Week #23 February 10-14, 2020

We have a lot of pictures to share from many "sweet" happenings this week.  We'll start with the sweet start to our Friday and work backwards chronologically.

We had a wonderful start to our day on Valentine's Day!  The students were very sweet, and excited, as they politely and energetically exchanged valentines, and enjoyed breakfast together.  Thank you to all families who contributed items and thank you to our chefs, servers and clean up crew:  Mrs. Abrahamson, Mrs. Kutler, Mr. Kunz, Ms. Porter, Mrs. McGibney, Mrs. Thibault, Mrs. Molinari, and Mrs. Ebbers.  I really appreciated all the efforts to help the breakfast run so smoothly! The rest of our day was just as lovely too.

We received a sweet  collection of Flat Stanleys in the mail this week.  They returned from Connecticut, California, New Jersey, Winooski and Burlington.

We enjoyed a sweet Marky Mark celebration by having a picnic in our classroom for lunch.  We also watched the audio of Scrambled States of America Talent Show.

We made sweet confetti slaw with Miss Kayli and Miss Georgia in Farm-to-School.  Purple veggies are good for our brain!

We started work on our sweet float project by painting our boxes on Monday.  Thank you to Kate Lane for braving the world of tempera with 7 & 8 year olds!

Other things to ask your child about this week:
*our sweet trip to The Flynn Theater to see "Rainbow Fish"--very cool black lighting and puppetry
*using a few sweet websites for our state research:  Nat Geo Kids, Maps of World and geology.com
*learning to spell words we love
*flags of the world with fractional amounts of red
*"compare" versus "take away" math problems

Stay warm and enjoy the weekend!
Mrs. Hock

Week #22 February 3-7, 2020

Happy 100th day of school!  Here we are 100 days smarter, kinder and braver.  What did we do related to this special day?

• built or designed with 100 pattern blocks
• read a poem entitled "The 100th Day"
• counted 100 tens
• solved problems within 100
• colored patterns within 100
• 100th Day Worries

Mail keeps arriving. We are excited each day to see which Flat Stanley returns to us at school.  This week we received mail from Maryland, Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia and New York.  Some of these Stanleys even traveled to other states with the hosts who entertained them.  Our family and friends out of state are certainly being creative and taking their host job seriously!

In geography this week, we studied and analyzed US maps about regions and natural resources.  We also began our state research.  This was very exciting as we gathered as a whole grade level to learn our assigned state, sing "Fifty Nifty" and see a model of our parade float project.  We will continue this research the next 2 weeks and also create items to adorn our float in preparation for our parade on March 6. 

Other things to ask your child about this week:

• morning meeting games:  Cual Es La Regla? and Veo, Veo
• our Kindness Alphabet Book
• two different types of subtraction situations--take away or compare
• strategies to spell multi-syllabic words:  start with the biggest part, use syllables, focus on vowels and compare sound patterns to words we already know
• our guidance lesson with Ms. Amblo and Ms. Kirsty about caring for babies

Enjoy and be safe this snowy weekend!

Mrs. Hock

Week #21 January 27-31, 2020
Writing, Cheering and Mapping, Oh My!

This week we celebrated our non-fiction writing with "Publishing Party Positives & a Pair of Pops"!  I chose this catchy title for our celebration, just like our authors chose catchy titles for their books:  Pumping Facts About Blood, and Throwing in Facts About Football to name a few.  We read each other's books and wrote positives for feedback about their lead, details, organization, pictures and spelling.

Wednesday's field trip to UVM to watch the women's basketball game was a lot of fun.  We were great fans!  Thank you to Elliott and Faiza for representing our class on center court.  We enjoyed snacks from Mr. Coon, activity packets from the UVM team, our bag lunches, quick entertainment & music during timeouts and Zumba at halftime.

We've received mail!  Seven Flat Stanleys have returned from New York, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Florida, Texas and Richmond, Vermont. How exciting!  This is an amazing way to support our learning of US Geography as we learn about the states our Flat Stanleys have visited. This week we also colored and analyzed physical maps of the United States as well as a map of our country's 58 National Parks.

Send in those boxes!  We are collecting the boxes and lids that hold reams of photocopy paper.  If you have any at home or work, please send them in.  We'll need one box for each student.

Other things to ask your child about this week:

• Yes Day!
• Alexander Who Used to be Rich Last Sunday (for math in both English and Spanish)
• guidance lesson with Ms. Kirsty and Ms. Amblo about body parts
• "Fifty Nifty United States"
• phonics lessons focused on words' tails--doubling consonants before adding endings, plural with s or es, changing y to i and -tion
• Our Kindness books:  Giving Tree, A Sick Day for Amos McGee and The Last Stop on Market Street

Have a wonderful weekend!

Mrs. Hock

Week #20 January 21-24, 2020

What a full week!  A full class of students, full of learning and full of fun!  We started more specific work with US geography, we celebrated our learning of tricky consonant pairs in phonics, we worked hard to publish, publish, publish our non-fiction books, we read our chapter books with a focus on the characters, and we confidently tackled 2 digit subtraction.  Along with all that, we managed to ski, sing, cook, and of course, be brave & kind.

For US geography, we began with an alphabetical list of the states, pronunciation of each state, their abbreviations, and we made political maps.  Next week, we will make physical maps, look at National Parks and learn the "Fifty Nifty" song.  Here we are with our collaborative puzzle making:

Yay, we got to ski in PE!  Mr. "Snowy" Day was quite excited, and so were we as we finally got to enjoy this annual favorite.  I was fortunate to capture the picture below as they swooshed by our classroom.

