Marbles!

I have several different ways to manage behavior in my classroom, but the one that excites the students the most is the marble jar. At the end of each day, the students pack up and join me on the carpet. During this time, we reflect on our day and discuss all of the positive things that happened as well as all of the things that we need to work on the next day. The students are wonderful at reflecting and we are usually on the same page with our thoughts. After we reflect, we take a vote on whether we think we earned a marble that day; the students are so good at judging their own day that I rarely have to sway the final decision. If we earn a marble, we select a marble from my collection of marbles - you can't believe how thrilling this process is for 2nd graders!! - and add it to our marble jar. Our goal is currently 25 marbles, so once we reach that goal we will have a "Marble Party" which the students will decide upon. We are at 17 marbles right now, but I'm really looking forward to reaching our goal because I LOVE a par-tay!!

Check out the HUGE marble - only the best days earn one that big :)

Artist Spotlight

One of my co-workers had a fabulous idea to incorporate poetry into the classroom each week - a poetry journal! Each Friday, students are given a poem that we read together and then discuss its meaning. Students are then set loose and given the chance to visualize their idea of the poem in the form of a picture. They spend time drawing the pictures that they see when reading the poem and the results are always fabulous! I have an outsider come into the classroom each Friday to judge the "Artist of the Week" and the journal that is chosen is on display the entire next week. The kids love it, and it's a great way to study poetry and visualization. Here are some of my "Artist of the Week" winners that we've had this year!

I can't wait to see what other great poetry art work is created this year! 

Edible Landforms

Second grade sure is a lot of fun! We're starting to get into a regular routine and beginning to be able to handle fun activities. We're currently studying landforms in Social Studies and South Carolina happens to have many different ones - how convenient! After creating our own maps of SC landforms (including a map key, of course), we shaped cookie dough into the shape of our great state and then decorated it with the different landforms. The kids loved the decorating, and especially the eating at the end! See if you can guess what landform each food represents!

I'm off to watch the Gamecocks play in Charlotte and then spend the rest of the weekend with my lovely family in Winston-Salem. Enjoy your long weekend!!

The Beginning

I just had the most wonderful first week of school! My 20 students are all precious and we loved spending the week getting to know each other in a variety of ways. We shared "Me Bags", made a huge yarn web to show how we're connected, and talked about ourselves on puzzle pieces to show how we fit together. While these 'get to know you' activities were fun, however, I'm really looking forward to next week when the teaching actually begins!

While reading Chrysanthemum as a class, we crumpled this paper heart every time there was a put-down. By the end of the story, the heart was in a little ball. Even though we opened it and tried our best to smooth it, the wrinkles on the heart would not come out. We then put band-aids on it and signed our names to promise that we would not say put-downs to one another!

Meet Jo-Jo, our class mascot! We voted on his name this week (other top contenders were Horton and Ellie)  and next week he will begin going home with a different student each week. I'm excited to see what adventures will be recorded in his notebook!

Here We Go!

The school year is about to begin, which means lots of time spent setting up my classroom, planning lessons, and getting excited for my new students to arrive! I had a great time at our Meet and Greet tonight where I met my incredible students and their families for the first time. I'm truly looking forward to this year of teaching and know many wonderful things lie ahead. Monday morning will be here before we know it and I can't wait for everything to get started :)