Week #3 September 9-13, 2019

We had a fun week of "firsts" starting with this being our first full five-day week of school.  We enjoyed both our first class celebration AND our first whole-school celebration, and saw our first Monarch caterpillar hatch.  Here are some more highlights:

We learned:

• all about our Chromebooks including the topics of digital citizenship, usernames & passwords, Google Classroom, bookmarking, changing settings, Bookflix and Dreambox.
• to be mindful with touch by feeling a mystery item in a bag (pinecone), handling an item behind our back (seashell), holding ice, and using thumb circles to pay attention to our wrist, hand and fingers.
• two structures we'll use during our math block this year--
1. independent practice (regular maintenance of skills & concepts)
2. choice (use of tools, fluency practice and technology)

We experienced:

• leading a whole-school assembly about Mindfulness.
• "All About Me" share from Siena, Harper, Dagny, Elliot and Sora.
• reading mini-lessons related to deciding HOW to read text, taking a Sneak Peek before reading text and using our "Repeated Reading" folders to reread familiar text to build fluency.
• our first Marky Mark celebration and 2 birthdays where we made slime, played wiffle ball and crafted rain sticks.
• the district-wide fall 2nd grade paragraph dictation and online aMath assessments.

Other things to ask your child about:

• The Golden Rule
• My Magic Breath, I am Peace
• Our morning meeting activities:  Mystery Doug, Coseeki, Down by the Banks, Brave

Enjoy the weekend!

DOT DAY is September 15--may you make your mark on the world!  

http://www.thedotclub.org/dotday/

Who knows, I may wear DOTS on Monday, September 16.

Mrs. Hock

Collaborative Art with Mrs. Lewis

Week #2 September 3-6, 2019

We have a lot to celebrate at the end of week 2!  We have earned a total of 374 Marky Marks filling our bin.  Our first celebration will be Monday, 9/9 and we will be making slime.  We even called a teacher on the "Marky Mark Committee" to share our news.  Fun times to honor our hard work together.

Here are some other highlights from this week:

We learned:

• 3 new math games:  Race to the Top, Empty the Box and Target.
• to be mindful by listening to different tools with different sounds (chime, rain stick, singing bowl and talking stick).
• Our system for using the Peace Place after reading Anh's Anger.

We experienced:

• school pictures, a whole-school assembly hosted by grade 5 and a grade-level orientation to review R-M-C-S on the bus.
• "All About Me" share from Mrs. Hock, Lucius, Lydia and Elliott.
• The start of our Number Corner skills work for the month with ways to make 20, an introduction to clocks, odd/even (impares/pares) and counting by tens.
• creating a class book, "______ is my name.  ______ is my game."
• A quick sort of statements as either Fixed Mindset or Growth Mindset.
• Using watercolors to create a painting related to the book, A Spot of Kindness.
• The district-wide fall 2nd grade spelling assessment.

Other things to ask your child about:

• Our rights and responsibilities as students in our classroom and Howard B. Wigglebottom.
• "Repeated Reading" Folders
• My Name is Elizabeth

Enjoy the weekend!

Mrs. Hock

Week #1 August 27-30, 2019

Hello Families,
Here are a few highlights from our first amazing week together!  Our class is fun, energetic and enjoys learning new things.  We're off to a great start and have made progress each day.  Did your child tell you I called Mrs. Gilmore, Mrs. Scott and Mr. Coon to brag about them?  Did your child tell you we earned over 200 Marky Marks in our first four days?  Did your child tell you we celebrate our learning, sharing and mistakes with musical cards, chants and by "knocking my shoes off"?

We learned...

• our classmates' names.
• our classroom procedures for: signing up for lunch, Morning Meeting, using table baskets and lining up to leave our room.
• our school procedure for fire drills.

We experienced...

• guided discovery of our playground and math manipulatives.
• Wednesday Surprise to share how we will celebrate birthdays in our class.
• giving and receiving feedback as we wrote our best names and drew our best person.
• quick images and the game NIM during math.
• our uniqueness and positive character trait to our class by listening to There's Only One You.
• our first whole school assembly to welcome us to the new school year.

Other things to ask your child about this week:

• First Day Jitters
• If I Built a School
• our first week of creative arts classes

Enjoy the holiday weekend with your family!

Mrs. Hock 

Soaring Into a New Year!

