Week 17 in Review

Greetings from Room 119 and Merry Christmas and perhaps Happy New Year (if you're reading this in 2019). We had a BUSY last week of 2018. We were asked to do five Thoughtful Thursday projects and we rose to the occasion. We made a project for Stephanie that you can see HERE, a project for Mo that you can see HERE, a project for a 2nd grade teacher name Ms. Mishael HERE, a project for Nate that you can see HERE and a project for Peggy that you can see HERE. Between these projects and our "secret" projects we made for our families, we were busy. 

 We were able to celebrate our friend, Adyn, who turned the great eight! Happy Birthday and Sto Lat!

We love reading. We read books where we learned the history of Christmas and ways in which people from different cultures celebrate this holiday. We also enjoyed reading our own books.

We have been logging into our iReady accounts to do math and reading lessons. Did you know this is something that we can do at home and it doesn't take long. Ask us about it. All login information is on the back of our Everyday Folder.

We finished our Unit 4 Math Assessments and scores are now in Skyward. If you have not yet returned our test and checklist, please do that soon so we can get our Doran Dollars.

A special thank you to Peyton's mom who treated our classroom to a yummy pizza party lunch! She also helped organize all our amazing volunteers who helped at our party! Thank you to everyone for all your hard work! You can see a video from that party by clicking HERE.

Mrs. Doran felt very spoiled with all the wonderful gifts. Hopefully her thank you made it home to you! She also gave us a book about Fly Guy and his pet. If we haven't read it to you yet, ask us to now! Have a wonderful break and we'll see you on January 3rd!

Week 16 in Review

Greetings from Room 119! Mrs. D. enjoyed meeting with you at conferences. She'd love some feedback on how you felt it went. If you attended conferences, please answer this short, one answer survey question that you can find HERE. It's totally anonymous. 

We also lifted up a special girl who has a long recovery ahead of her after surgery surgery. You can see the project we made for the cousin of a LLE family by clicking HERE.

 We've loved reading our books and noticing those adjectives. Many of us are also finding words with our word study patterns. Mrs. D. has loved seeing our different subjects overlap!

We finished the Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane. Did you know during our read-alouds we have rich discussions about what we're reading. We made connections, predictions and discussed the messages Kate DiCamillo wanted her readers to take away. These discussions happen so naturally when you read great books! We'd love if you'd find a favorite book from your childhood to read to us! This also helps build comprehension (and it's great family time).

This week we did some poem writing, but we also reflected on the first trimester of second grade. It's hard to believe that we're a third of the way through second grade! Time flies when you're having fun! We hope you enjoyed reading our reflections.

In math we focused on measuring in inches and in centimeters. We are going to review and take our Unit 4 Assessment next week. In January we'll start a new Unit and a new math journal!

Liam was very surprised when he found out this week's Mystery Reader was his big sister! She did an excellent job reading to us and we all loved the story!

Just a reminder that next Friday is PAJAMA DAY and our Holiday Party! Special thanks to all who have been planning the party. For those unable to attend, don't worry~ Mrs. D. will take lots of video and pictures for you! Have a great week!

Week 15 in Review

Greetings from Room 119! It was a full week! Our Thoughtful Thursday project went out to a special little girl who has been receiving love from Room 119 every year since Mrs. Doran started this project. She has far surpassed the life-expectancy that doctors predicted for her and we were honored to send her love. You can see her project by clicking HERE.

 As current families know, we did not win the $250 from the bank, so Mrs. Doran put a "Wish List" of items page on the blog. She has been blown away (and we've been cheering too) with the donations that have come in! WOW! Thank you, thank you, thank you! Our hearts are full!

Thanks also to all who came to Mrs. Aaronson's folk-dancing night! It was a fun night and Mrs. Doran's teenage daughter even put down her studying material to dance a bit! We are all so lucky to have such a fantastic music teacher!

Mrs. Doran has been reading holiday books and one was about an elf on a shelf! After she read it, one appeared in Room 119! Many of us were even saying we saw it move! Gingersnap has been a fun addition. Ask us about it!

Read. Read. Read. It's one of our favorite times of the day. Mrs. Doran continues to read us "The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane" and we hope to finish it next week. We also have been learning about parts of speech (particularly adjectives). As Mrs. D. has been reading with us, we've done well finding them in our reading material and then back to enjoying our reading treasures.

Once a week we get on our chromebooks and work on iReady Lessons and RAZ-kids. Did you know these are both things you can also do at home? All login information is on the back of our Everyday Folders.

