Experiences Abound!

Our science focus is on weathering and erosion.  As a model of our earth changing both fast and slow, we used a rock tumbler with the aid of water, sand, and gravel.  Here are our pre and post pictures of our rocks.


During the month of December, our word study focus will be on high-frequency words.  Each student has an individualized list.  We will also be working on handwriting and fine motor skills with our variety of activities.

We are writing and reading nonfiction like experts.  This week our work was writing chapter books about a topic we are experts about.  Our students are writing at least four chapters.  They are writing fast and furiously to get their ideas down on paper.  We are learning about nonfiction through mentor authors like Gail Gibbons, who lives in Vermont and has written over 120 books.  

Not only are we authors ourselves, and learning about authors, we also experienced a webinar this week with Jacqueline Woodson! We read her book titled, The Day You Begin.  We also pulled out books she mentioned that she's written titled Each Kindness and The Other Side.

I look forward to seeing you at the concert, this Wednesday, December 12th.  Children arrive at 6:15 in our classroom, the concert will start at 6:30 pm.  

Thank you for all you do,
Jen Belisle

Learning in Action!

 Our second graders enjoy spending time in our afternoons reading!  We are reading fiction and nonfiction books right now.  I'm so proud of their sustained reading time, effort and growth.

 
Here we are engaged in a science task about the water and landforms. This week we focused on water, wind, and weather.  We will use this knowledge to help understand weather and erosion. 

Our St. Michael's interns Mr. Foley, Ms. Lauren and Ms. Megan each taught a math lesson focused on comparing problems.  We are learning multi-digit subtraction in class using multiple strategies.  We are practicing subtraction into the previous decade using an open number line as well as decomposition.  I'm proud of their ability to work thoughtfully, practice skills in games like 6 rolls, and express their math thinking in a verbal and written format. 

We are writing our first nonfiction book!  We created expert and interest lists.  We created our own dictionaries.  We have started our brainstorms and created the chapter topics for our books. 

Mrs. Wheeler visited us twice this week.  She taught us about care for babies as well as a lesson about personal space.  I appreciate Mrs. Wheeler's team teaching with our students.

It was fun to celebrate with the whole school watching Frosty the Snowman on Friday.

December is a busy month, please enjoy it.  I look forward to seeing you all on the night of December 12th for our winter concert. 

Thank you for all you do,
Jen Belisle

                    Immersion in Non-Fiction!

This week, our first full week in November, we began our nonfiction studies!
We are:

• reading nonfiction books during reader's workshop
• researching landforms and bodies of water using info bits on the RMCS webpage
• reading about types of landforms and bodies of water with a variety of literature
• recording our learning with a variety of tools ie: research papers, labeled drawings, bulleted lists, and definitions.
• sharing nonfiction and fiction facts about ourselves in our morning meeting with a question/answer format to figure out which of the statements are fact or fiction.  

During this upcoming week, we will publish this work with postcards, google slides, models, info books and posters.  

This week we enjoyed visitors:

• Miss Megan taught us about the benefits of kale and we enjoyed a dino kale smoothie.  Our students recorded the recipe to bring home.
• We appreciated time to eat together with family and friends at our harvest feast.
• Mrs. Wheeler joined us for our weekly guidance lesson; our focus was about defining public and private then how that relates to our bodies.
• Miss Lauren, Miss Megan and Mr. Foley have been with us one day a week during math time.  They are juniors at St. Michael's College.  

During math time this week we:

• learned to add single and double digits using strategies including the hundreds chart and an open number line.
• practiced our open number line with a spillover strategy into the new decade with addition equations like 38+7.
• introduced string problems with single and double-digit numbers.  
• practiced skills in our students books, our Do The Math packets and our math menus.  All of these items you probably have seen come home in their folders.
• practiced reading time to the hour and half hour on multiple timepieces.

Please look for an email with your conference time.  Let me know if you received it and if it works for you and your family with a quick reply to the email.  

Thank you for all you do,

Jen Belisle

A Week to Celebrate!

Here we are making ghost, pumpkin & Frankenstein slime!

This is such a fun time of year!  Thank you to all of you for supporting our fun on Halloween this week.

Friday we celebrated National Author's Day with our narrative writing celebration!  Here we are reading our stories:

 

  

   

 

We learned about six different patterns in leaves and what types of animals use leaves for food based on the observable patterns with our Hands-On Nature teachers: Mrs. Knoth and Mrs. Almassalkhi!

We completed our read aloud titled The Elevator Family.  

We spend about 30 minutes during the week on a program called Typing Quest.  This program helps us to become strong, accurate, efficient typists.  This skill will assist in all areas of composition as well as research to begin the list.  

Our math focus is about adding 10's and 1's to any number.  We are moving around the hundred chart as well as an open number line to problem solve.  We taught the break apart strategy and how to use landmark numbers when adding two and single digit numbers.  