Welcome back and welcome to 2nd grade!
I am looking forward to meeting everyone at Open House on Monday, August 26 between 1:30-3:00.  We will have a wonderful week getting to know each other, and building our routines and community.
Ready for lift-off...
Mrs. Hock

It's a Wrap!
Week #38 June 10-14

We wrapped up our amazing school year this week.  We celebrated our time together with many of our favorite activities, and we completed our science unit by planting our pollinator garden.  Here are some pictures of that process along with a 22 second elapsed time video clip of the 90 minutes it took 60 students to actually get over 220 plants in the ground!  Also, check out the "student stories" feature on the SBSD main webpage for a share of our plant work written by our district's blogger, Corey Burdick.
https://www.sbschools.net/Page/1523

Along with a variety of student work that came home this week, you may have also seen a few resources for your students to use this summer including:

• sign in information for Coding from Mrs. Springer
• Barnes & Noble book log entry form and summer reading brochure
• summer math calendars to solve a problem daily in July & August

Memory Books.  The students were always excited to add a page to their memory books whenever a special event happened this year.  However, when we shared our compliment cards with each other this week, they were also appreciative, sappy, and wished for more pages!  I do hope they treasure those...speaking of treasure, each student also came home today with a box containing 2 treasures from me.  I hope they find and collect treasures from their summer fun to add to this memento.

Thank you very much for your support this year.  Thank you also for your generous end-of-the-year gifts and thoughtful notes of gratitude.  Your children are incredible, and I look forward to watching them grow and hearing about their future work and accomplishments.  Please know that I am always here for them. 

All my best,

Mrs. Hock

Family, Field Day and Fun!
Week #37 June 3-7, 2019

This week flew by as we enjoyed the PTO Family Picnic on Tuesday, Field Day on Friday and had fun creating models of seed dispersal in between those special events.

Here are a few pictures from Tuesday's lunch.  We were thankful to be together, eating outside and sharing blankets with friends.

Field Day occurred on a glorious Friday morning.  We were so fortunate to have the amazing weather support efforts from Mr. Day and all the parent volunteers.  Great times were had by all!  Did you know that Mrs. Hock hit a home run over the fence, scored a goal in hockey and avoided getting wet in the water bottle battle?

The national science standards state that students need to create models not only as engineers, but also as experts of plant and animal relationships.  This week we created models of seed dispersal.  Students were given 4 seeds to create a model of how each seed could travel (by wind, water, animal or propulsion) to land far from its parent plant.  Students made plans, created models, tested & revised their models, and then demonstrated the models to their peers.  They all persevered, designed impressive models of dispersal and smiled as well!

Other things to ask your child about this week:
*Building and drawing triangles and quadrilaterals
*"Last Shape in Wins"
*Mystery Doug
*Analyzing height data of Kindergarten, 2nd grade and 3rd grade students

Enjoy the beautiful weekend with your family!
Mrs. Hock

Still Working Hard and Having Fun
Week #36 May 27-31, 2019

This week we completed many end-of-the-year assessments to show our knowledge, and balanced that with other fun experiences.  Students worked very hard on their final spelling, writing, reading and math assessments for second grade to be collected in their portfolios.  They were focused and calm.  We also enjoyed meeting our new Farm-to-School teacher, playing 3 new math games, hearing a butterfly presentation from Jerry Schneider and of course, Spirit Week.

Jerry Schneider is with the VT Entomological Society and Morphos Productions.  He conducts butterfly and bat presentations all over the east coast.  He shared all about butterflies with all of 2nd grade and then we made our beautiful t-shirt craft.  One tip from Mr. S about the t-shirts:  toss them in the dryer to help set the RIT dye color before washing.

We welcomed Kayli, our new Farm-to-School teacher and learned about pea shoots.  This was a nice complement to our work with Eric von Wettberg about legumes.  The students already new a lot about plant needs, nitrogen and nodules!

Math games anyone?  What a great way for us to practice our addition and subtraction of 3-digit numbers.  We learned 3 math games, and the students were such nice opponents--they let me win every time!  Next week, we'll start our work with geometry and 2D shapes.

Spirit Week was a blast.  Here we are on "Throwback Thursday".  What a creative, fun group!

Other things to ask your child about this week:
*Our read aloud The Witches
*talent shares featuring pokemon, tracing characters and group fitness exercise
*Adding and subtracting 100's and 10's during Number Corner

I look forward to seeing you at perhaps the school picnic or field days next week.
Enjoy the weekend!
Mrs. Hock