We have had such fun learning about poetry! This week we practiced acrostic poems and someone even noticed we had one in our classroom. We poets have loved this unit so much that we are even writing poems in our free time! Great job, Room 119!

In math we've been learning about place value using expanded notation (which is something we actually do every day in our calendar routine). Since we've been picking it up so quickly, we had extra time to learn a new math game called Dreidel. Since we've been learning about Hanukkah, this was a fun tie in!

We wanted to play Dreidel every chance we got so during free choice we even started MAKING OUR OWN! The problem solving, imagination and creativity in play is awesome! This was a big hit for our Jewish and non-Jewish friends!

A very Happy Birthday to our friend, Ashley who turned the "Great Eight" this weekend! We loved singing to her in English AND in Polish! Sto Lat!

And finally we ended our week with a special Mystery Reader we all know (but one of us more so than all the others). Eli's Mimi (and beloved first grade teacher), Mrs. Hoger, came in to read to us a great book called "After the Fall" that we've seen on Mrs. D's shelf. It was a great book and we enjoyed having her come read to us!

Have a wonderful week! Just a reminder that parent-teacher conferences are Thursday. 

Week 14 in Review

Greetings from Room 119! It was a busy week but we had a lot of fun learning about new things all week. Our most important work of the week was lifting up the owner and friends of Bright Starr. You can see the project we made by clicking HERE.

This week we started poetry! We learned that not all poetry rhymes but they are all descriptive and so we also learned about words that are descriptive called adjectives. To help us learn about adjectives, we also learned about nouns and verbs! We LOVED becoming poets. We wrote poems together, shared our poems with friends and even took our writer's notebooks to the media center to write more after book check out!

While we enjoy our books in reading workshop we also look closely to see how authors use adjectives to help their writing become better. If we found an adjective in our book, we wrote it down to share with others while Mrs. D. worked with us to help us find them as well.

In math we've been learning all about how to tell time and we have really done a great job with it. If we need extra instruction, you can check out a video that Mrs. D. made HERE. To play a game she made called, "Beat the Clock" you can click HERE.

We ended the week with a special Mystery Reader. Jack's Nana came to visit and stopped and read an amazing book to Room 119. She then gave it to us to enjoy again and again! Thank you so very much, Nana!

Wishing all of our Jewish friends and family a Happy Hanukkah this week! Remember if you haven't yet signed up for conferences, please do so. The days are flying by and conferences will be here before you know it!

Week 13 in Review

Greetings from Room 119! It was a short week with the Thanksgiving Holiday break but we still made time for our most important work. You can see the project we made for Mr. Ed and Mrs. Esther who are still without electricity and water after Hurricane Michael by clicking HERE. We also made cards for our nighttime custodian who was recently diagnosed with cancer. As a father of young children and a military veteran, we know he is extremely tough! Mrs. D. didn't put a video together for him since she didn't get permission but you don't need permission to send love.

 Speaking of love, second grade "Super Riley" sent us an awesome letter as well as a box full of supplies for us to use on future projects! We were so grateful and sent her a video thank you on facebook!

Kindness was the theme this week as we also worked on having a "gratitude attitude". With Kindness being the trait of the month, we voted for someone who we think shows kindness regularly in Room 119. Our votes will be revealed at the next school assembly.

We finished our biography of Squanto and also read about him in our Scholastic News. His life was very difficult. We learned about the lives of the pilgrims and the Native Americans.

We did awesome on our math assessment! Be sure to sign and return our tests and the checklist that was sent home. Our ability to explain and talk about our thinking is really improving! We'll be starting Unit Four after the holiday weekend!

In addition to all the fun "work" (which we call learning) we did this week, we also LOVED watching The Wizard of Oz and talked through the entire movie (but Mrs. D. didn't mind since we were comparing and contrasting the book and movie the entire time). Be sure to ask us our thoughts.

Also, our class brought in the MOST cans to help the Hospitality House and we each got a free pencil! Special thank you to all who sent in items. Jaxson's mom sent in over 200 items which helped us beat out the other classrooms! Well done, everyone!

And one more thing... The Dorans have a new family member who will hopefully be making an appearance in Room 119 before the new year or shortly after! Meet Norbert, the bearded dragon (those of you who are Harry Potter fans will understand the name). Mrs. Doran can't wait to tell us more! Check out the class FB page to see a video of him eating!

Have a great week!

