Sing Along With Seconds!

Each morning we begin our day with a song. We try to learn one new song a week. On Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays we sing our new song. When Thursday and Friday arrive, our classroom helpers choose their favorite from an always-growing list of tunes. You can sing along with us at home! Just click the song titles below to be miraculously, or technologically, transported to YouTube, hit play and sing your heart out. Feel free to skip the ads; we do. Here's to the soundtrack of our classroom and here's to Seconds!

If I Only Had a Brain sung by The Scarecrow

Mister Rabbit sung by Pete Seeger

My Favorite Things sung by Julie Andrews

I Won't Grow Up sung by Peter Pan

Three Little Birds sung by Bob Marley

So Many Books, So Little Time

When we write, we are writers. This week we are 100% writers because we are publishing our personal narrative stories. Let me tell you, it's not easy publishing a book.

First, we looked through our writing notebooks and decided which story was worthy of publication. Next we thought about the book's layout: tall or small, illustrations or only text. Once we made these decisions, we set to work on our final copies. Out of respect for our readers, we are paying attention to correctly using capital letters, spacing between words, spelling, and punctuation at the ends of our sentences. Whew it's a lot to pay attention to.

The work in our publishing house this week is going well. We hope to finish our final copies in the next few days because we can't wait to share these stories with families during conferences. So here's to deadlines and published stories. Here's to writing and writers. And here's to Seconds!

Writing About Reading

Shhh. Don't tell Ms. Bolme's Second Grade class, but we are writing them a letter. The letter is about one of our favorite books, Mrs. Chicken and the Hungry Crocodile.

Whenever writers write, they have a purpose. Our purpose is to convince Ms. Bolme and her students how good this book is. We discovered that before we write, we have to do a little planning. Planning is like slowing down our thinking. During our two days of planning, we uncovered some pretty fancy ideas we didn't think about right away. If we would have just started writing and quickly finished the letter, we would have missed writing about the author and the illustrator. Our whole letter would have been about our favorite part, favorite part, favorite part, and another favorite part. Zzzzz. Kind of boring, don't you think? Since we took time to think and plan, we now have a bunch more interesting ideas to include in our letter.

We can't wait to write our letter and send it to Ms. Bolme's room. Sharing books and letters with friends is way cool. So here's to friends; here's to books, and here's to Seconds!

Writing Like Readers

There's a problem. Seriously. Every story we read has had a problem. The problem happened because one or more of the characters wanted something. Getting what we want is rarely easy, so there's the problem.

As readers we have noticed these problems. Today we opened our writer's notebooks for the first time and started thinking about the stories from our lives. Guess what. There were problems:

• dog bites
• cuts
• broken bones
• accidentally left a child at home and drove away (Yes family, you know who you are.)
• fell off a bike
• fell into a lake
• got sick and couldn't go outside
• lost in the store...dun, dun, dahhh

Oh my, the list goes on. Now that we know there's a problem, we will write like authors and think like readers. We will plan our stories, just like authors do, to include characters, settings, and events that tell the story in the best way we know how. It's the way the stories we have read work, and it's the way we are working too. How nutty is this? A problem is a good thing for a writer. Ha. So here's to problems, and here's to Seconds!

Individuals as Teammates

Happy Monday! Wow, who knew we were going to have a fire drill today? No one in our room. After the drill we met to discuss how things went. We decided we lined up, walked out, and took care of ourselves quite well--even though the alarm was a big SURPRISE! During our discussion, we also decided we needed to be quieter when lining up and simply say, "Here," when we get to our safety spot. That's what a good teammate would do.

Each person in our room is a unique individual. When we come together, we are still individuals, but we also form a team. It's an odd idea isn't it? Really it's making one out of many. This idea is why we are working so hard on helping everyone be individually and independently responsible. We listen, make transitions, and do our jobs independently, so our class team can work well and learn together. It's the individual links in a chain that make it strong; it's the individuals in our room that make us a strong team.

In the coming weeks, we will continue to explore the behaviors that support our learning: getting along, listening, using our work time, being kind, safe, respectful, and responsible. So here's to great Teammates and here's to Seconds!

Odds and Ends

Did you know that all Woodlamd students have recess before lunch this year? Did you also know that all Woodland students run a lap around the Square before heading to the playground? Did you also, also know that at least one teacher runs the lap with his second-grade learners most days?

Here's one more "did you know." Did you know we had a fire drill on Thursday? Everyone exited the building quickly and quietly. The learners in Room 223 put on a great display of safe and mature behavior. We know how to take care of our business, so here's to Seconds! Thanks families for all the support you show each and every day.

What a Week

What a week it has been. You might even say it's been a strong week! We are off to a great start as we learn how to do second-grade work, how to be part of a classroom team, and how to cooperate. The Woodland Way is alive and well in our room.

This morning, we also had our first, all-school assembly. During the assembly, Ms. Carlson talked about how important the Woodland Way is for everyone when we are in school, on the playground, and on the buses. No matter where we go or what we do, it's about being kind, safe, respectful, and responsible.

Here are some things you might want to talk about as a family...things we have done this week:

• We read Hunter's Best Friend at School.
• We sang The Barnyard Song (and the bird went tweet-tweet).
• We are reading Rumplestiltskin and learning about characters, wants, and problems.
• We talked about how mathematicians work.
• We started working in our Math Journals.
• We laughed and learned together!

Enjoy the weekend ahead. Here's to Seconds!!