Ms. Palmer's Website, Second Grade, Stevenson Elementary, Room 108

Students asked that they be able to have music to practice the weather songs at home.  I placed the audio file of our musical songs on my wiki.  Please click on the link below, then click on the "play" button to hear our musical songs.  Hopefully the kids will have fun practicing this way!!!

http://msp--wild-wonderful-wiki-world.wikispaces.com/Wiki

We are looking to do "green screen" clips of students pretending to be in different types of weather for our musical.  We would play these clips during different parts of the musical...

I was wondering if anyone would have time after school to help us film these clips.  We would also need props, like:

raincoats
winter gear (coats, scarves, etc)
fake snow (?)
shovels
umbrellas
sunglasses
rakes
a box fan (for wind)

If you can send in props or have time after school for filming or supervision of actors/actresses, please let me know.

Thanks so much!

We are deep in the heart of practicing for our musical!  The kids are really enjoying our selections of songs!

Tonight for homework I'd like the kids to practice reading/singing the songs for 5 minutes.

They should then read a book for the other 5 minutes and do the main idea.

We also have math.

Whew!  It was a long day today! 

Musical: Students are deep in the heart of practice.  Our musical is about how seasons are related to weather.  We designed it ourselves and all the facts are intertwined with contemporary songs about weather.  Check out the lyric sheet tonight to see the great songs the kids will be singing.  One thing Mr. Shaw stressed with the kids is that they really need to pay attention and follow directions in class because we don't have a lot of time to practice before May 27th...

Chinchilla: We tried an experiment with letting the chinchilla come out to recess today.  He was in a cage and the class zoologists were in charge of him.  It turned out to be a bigger deal than we thought but it was a great opportunity to problem solve.  Many students outside wanted to see Pikachu and the zoologists were worried that he was getting stressed out.  This led to some difficulties on the playground.  We had long talks this afternoon about conflict and conflict resolution.  We talked about rules for conflict resolution and how to try and make the situation "win-win" for everyone.  Although it was rough at times, this stuff is great practice for the real world.

Elections:  Election day is tomorrow!  The kids finished up their campaign commercials, we put them into iMovie, edited, and added titles.  The kids are all excited about the big day.

Students copied in a reminder in their Homework Logs about capacity.  This will help them with math homework tonight.  It tells how many quarts in a gallon, pints in a quart, etc.  I can also try scanning the chart and sending it via the copier as soon as I get a chance. 

Reading: We are working hard on our 2nd grade musical.  For homework tonight kids have to read (and sing if possible) the lyrics from the songs about weather.  They should know these by heart soon, so I'd like them to practice for 10 minutes. You can sign the lyric sheet to let me know they did this.

Social Studies: The kids are sooo excited about the upcoming election!  They are working hard to promote their candidate.  They used their campaign money to "buy" commercial time, flyers, posters, and speech time.  Most groups have completed their own campaign commercials using the school's new iPod nanos- they are very entertaining to watch.  Last week, they gave campaign speeches to the kindergarters and we did an official "poll" to see where each canidate stood.  Another thing we did was watch famous leaders and their speeches to get an idea of how to make a speech and address a crowd.  This Thursday is election day- the kids can't wait!

Word Study: We looked at out new word wall words.  These words include: us, sibling, other, thought, myself, too, without, of, themselves, and our. 
Some things we talked about-
us: when you add an e on the end it makes a new word
sibling: is a brother or sister, this isn't a compound word because "ing" isn't a word
other: helps you spell mother and brother
myself- compound word, has the word "elf" in it
too- is a homophone, means "also"
without: compound word
themselves: compound word, when add an "s" to a word that ends with "f" you have to make it "ves"- like in elves and wolves
our- is often confused with "are" because this is how we speak, but "our" means "belonging to"
After introducing these words, we practiced spelling them alound and writing them on whiteboards.  After about a week of practice, these words will be "launched" onto our word wall as "no excuse" words.

Spelling/Word Study: Kids picked out new words.  They are listed in their HW Logs.  I hope to get them up on Spelling City soon.  Buddy test is Friday.

Writing Workshop: We had free write today and I worked with some kids on their writing.  The kids really love to free write:)

Math: We talked about area vs. perimeter today for our full group lesson.  Students played a "Simon Says" game where they went to the perimeter of the room and then showed where the area was.  They also got to get up and walk the perimeter of the room.  Finally, we reviewed more complex fractions.  These are still a struggle for a lot of kids.  These kind of problems include ones like, what is 2/8 of 16.  Students have to draw this out and use the bottom number of the fraction to know how many groups to put it into, then circle or shade 2 of those groups.  We'll keep working on this.

Reading Workshop: We finished Because of Winn Dixie and moved on to a book about the Titanic.  The kids are really interested in this subject.  I met with reading groups reading Ghost Town at Sundown and Weird Wolf.  Many students didn't have their books for reading group...   If you could make sure your child has their reading group book in their Communication Folders, this helps so we don't all have to share...Tomorrow I will meet with Sisters Grimm, Ghost Town (first group) and Stone Fox.

Have a great evening!

Our wiki is going to be a place to collect good examples of student writing.  To check out student introductions, please see our writing page on the wiki.
http://msp--wild-wonderful-wiki-world.wikispaces.com/Writing+Projects

This morning we went over homework sentences.  See below.

For Word Study we reviewed new Word Wall words and talked about their features:
perhaps- has a bossy r in it
Mr.- is an abbreviation for Mister, dots tell us it's an abbreviation
large- ge, gy, gi make the j sound
Ms.- we had to look up the abbreviation for this which is mistress.  We talked about how you don't know a woman is married with this title.
special- the cial sounds like shall
grandfather- has all sort of great little word in it, formal
grandma- informal, slang
because- has 4 vowels, often misspelled
aunt- homophone for ant
Miss- an unmarried woman

We had an outdoor recess.

We came in to do a quick spelling check to see what word types we need to work on.  Types included long vowels with silent e, bossy rs, other types of long vowels, complex consonants, and abstract vowels.  We discussed what this meant.  Some students will be getting new spelling words tomorrow.

Social Studies: We finalized our 3 candidates: Percy Jackson, Greg from Diary of a Wimpy Kid, and June B. Jones.  Students got in groups to support their candidates.

Students did a good job on the main idea.  One thing I reminded them was that main ideas are very general statements.  I added notes to some student pages to better assist you in helping your student with main idea.

Tomorrow with be our "make up" read a thon.  Students can wear PJs and bring blankets, pillows, etc.  They can also bring books from home.