Academic Contest Winners

1st, 2nd and 3rd Place Word Masters Challenge Winners

Throughout the year, we competed in several academic contests. Medals and awards came in right around the same time for two of them! Congratulations to our Word Masters Challenge Champions! The Word Masters Challenge is an advanced analogy and vocabulary competition and consists of three meets during the school year.

National Honor Roll Winners

Students love being a part of the Noetic Math Competition and the class did awesome in the Spring Meet with 15 students placing in the top 10% nationally. We also had several students who placed in the top 50% nationally and our top six scorers helped us earn a Team Achievement Award. Nationally the class tied for third place. Way to go, Math Maniacs and congratulations to all the students for their hard work and accomplishments this year!

Blogging to an Authentic Audience

Last week we learned all about blogging! Click here to view the presentation I reviewed with the class to learn some of the "rules" of blogging along with some important cyber-safety information. 

After learning about blogging, every student logged into his or her very own blog through kidblog.org and started writing and since then we have blogged three times! Kidblog.org is an amazing tool because it includes all the wonderful features of blogging sites like Blogger and Word Press, but makes teacher management and safety very easy. It is incredible that 1st and 2nd grade students are using the same tools as adult bloggers and getting this excellent writing experience, while still remaining safe online.

Be sure to ask your student to show you his or her blog at home! Blogging will soon become a frequent option for the weekly spelling homework. We have several Skype calls set up in thew next few weeks to teach other classes with students in 1st or 2nd grade about blogging. 

Emailing The Future

This week my returning students were excited to receive emails from... themselves! These emails were written last year when they were mere 1st graders and they got to read them this week as much older and mature 2nd graders. 

After reading their emails from their younger selves, students wrote again to their future selves, and this time the letters will arrive when they are in high school! 

We used a fun and free site called FutureMe  to send ourselves emails in the future. Students told their future selves about themselves right now and included information like their current favorite color, what they liked to eat, what they liked to do at recess, etc. Students are looking forward to seeing how much they change by the time they receive these emails! They also asked themselves questions and made a few predictions. FutureMe was a fun way to get my class excited about writing! 

International Talk Like a Pirate Day

September 19th is one of my favorite days of the year: International Talk Like a Pirate Day!

Students read a pirate themed readers theater and then answered some comprehension questions. Next, we broke into small groups, students chose a character like "Peg-Leg Peggy" or "Captain Goldtooth" and rehearsed with their team. Finally, each group presented their interpretation of the reader's theater to the class. Watch the video below to see us in action!

Biography Book Report

Can You Spot Helen Keller, Ronald Reagan and Abigail Adams?

We had a lot of fun presenting our biography book reports and most of the students got really into his or her character!

Can You Spot Thomas Edison, Jackie Robinson and Christopher Columbus?

Watch the video clip below to see exactly who we had in our classroom!

7-Up Sentences

You may notice your students referring to "7-Up Sentences."

A 7-Up Sentence is one that is seven words or more, but in class we discussed the importance of adding quality words and not just creating long, run-on sentences. We have done a variety of writing exercises both individually and also working with a small group. 

When we were finished learning about 7-Up Sentences, everyone got to enjoy a refreshing taste of 7-Up as they completed their work.

Puppet Book Report

For our very first book report this year each student read a book by Beverly Cleary. Then, students chose a character from the book and created a puppet of that character.

Students presented a summary of the book through their puppet, as that character. I really enjoyed seeing the unique and creative puppets and hearing stories from the point of view of the character.