Ask your child about their word study skill each week & the title(s) of books they enjoy reading at school.  

Please send back the green note about conferences.  If you prefer a time outside of those listed, please let me know.  

Thank you!
Jen Belisle

We Matter!

In this animation, our class is holding their self-designed crayons!  They each chose 4-5 crayon colors to use in our states of matter experiment.  We peeled, melted and recreated a multi-color crayon in a new shape!  Our focus is reversible and irreversible changes. 

We completed our read-aloud of Stuart Little by E.B. White and started our new book, The Elevator Family by Douglas Evans. 

We added new beginnings to our narrative pieces this week as well as completed our drafts. We read Rain Stomper by Addie Boswell to help us learn about precise words, use of size in text and detail.  Our lessons about, "green means growth" allowed us to use a green pen on our writing to edit and add new ideas. 

Our math work this week focused on adding 10 to any number.  We used models like the hundred chart (with and without numbers), digi-blocks and place value pieces. 

We experienced our first full week of small group word study.  Ask your child about it!

Our sharing for the month of October has focused on conversation starters.  Here's a photo of the ones we've shared so far. 

Typing Quest is a tool we are using to teach our students how to type.  Watching my own children and older students with typing expectations, it's so helpful for our students to have this skill.  I have also taught students that we now use a program called Go Guardian.  This allows me, within my Google Classroom, to have access to what is happening on each student's computer at all times. 

Mindfulness this week included a 5 minute guided meditation.  Responses from our students were positive.  Our mindfulness schedule typically includes, coloring a mandala, active & interactive go noodle activity, meditation, breathing exercise, and a sensory activity. 

A note from our school counselor:
Our school counselors, Carol Wheeler and Meaghan Rice are hosting a number of parent coffees this year. They will be here at school on Tuesday mornings, 8:05-8:45, and we hope you will join us for the first one, scheduled for November 6th . As parents, you play the primary role in promoting healthy relationships and preventing child abuse, and it serves our children well when the adults use similar vocabulary and approaches. There will be a short presentation by Lori Howe from Prevent Child Abuse Vermont about the contents of the Healthy Relationships Project we teach at RMCS. We’ll also have time for conversation to help us plan the contents of future get togethers. Young children are welcome, as this is very informal and relaxed time to learn together. Special take home bonus: there will be a free mindfulness tool for your family to add to your home peace corner.

We are looking forward to an exciting upcoming week! 
Thank you to Kelly Knoth and Brittany Almassalkhi for leading Hands on Nature tomorrow.
Thank you for your support in our festivities on Wednesday.


Jen Belisle

A FUN week!

We began our week in a pajama celebration.  Thank you to Mrs. Rice for coming in on Tuesday to create FUN RUN posters to support our schoolmates during our run on Friday.  We ended our week with a fabulous whole school Fun Run event!

Here we are making our posters!

Our mornings are filled with creativity and smiles.

This week we learned about honey bees with Miss Meg & Miss Maddie with Farm to School.  We experienced mindful eating with apples and fresh honey.  Ask your child about some interesting honey bee facts. 

Our classroom community is learning a lot about each other with our daily lightning shares with conversations starters.  They are creating opportunities for continued connections and topics to discuss further.  We are able to group juggle!  We made it to three bean bag frogs so far!

We completed one more week of routine word study.  We will start more focused word study starting on October 22nd.  This upcoming three day week we will review our activities.  

During number corner this month we are looking at both pinnate and palmate leaf patterns, counting minutes in groups of 5, building rectangles with tiles to represent arrays with links to both addition and groups of numbers.  We will continue to build our decade and century counting number lines.  

Mrs. Courcelle, our information technology educator, joined our class twice this week to get us started using Typing Quest and a read/write function on google drive.  

This week we took a math assessment on our first unit.  Students had an opportunity to correct the assessment as well, learning from their mistakes and making thoughtful corrections.

We began our states of matter unit.  We created a chart with ideas we think we know about states of matter and some wonderings we have. We read a non-fiction book to give us some guiding information.  This upcoming week we will have an opportunity to explore at stations and experience for ourselves.  

We are writing our small moment narrative stories with the guidance of sequencing words: First, Next, Then & Last.  We then add details to our stories as we write.  

We read every afternoon.  Each student reads from books in their book box.  We love to read in our classroom.  

I hope you've enjoyed the beauty of this weekend.  

I'm grateful for our classroom communtiy.

Jen Belisle

Growing Learners

This week we completed our All About Me September sharing theme.  During the month of September, we are beginning to build friendships, work partners and a safe, fun place to learn.  During October we will have daily topics for sharing that will help teach conversation skills.  

