We celebrated World Geography Week on Wednesday, November 13th with Amy Haas, a Geospatial Technology Specialist.  She taught us how to use an app to GIS our playground.  Each student came home with a certificate and a copy of the map we made together as a second grade.  Thank you to Mrs. Courcelle for helping us with this learning opportunity.   

 

We completed our models of the earth this week. 

 

 


Wednesday, November 13th was also World Kindness Day!.  Each Kindness we share in our classroom helps us grow as learners in our community.  We are a strong group of kind people and I'm proud to be their teacher. 

We celebrated the hard work of our writers this week.  Each writer shared a component of their personal narrative while their classmates listened and drank apple cider.  Our new writing unit will be real-life writing.  We will be creating lists, cards, how-to pieces ie recipes, signs, and notes etc.  I'd love to share some real-life writing you have in your home with the class.  If you'd be willing to send some in with your student this week, that would be great!  

Each student is in a guided reading group, reading independently, listening to books read aloud, interacting with books on bookflix and practicing their repeated reading as part of our reading menu each week.  We recently taught our students skills to figure out words we roll up our sleeves and try these strategies:

Thank you for your support labeling and preparing your children with snow gear.  

I sent home paper copies for conference time choices if I haven't heard back from you yet.  I look forward to meeting with each of you during our upcoming parent-teacher conferences.

Thank you for all you do,

Jen Belisle    

Welcome to November!

Farm to School with Ms. Kayli and Ms. Bella involved mindful eating.  We experienced apples and maple syrup independently as well as together in applesauce.  We expanded our vocabulary with words to describe these foods and smells.

Mindfulness instruction during the month of November will focus on labyrinths and mandalas.  This week we began to use finger labyrinths, adding color to them We will walk the labyrinth on our basketball court before the snow falls.

Thank you to Lizzie and Damaris for helping us tie-dye our t-shirts.  Here we are in our yellow second grade themed shirts. We wore these at the assembly on Friday.   I kept the shirts here at school for future assemblies. 

We created final drafts of our 2 dimensional, bird's eye view maps of an important location to each of us.  On Friday we made models of the Earth with paper mache!  

 
 
 

 

Conversation starters by subject area:
How do you play "A What" at morning meeting?
What's my word study focus this week?
What is the calendar pattern in Number Corner?
What is the topic of your personal narrative?
What skill are you learning in typing quest?
Let's skip count by 10's starting at 28.
What time is it?
What is the title of the book you enjoy reading in your book box?

Notes:

I'll send home a paper copy of the conference request form if I haven't heard back from you via email.
It's the time of year for hats, mittens and snow pants.  Please write your child's name clearly on each item. 

Ms. Amblo is helping us build empathy.  She shared an acronym with our class titled T.H.I.N.K before you speak: is it True, Helpful, Inspiring, Necessary, Kind?

Thank you for all you do,
Jen Belisle

Wrapping up October

Thank you for the donations of time, snacks and creativity!  On Thursday afternoon we played Bingo, raced spiders, made ghosts and snacked on cheese sticks, goldfish, clementines and apple juice!

We finished reading the book titled Pedro by Fran Manushkin. Pedro is a classmate of Katie Woo, one of our previous read-aloud books.
We started reading Stuart Little by E.B. White.  Some of our students have seen the movie, so they are thinking deeply about how the movie and the book are similar and different.  
We learned to use Read Write Google to publish our personal narrative writing pieces.  We also made our title pages.  We will publish and share them this upcoming week.  
We are pictured here as peer editors, reading our pieces to each other and learning to give and receive feedback.  

 

 

 

Here we are scooping beads, counting them and comparing our totals to a benchmark number.  As mathematicians, we are practicing how many more or less. 



We are reading in guided reading groups with shared text.  
We reviewed & practiced the 10 Mindful Movements we learned.
We tie-dyed our t-shirts in Art.
We listened to a presentation by our third graders about UNICEF.
Ms. Amblo is teaching us about the power of our words.  
We are making maps of rooms, neighborhoods and special places for us.  

Things to ask your child about:
Mystery Doug
Google Earth
Kid President

Thank you for all you do,
Jen Belisle