May 11, 2012
SPECIAL EVENTS: Magic Show (Theme: Anti Bullying, sponsored by the PTA and
it was VERY good) Market Day
SOCIAL STUDIES: Economy
We mainly got ready for Market Day, spent all day Thursday having it, and
then debriefed Friday. Thank you to those of you who sent back the Profit
Calculators. We discussed paying workers and how difficult it is to own your
own business. Several students wanted to donate to Ronald McDonald House.
If so, please make your check out to them and send to me. One of the second
grade teachers Mrs. Jones belongs to a sorority that works with them and she
will get the checks to them.
Market Day seemed to be a great day for everyone. Students did a good job
with their store, making change, advertising their wares, being polite to
customers, etc. Apparently excitement runs high all over the entire school
on Market Day, so get ready for it year after year.
READING: To enliven things here at the end of the year, I pulled books from
my Read Aloud shelf, put them under 2 rows of chairs and we had Musical Book
Chairs, with enough chairs for everyone. After walking around to the music,
they sat and read for a few minutes in a book, then we walked around to music
again, whetting their appetites to read some of the books. Then they got to
read some from cover to cover. Getting back into fiction was hard. I asked
the students to chart the problem (beginning), action (middle), and solution
(end) of the book on a story "map" and it was not a huge success. We will
work on it some more.
MATH: Multiplication
We finished multiplication this week, tested today, and jumped right into
division.
WRITING: We also had a really fun time in writing. Since we have covered
every kind of writing we had to in second grade, we decided to let them write
a bit of fiction. I pulled out some bags that contained pictures I had cut
out of magazines so that instead of having to come up with a setting and
characters, there was a picture or two that got them started. All they had
to do was come up with a problem using the rest of the pictures and solve
it. They had the best time! We are reading them to the group, and as they
finish reading, they get to take a camera and film the next person reading.
We watched the videos taken so far, and that was fun for them to see
themselves and note what it means to do a good job of filming.
SPELLING: Students who were confused about the homophones we reviewed in our
Grammar textbook made a little project to hopefully help them remember the
correct spelling of which homophone means what (they made a tree with pears
on it because pear/pair are homophones). Students who didn't need homophone
work had a list of economy spelling words they worked on with a partner.
