell time. Second graders are expected to know how to tell time to the five-minutes on an analog clock. They also need to understand a.m. and p.m. After an initial pre-test, I am impressed how much our kids have learned during this unit. Please work with your child on telling time. If you're like me, my phone is my digital time teller. Perhaps it's time to bring out some analog watches and practice, practice, practice! Today we made some fun Cat in the Hat clocks. I didn't get a picture of one to post here. It can be a fun practice clock to work on time at home. What do these pictures all have in common? Well, they're made out of 1-0-0 of course! We had a fun day back after a week break and yesterday marked the 100th day of school! We got to meet our new classmate MacKenzie and share with her the things that make our school a great place to be. Most of our day was filled with activities around 100. Most kids gave the day back 2-thumbs up! Check out the poster we created in the slideshow below and more of our 100 pictures (with writing) are hanging in the hallway and are getting posted to our Weebly sites. We will have one activity we will continue this week and that is 100 ACTS OF KINDNESS. Students are encouraged to think of ways to make someone else's day a bit cheerier. This could be a note, a pay-it-forward, bringing in a neighbor's garbage bin, doing a chore without being asked, etc. Please have this conversation with your child, do an act of kindness, and add that act to our classroom poster. We have a goal of doing 100 acts of kindness by the end of this week! We've all had a little kangaroo in us lately! We've been busy using different tools to measure objects and distances and comparing those measurements using different units of measure. We are also estimating and making accurate measurements of objects and the distance we threw bean bags and jumps. Using the data we have used addition and subtraction to solve problems and made line graphs. Feel free to keep kangarooing at home. It could be fun for the whole family! Oh boy, what a busy week that lies ahead of us! I'd like to make sure we all know what's in store for the next four days. Valentines: Compliment cards are due this Wednesday. Please take the time to write neatly and to put thought into making compliments unique for the recipient. Party is on Friday at 2:30. Spelling: We have more "commonly misspelled words" to practice this week. Sentence writing and word lists went home today. Test Friday. Reading Log: We have a four-day reading log that went home today. Please have the students keep track of the log and parents please initial. Character Works: Performance is this Friday at 2:00 in the cafeteria. All second grades will be performing a Readers Theater and sing a song about QAE's five pillars. PLEASE let me know if your child will be absent or leaving early this week. All kids have a scheduled part in the performance and we need to plan for absences if there are any! I am thrilled to share with you that I will be traveling to Zambia this summer! I have the opportunity to take part in the partnership QAE has with Dwankhozi Hope. I will be traveling with fellow teachers Mr. Bailey, Ms. Marks, and Ms. Yokoyama and with six wonderful Dwankhozi affiliates. Our trip will continue to build the partnership we have built with Dwankhozi Basic School and further the connections and learning we make from reaching out across cultures and continents. Before our departure, the staff will be collaborating to plan for our time there and we'll be making further preparations for our trip. Thank you for sharing the excitement and curiosity with me! |
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June 2014
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