We are spellers!  Word study began this week.  We set up our routines for a successful year of word study instruction and learning.  We will practice with words as a whole class for one more week to build confidence and independence.  

We are mathematicians! During number corner this week we practiced counting by 10's on our number line, advanced our computation skills with adding strategies of 0,1, doubles, neighbors (+/-) as well as understanding and identifying odd and even numbers.  During math class, we practiced strategies with addition and subtraction while playing Battling Bugs & What's the Difference.  We created bead strings and introduced number lines to model our solutions during problem-solving.  

We are writers!  We created maps of our hearts filled with people, places and things that are meaningful to us.  We read A Chair for my Mother and Stella Tells a Story to help us with strategies to come up with writing topics and how to organize our thinking like writers. We spend time writing every day.  Math Menu includes problem-solving, math practice, responding to a written math prompt as well as generalizing these skills into math situations.  

We are mindful!  This week we colored mandalas, we used the senses of sight and touch to make observations of our "ishis", we participated in mindful movement with go noodle and we practiced breathing, to help us feel our lungs fill while holding our rib cage.

We are readers!  This week we read There was an Old Lady who Swallowed a Fly with different voices, depending on how we felt. We can control our voice as we read a book.  We discovered and uncovered our classroom library.  We labeled bins together and continued to build our reading stamina.   

Our second grades are running the whole school assembly next Friday, October 5th.  It will run from 8:20-8:40 (ish).  Our theme will be to celebrate our Peter Reynolds author study.  I also look forward to seeing you on Thursday night, 6:30-7:30 at Open House.  

The first of our scholastic book order arrived.  I'm anticipating a steady flow of arrivals. When your order arrives I will send it home with your child.

I hope you enjoy the weekend,

Jen Belisle

Happy International Dot Day! 

 We created a dot at the beginning of our journey together and joined more than 12 million people in 177 countries to celebrate making our mark on the world with our trip to Oakledge on Friday.  I'm grateful to be on this journey with your families.

We started our first chapter book read aloud, Stuart Little by E.B. White.  We also read books including Personal Space Camp, Beautiful OOPS as well as Stick and Stone.  Our author study of Peter Reynolds took us to his books titled Going Places, Too Few of Me and The Word Collector.  We learned that Peter is an author and an illustrator. He also creates books with his twin brother, Paul.

We are fortunate to be spending time outside with our second-grade peers.  It's fun to have the sun shining and time to play together.  We are learning group games, cooperative games and spending some free time with each other.

We welcomed Mrs. Jensvold into our class this week.  She's working with all students in math this year.  She read us a book and we explored "ways to make eleven" with each other.  It's a fun game, ask your student to explain it to you.  Our number corner calendar skills are adding to twenty, matching equations with a model and exploring problem-solving.  Each day in math includes a lesson and then time in math menu.

This week we read I am Peace, by Susan Verde & illustrated by Peter Reynolds.  We designed our peace place in our classroom as our activity.  Every day after lunch we spend 10-15 minutes in mindfulness practice.  This past week we took a rainbow walk, colored mandalas, began to use go noodle and highlighted our senses to experience a seashell.

During farm to school this week we learned how to make salsa!  We also played a game to help us understand how long food takes to grow.  We learned that vegetables and fruits can grow in less than a month, 2-3 months or more than 4 months up to multiple years!

I sent home book orders from Scholastic.  It's a choice to purchase books.  If you'd like to place an order, please send the form and a check, made out to Scholastic, back to school by Friday, September 21st.  Our class code to order online, if you'd like, is:
https://clubs.scholastic.com
 the class code is F7RGR 

I hope you had a good weekend.
Jen Belisle

Our Second Week Together!

We began our second week with a welcome back greeting at our morning meeting.  It was great to see everyone again after the Labor Day weekend.  This week we began sharing with our All About Me theme, it's fun getting to know each other through this process.  Thank you for your help putting together the 4-5 items to share.  We also played a game called "Roll a Topic" I sent home an example thinking that this may be a fun way to have conversations about school at home, you could change the theme to represent whatever topic you'd like.

 During our math time, we began our week exploring clocks.  As mathematicians we learned about inventory, it's purpose, different strategies to use and ways to count. We also created as many shapes as we could with isosceles triangles following 4 constraints, we came up with at least 7 ways.  I sent a copy of this home, just in case you wanted to try it together.  Our class is making creative, intelligent observations on our number corner calendar this month.

Our author study, to kick off our school year, is Peter Reynolds.  This week we read The Dot, Ish, Happy Dreamer & Sky Color.  We used watercolors to create dots, we used quiver vision to make a dot 3D and we sang The Dot Song, multiple times.  I've added the link to my sidebar if you'd like to listen.

We enjoyed playing second-grade community games outside at the end of each day.  It's fun to play tag games together.

