Family Writing Night

Last Tuesday I invited families to come in and join me for a family writing night. I began the evening sharing how I approach teaching writing in second grade, struggles young writer's face (choosing a meaningful topic to write about and moving out of their comfort zones) and a little about my own journey as a writer. I read aloud RalphTells a Story by Abby Hanlon and modeled creating a Heart Map. Students and parents then worked together to create a heart map for the student. I asked parents to help with spelling so students would have those words spelled correctly when they referred back to their heart map during writer's workshop. Parents then participated in a writing activity with me. You can see an example of the type of writing they did here. Afterward we talked about how they felt about the writing (uncomfortable for some) and made connections to how their little ones feel when we ask them to put themselves "out there" as writer's. I shared some tips with them on how to comment on their children's writing and took time to answer questions. I am looking forward to connecting and learning with families at our next family night!

The First Day of School is Coming!

Monday, August 28th, 2017 is our first day of school! I will be there bright and early waiting to shake your hand and show you around. If you click on the "parent information" bar at the top of this page you can find a letter from me, our supply list, upcoming events and our class schedule. Looking forward to seeing you soon!

Community Field Trip

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Owl Pellets

Mr. Macke teaches while the second graders listen closely.

Last Thursday we headed to the High School Science Lab to dissect owl pellets with our science buddies. Mr. Macke introduced us to "Mr. Ed" who helped explain how a skull fit together and how the teeth of a horse worked in the process of consuming food. This information helped us identify the mouse skulls in the owl pellets and had us looking closely at their teeth.

We were looking through the owl pellets for skulls and other bones.

We are dissecting owl pellets in the Science Lab.

Here is a mouse skull.  Look closely, you can see the front teeth.

RS found a lot of bones in his owl pellet.  He separated them into a pile.  There were 4-5 mice in this one owl pellet!

We found a bird femur in this owl pellet!

These are mice bones from an owl pellet.

We saw a bunch of mice skulls.  Look at these teeth!

AF and RS are building a mouse skeleton using a diagram.

Here is an up close look at a mouse skeleton in progress.

Ladd Marsh Field Trip

Today we visited Ladd Marsh to learn about birds.  We saw Mallard Ducks, Ruddy Ducks, Red-Tail Hawks, Sand Hill Cranes, Quail and a Western Grebe. We learned that there are more birds in the Marsh during the spring & summer than during the fall because most birds have migrated to their southern habitats.  We also learned that Ruddy Ducks can't swim but can dive under the water to get away from us. Our favorite parts of the field trip were looking at ducks, looking through the binoculars, going for a walk through the marsh, seeing the Red-Tail Hawk, watching the female duck swim, seeing ducks close to shore, seeing all the animals out the bus window, finding all the mouse holes and eating lunch with our friends.

The Marsh habitat has plenty of water, grass for the animals to hide and sleep in and trees for birds to build nests in.

This is a female Ruddy Duck.  She belongs to the "stiff tail" duck family.  When a male Ruddy Duck tries to attract a partner it bobs its head up and down and blows bubbles under water.  The female ducks can't resist this!

We used binoculars to see the birds up close!

Welcome Back!

Welcome back to Second Grade!  Hard to believe we haven't made one post since the beginning of the year.  We have been busy, busy, busy though!  We have taken a field trip to Anthony Lakes and have been learning how readers ask questions to help investigate information they want to learn about.  This led us to a huge research project about an animal that lives in a forest habitat. Stay tuned.  We have lots to share with you!

Bag of Hammers Visits Cove!

Lucky us!  We had a special guest at school yesterday.  Mr. Luke McHern from one of our locally and very talented bands, Bag of Hammers, came out to see us in Cove!  Mr. McHern creates all the music for his 2 person band using digital looping, while his band-mate, Holly Sorenson provides the vocals.  We spent an hour watching Mr. McHern perform,  helping him create a looped musical rendition of a tropical rainforest and asking lots of questions.  There was a little bit of dancing involved too!

After we returned to class we took a stab at creating digital music using our voices (and anything else we could find to create cool sounds) using apps on our iPads (Loop Recorder, Beat Man).

Today we plan to use digital looping to record music to go along with some poems that we will be reading.  If all goes well we will share our finished products with you soon!

Thank you for helping create this experience for us Mr. Gustavson, Mr. McBride and Mr. McHern. We think you guys ROCK!