We enjoyed Farm-to-School with Kayli this week as we learned about squash.  Here are a few quotes to summarize our thoughts on the experience and the recipe we made:

"Every time I'm about to try something new I think, 

'What if it's the best thing I've ever tasted?'.  I don't want to miss out on it."  --Sora

"I give it a great big smiley face!" --Ian

"I wanna make a whole bowl of it!"  --Lukas

Other things to ask your child about this week:

• "Kindness" picture books:  All for Me and None for All, Paulie Pastrami, All Are Welcome
• Completing the district-wide math assessment
• How consonants can mimic or disguise their sounds.  IE:  --ge (sounds like [j] in "camouflage"), and gh (sounds like [g] in "spaghetti", [f] in "laugh" or is silent in "light")

We are collecting photocopy paper boxes for our upcoming US State Parade.  Each student in grade 2 will need their own box (lid included).  If you have access to any, please save them, and send them in to school the week of February 3.  Thank you!

Enjoy the weekend!
Mrs. Hock

Week #19 January 13-17, 2020

We are wrapping up our literacy work with non-fiction.  We completed our reading sessions and became experts on a topic as we read paired books about one subject.  We were able to compare information and grow our knowledge.  Below is a picture of our display sharing our favorite fact about our topic. 
We are almost finished our "expert" books for our non-fiction writing.  This week we revised our work to include answers to questions readers might ask.  We also read other text written by other authors on our topic to include more details (examples, descriptions and comparisons).  We'll publish next week!
Our phonics work is also related to non-fiction as we take inspiration from animal facts.  We were inspired to find letters "camouflaging" their sounds in words.  For example:  hard & soft g or c, and kn-knowledge/wr-writers/gn-gnat.

We were fortunate to have students from SBHS' Student Justice Union deliver a presentation in honor of MLK Jr. Day.  They shared information with us about Amelia Boynton Robinson and how she "kept her eye on the prize".  We reflected on how we persevere to be proud of our goals.

Other things to ask your child about this week:

• A lesson with Ms. Amblo and Ms. Kirsty about feelings
• "Kindness" picture books: Strictly No Elephants, I Walk With Vanessa, Nerdy Birdy, Ordinary Mary's Extraordinary Deed
• Are our rectangles < half, half, or > half red?
• Asking math questions about Mr. Fletcher's real life situations:  Whoppers, Oreos and Pringles
• Writing Flat Stanley letters to our family and friends

Enjoy the 3-day weekend!

Mrs. Hock

Week #18 January 6-10, 2020

This week we enjoyed another Maker Time session with volunteers Vicki, Shane and Aili.  We learned about capillary action, or the movement of water. We watched demonstrations of key vocabulary, we tinkered with colored water and various tools, and we created a make-n-take based on our new knowledge.  Thank you for this enriching experience!

This week we learned a lot of skills as Phonics Professors to help us as readers, writers and spellers.  We took inspiration from mountain goats (persevering), Darwin's bark spiders (working methodically beginning to end), leaf cutter ants (cutting words into parts), chickadees (looking for signals) and squirrels (removing endings) to teach us how to tackle challenging, multi-syllabic words.  Here are some sample words we used:  abdomen, blossoming, dinner/diner, and tentacle. We also edited our work for accurate spelling, use of capitals, punctuation and sentence completion.

Students will receive mail next week.  We read Flat Stanley to start our unit about United States Geography.  In the book, Flat Stanley travels by mail to visit his friend.  Since we will be mailing a Flat Stanley to a family member or friend out of state, we practiced writing both letters and envelopes by mailing a Flat Stanley to ourselves.  I hope they enjoy getting "snail mail".  Please note that there is a notice about this Flat Stanley project in this week's Home/School folder.  Thank you for your help in this endeavor!

Other things to ask your child about this week:

• Welcoming our 2 new students:  Fatuma and Faiza
• Reading non-fiction book sets
• Our first lesson on personal safety with Ms. Amblo and Ms. Kirsty.
• "Kindness" picture books:  The Kindness Book by Ellie & Bella, The Monster Who Lost His Mean, Do Unto Otters, Kindness is Cooler, Mrs. Ruler and The Good Egg
• Energizers during mindfulness
• Beginning subtraction using the open number line

Enjoy the weekend!

Mrs. Hock

Week #17 January 2-3, 2020

Welcome back and Happy New Year!  This shortened week allowed us to return to routines gently as we all adjusted to the full-day school schedule again.  We spent time in all subjects having choices of work and a range of activities to complete.  Here are some highlights:

• We made Word Pattern Wheels and created lists of rhyming words.
• We chose from several math options to review important topics related to place value, mental addition, odd/even, addition & subtraction facts, and word problems.
• We participated in 2 energizers during mindfulness--Aroostasha, Boom Chicka Boom
• We enjoyed independent reading and free writing.
• We attended a whole-school assembly hosted by the student PBiS leadership team that included RMCS trivia.

One of our favorite tasks was to complete a "Snowman Challenge".  Table groups accepted the creativity and kindness challenge of making a snowman together with 6 feet of white paper.  Here are a few photos of our work.

We also began an independent challenge entitled "ONE WORD".  This is based on the work of Jon Gordon:  http://getoneword.com/  Students are challenged to have "one word" that will help them have their best year.  Today, we looked at samples from students and adults of all ages, we read One Word for Kids, and we spent time privately brainstorming to look in our hearts for possible words.  Next week, we'll pick our words (or rather the words pick us), and we will list action steps for how we'll use our words to be our best.  I have shared the steps I used in finding my word, and will share it once we all have our own words to reveal.  What's your word?

Enjoy the weekend!

Mrs. Hock