Our STEM activity this week was called Help Harry.  Our class not only created perches from limited materials, they also listened to each team explain their process and compliment them on something they did well.

Our field trip to celebrate Dot Day at Oakledge is Friday, September 14th.  We will be out of the building 8:45-:12:15.  We will be back at school in time for our early dismissal at 12:30.  We will eat a bag lunch, from home, at Oakledge.  No chaperones are needed for this trip.

I'm so excited for our first Monday together!  I hope you had a great weekend.

Jen Belisle

Our First Week Together

I'm thrilled to be teaching second grade and embark on this journey with your children.  Our first four days have been filled with opportunities to learn about each other, our space, our team and our school.  I appreciate that you all came to our Open House on Monday, August 27th, it was exciting to meet everyone face to face.  

Reading, watching and experiencing the creative ways of sharing about your children with the UDL projects is both inspiring and insightful.  I've received a bag of pictures and significant symbols, top ten lists, videos, photos and thoughtful letters.  I am a fortunate educator to be working with such amazing children and families.  Thank you. 

This week we've read books together to create a positive culture for learning and growing; some titles include: Mary Wore Her Red Dress, First Day Jitters, Chrysanthemum, Me First, Giraffe's Can't Dance and The Wednesday Surprise.  Reading these books lead to projects like drawing our "best person" and writing our "best name".  We created mosaic representations of our own names that we will hang in our room.  We created a list of birthday options for our gift of time and I've posted that list on the right side of our blog home page. 

We are spending time together as a grade level playing a variety of tag games outside.  We've played rainbow tag, mosquito tag, under the bridge tag as well as fruit salad tag.  It's fun to be together as a team.  The whole second grade will be going to Oakledge Park to celebrate International Dot Day on Friday, September 14th.  We will take the bus at 8:45 and return for our 12:30 early dismissal.  We don't need chaperones for this event. We will eat our bag lunch in the park.  

Our week of inspirational math began with a quick video to teach about brain growth, perseverance, making mistakes, believing in yourself and that speed doesn't matter.  Our learning has included experiences like: crossing our midline with math mazes, flexible thinking with dot numbers, creating shapes from other shapes and designing pictographs with opposite qualities.  

Our STEM challenge to create a paper chain was a cooperative success!  Our whole chain is 131 links and 312 inches in length.  

Our school expectations to be: Respectful, Mindful and Cooperative to be Successful is a consistent conversation as we develop our classroom community.  We are earning Marky Marks and will set our goal this week.  

Each student has a mailbox. I taught them how to pack their folders on Friday.  Please send the folder back to school on Tuesday.  It will come home this coming Friday as well.

Please note that picture day is Wednesday, September 5th.  We are the first class to have our photos taken at 8:30 am.

I hope you are all enjoying the three day weekend.

Jen Belisle  
  

August Welcome Back Letter

Welcome to Second Grade! August 3, 2018 My name is Mrs. Belisle and I’m so excited to be your teacher this year! My husband Dennis and I have two children, Caroline (18) and Colin (15). Caroline just graduated from SBHS and Colin will be a sophomore. We also have two dogs, Apollo (7) and Zephyr (2). My favorite experience this summer has been spending time together with my family. I am looking forward to hearing about your summer and getting to know you! Our school year will start with team building, fun writing activities, creative problem solving and interesting books. This year we will also explore earth changes, plants and regions of the United States. We will spend time together with our second grade team at school and on field trips. The first few days of school can be warm, so please bring in a water bottle along with a daily, healthy snack in your backpack. I will supply you with a home/school folder, subject area folders, and creative school supplies. I will start the year using email to communicate with families until our class blog is available. Please send me a quick note to jbelisle@sbschools.net so I can gather your family’s contact information. Enjoy the rest of the long days, the warmth of the summer sun and dream about the upcoming learning adventures ahead this year! I will see you at our Open House on Monday, August 27th between 1:30-3:00 pm. Sincerely, Mrs. Belisle Possible Classroom Donations: *Baby Wipes (not clorox or lysol) *tissues *Pencils *Black sharpies

Welcome to Second Grade!

My name is Jennifer Belisle and I’m so excited to be your teacher this year! I have been teaching in South Burlington for just over 20 years. I've taught at both Orchard School and Rick Marcotte Central School.  My husband Dennis and I have two children, Caroline (18) and Colin (15). Caroline just graduated from SBHS and Colin will be a sophomore at SBHS. We also have two dogs, Apollo (7) and Zephyr (2).  

I'm thrilled to be a member of the second-grade team here at Rick Marcotte Central School.  My friends, Katie Ransom, Kelly Mahl and Stephanie Hockenbury are my teammates.  Mrs. Hockenbury and I have been teaching together since 1998!  Here's a photo of us together with our versions of Vincent Van Gogh's Starry Night.