Pajama and Stuffed Animal Day

Guest Speaker!

Thank you so much to the Bix family for sharing Terry Deinlein, Gigi's grandfather!  Throughout his lifetime, he has obtained MANY, many autographs from famous sports players, musicians and actors and taught us ways to pursuade these people to give us their autograph!  He even has George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Judy Garland's autograph, which we got to see!



Comprehension Questions!

Hey Parents!

In school, we have been working on comprehension questions.  A lot of the kids are reading accurately and are not making a ton of mistakes with word correction.  On the other hand, the kids are struggling with deeper meaning comprehension.  I wanted to give you some tools that you can use at home when asking questions to your kids about the reading!  

What is this story MOSTLY about?

Is this a fiction or non-fiction piece?

Who is telling you this story? 

Who are the characters?

Why are you reading this piece? (not just because Mrs. H said so!!) :)

Can you retell this story using key details?

What is the setting of the story?

What type of text am I reading?

Why do you think the author wrote this story? (Theme)

Why did that character act that way?  

Is this book easy, just right or too hard?

These are just a few, but I'm hoping they will start healthy conversations about the text sent home or a text they are reading at home! 

Thanks for your support! 

Pre-Thanksgiving Fun!

The 2 days before Thanksgiving were filled with fun!  The Columbus Zoo came and presented a few of their fantastic animals and we explored the past and compared it with the present by rotating "sessions" in each classroom!  We made butter in our classroom and also compared transportation from the past to today by going on a gallery walk!  We had a great 2 days!

Race to $1.00!

The kids played Race to 100 this week!  They started off with a certain amount of coins.  Then the kids would spin the spinner to get a certain coin amount.  Whoever could exchange the amount for fewer coins and get to $1.00 first was the winner! This helps the kids learn to exchange coins up to $1.00! 

Veteran's Day!

On Veteran's Day, we discussed what a Veteran is, what makes them a good leader and why we should thank our Veterans!  Thank you to Mr. Fitch for coming in and teaching us about his amazing adventures in teh U.S. Army!  He taught us the Army values, sang the Army song and told of us his travels jumping out of planes!!  The kids really enjoyed his stories and information!

It's Election Time!

The lines were long, but Mrs. Hurak's class and the entire second grade came out and did their duty as American citizens by voting for their favorite candy!  Our class candy candidate was Skittles and our competitors were Nerds, Gummy Worms and Smarties! 

All this week we have been discussing the election process, being a president and writing persuasive essays convincing Mill Valley to vote for Skittles! 

We began by learning about our candidate by doing a Skittles Sensory Exam.  Then we wrote pursuasive essays.  The people who wrote the most descriptive and creative essay and could present their essay won the chance to have the TV ad on the morning announcements!  Congratulations to Ava and Gigi! 

Next, we talked about what we would do if we were president.  The first picture is our web we created on the Smart Board with our thoughts - thought they were too cute not to share! After we created the web, we put our thoughts into a narrative!  Those are hanging in the hall and will be home soon!

Next, we made campaign posters for our Skittles Candidate and hung them in the hallways convincing Mill Valley students to vote for our candy!

And lastly, we went out and waiting patiently in line to cast our vote.  We did the complete voting process of checking in and signing our name and then waiting for a booth to open.  Then we voted with a REAL voting machine (a little dated, but was once used by the poling stations!)

Then we received our "I Voted Today" stickers! 

GO SKITTLES!