Week 12 in Review

Greetings from Room 119! It was a great (albeit busy) week. We did two Thoughtful Thursday projects this week. Mrs. D. has us do the projects in the order she gets them but sometimes kindness needs to be sped up a bit so we double up. You can see a project we made for Scott (a 12 year old with a brain aneurysm) by clicking HERE. You can see the project we made for Karl (who was in a biking accident and is the friend of a Room 119 family) by clicking HERE.

We finished reading Wizard of Oz and are excited to watch the movie next week on Wednesday! The book and movie are very different, so Mrs. D is eager to hear our opinions. She also started reading us a biography which we learned is a nonfiction book about someone who lived. This book is about Squanto. Ask us about it!

In writing we wrote about how we spend the November holidays. We either wrote about Thanksgiving or Diwali. We had fun sharing our writing with friends and our work is now displayed in the hallway for others to read as well!

We had a lot of great math thinking this week! So much so that Mrs. Doran's brain hurt a bit, so she had US do the teaching on Friday! We did an awesome job using open number lines to help us with subtraction. The key is that we must know our sums of ten automatically. To help us with this you can play "Fish for Ten" which is like "Go-Fish" but instead of asking for a matching card, you ask for what you would need to make ten. So if you have a 7 in your hand, you would need to ask for a 3. This is a fun game and a great way to build our foundations in math!

Have we told you about NESTS? This is a time where we visit other classrooms. In our nests we meet with students in grades K-6. We get to know each other and build friendships through fun activities. Ask us about the activity we did this week!

For Diversity Week, we learned how many communities are made up of awesome women! Many of us took our learning a step further by completing an activity about a woman who has inspired us! Thank you to all who participated! Ms. Schafer will be using some of our outstanding work at our MLK celebration in January! Stay tuned!

We have a lot to be thankful for in Room 119 so we made ourselves into some thankful turkeys! We love doing projects like this. It also helps us in following directions and fine motor skills!

A very special thank you to Leah's family for treating us all to a VERY yummy pizza party on Friday complete with drinks and a delicious dessert from Marco's Pizza! They wanted to thank us for the kindness we shared with Leah when she was going through her surgery.  Kindness Matters! Thank you so much!!

We ended the week with a special Mystery Reader! Jimmy's Nana came in and read an amazing biography about Scott Kelly's journey to the stars! We loved it almost as much as our future astronaut, Jimmy! Thank you for coming in to read to us, Nana!

Just a reminder that it is a short week next week because of the Thanksgiving holiday! We are still collecting cans for the Hospitality House! We will take our Unit 3 Assessment on Wednesday. We will save our List 12 words for the week AFTER Thanksgiving. Have a great week!

Week 11 in Review

Greetings from Room 119! This week our Thoughtful Thursday went out to Mrs. Barb who recently lost her husband. You can see here project by clicking HERE. We also made placemats for veterans with our fifth grade buddies! Happy Veteran's Day to all who served! May we all never forget!

In reading this week we were thinking about our characters and making connections with them. We are also close to finishing the Wizard of Oz. Ask us about what is happening in the story.

We finished up our books this week and also wrote again about a time we got hurt. We once again used our sticky notes to help us to organize our thinking. We focused on adding detail to our beginnings, middles and ends and also worked on capitals, endmarks, neatness and spelling.

In Social Studies we took a little assessment to show Mrs. D. how we are learning. She was really impressed with the material we've retained thus far! We did a great job identifying rural, urban and suburban communities and sharing what it is about these communities that helps us identify them.

Our social studies overflowed into our math by accident this week. We learned about fact families and we made a map of "houses" that held fact families. Most of us ended up making maps with many buildings which had us talking again about what kind of community we were making.

In addition, we learned the names of different parts of addition number models including the sum (answer) and the addends (the numbers that are added together to get the sum). We played a fun game called "Salute" where we took turns finding a missing addend or a sum. Ask us how we play this game.

We got on chromebooks on Friday and did iReady lessons. This is an easy way we can work on both math and reading at home as well. You can find our iReady logins and passwords on the back of our Everyday Folders.

We ended the week with a special Mystery Reader. Olivia was so excited when she learned that it was HER mom who had come in to read to us! She read a great book which had many of us reflecting on our morning announcements with Mrs. Kidder. How we look at something matters. We can find the good or the bad, the choice is up to us.

Have a great week!

Don't forget the Book Fair will be going on all week next week! Be sure to check Mrs. D's blog for times!