BIST rules

On this short week, we are spending some time going over our BIST Behavior plan and all of the rules associated with it. We reviewed our two bottom line rules:

• It is never okay to be hurtful
• It is never okay to be disruptive

Then we went over our Meadow Lane School rules:

• Be Safe
• Be Respectful
• Be Responsible

We talked about examples of being safe, respectful, and responsible and also non-examples of these three things. The children thought about which one of these rules was the hardest for them, and then they went to a part of the room to represent their hardest rule. When paired with others who felt the same way about themselves, they took part in discussions about why this rule was the hardest for them to follow and examples of those things. One person from each group did an overview of what the group talked about in their discussion and now each child has a personal goal that they can work on based on which rule they decided was the hardest for them!

Butterfly Release!

We let our butterflies go last week! Our kids were kind of sad because we had raised them from when they were caterpillars and now they are out in our courtyard! They flew everywhere and we all got to hold them!

Butterfly Progress!

We got some more caterpillars at the start of this week so each child had a job in preparing them for the jars! We found out that they were really hard to pick up with the brush and get them in the jar!

We have the start of some chrysalis! Some of our caterpillars have started their third stage of life and are starting to make their chrysalis. We transferred them to our butterfly net this morning and will patiently wait for our next step! We think this is the coolest thing!!!

Spelling FAQ

The students have had lots of questions about spelling and I figured it would be a great idea to answer all of them in one place!

• Spelling Pretests are given right away Monday morning
• There are 15 words on the list and we go over them together. The students check their own paper
• Depending on how many words the student got right, they are given a new list to practice for the week. Your list may not look the same every week! 
• In their green homework folder, there is some suggested spelling homework for the week. This is not required and you do not have to return it to school (although you can) but it is recommended to help them practice their words all week!
• We practice the spelling words during our Workstation time every day, but the majority of spelling practice is done at home. You can find lots of ideas on how to practice spelling words online!
• Spelling Post Test is done right away on Friday mornings

Hopefully that clears up some of the questions you may be having at home about Spelling! 2nd grade learns so many words a week including vocabulary words, high frequency words, words in their stories, as well as their spelling words, so it is important to practice these at home!

Feel free to contact me for any more questions you may have!

The First Week of 2nd Grade

We had a great first week of school in 2nd grade! We jumped right into learning and spent quite a bit of time learning about our behavior plan and the rules of our school! 

We started our days in the library with the rest of 2nd grade to learn about BIST! Ask your child a few things about this behavior plan. 

Our two Bottom Line rules are:

• It is never okay to be hurtful
• It is never okay to be disruptive

We also use three goals for our life that we use every day in school. These rules are:

• I can take good care of myself, even if I am mad.
• I can be productive and follow directions even if I don't want to. 
• I can be okay, even when others are not okay.

These 3 rules we talk about every single day and if there is a problem, we talk about which rule it was that we had a hard time with. We also practiced how to calmly go to the safe seat in order to remove us from the situation and think about what we need to work on. 

We did lots of review work in our classroom!

We did a collaborative learning activity where students in our classroom had to Find A Friend that had done something to fill in a box on their paper. This was a great way to get to learn a little bit about our classmates and work together!

We also got to visit the library and go on a hunt with Mrs. Schwindt! Our library time will be 1:00pm every Wednesday. Second Graders are allowed to check out 2 books, but only if they bring their books back from the previous week!

We ended our week with our all school assembly to learn a little bit about Meadow Lane and about all of the teachers in our building!

We are so ready for this week to be a great one!

A few things about 2nd Grade!

I have had a few questions that I wanted to clarify about 2nd grade! So far we have had such a great week! Your child is getting used to our new schedule and doing really well!

I had a few questions about the work coming home with them. This week we are just playing catch up and getting them used to school so there is some review work of 1st grade. Lots of papers are coming home in their backpacks each day! These papers can stay at home. Whatever work we are doing in class together, I check over while they are working on it and then they put it in their cubbies to bring home what they have been doing in class! Their green homework folder and math homework need to be returned each day.Wednesday folders come home on Wednesday with some important information for your household, these need to be returned everyThursday so we can prepare them to go home with you the next week! 

We have jumped into our curriculum and our behavior plans right away so be asking your child about some of the things we have been working on as well as our BIST plan!

As always, please feel free to ask me any questions you may have! 

(I will not always send the same email that I post to the blog, I'm just trying to get our entire class subscribed to the blog and then I will be just posting to here!)

Reminders

We have been so busy lately in Kindergarten!

We have just taken our Unit 2 math test and started Unit 3 on Monday! Week 4 of Literacy started on Monday as well! I can't believe we've been in school this long already!

Just a few reminders of some things coming up :

• Holiday book orders went home in Wednesday folders last week. If you were thinking of buying any books for anyone for Christmas or anything, this is a great book order to pick from! There are some really great books for amazing prices! We have earned so many awesome books for our classroom because of the amount of orders we have had turned in so thank you for that! November 22nd is the due date!
• Meadow Lane t-shirt order forms also went home in Wednesday folders last week. These orders are due by November 22nd. There is a sample shirt on the order form and in the front hallway at Meadow Lane!
• Thanksgiving Break starts Wednesday, November 27th. Tuesday, November 26th is a PLC day and Monday, December 2nd is a no school day as well. I hope your kiddos enjoy this long, much needed break!
• We practiced some code red drills in our room and school last week. Ask your student if they know what to do if a code red ever happens. They should hopefully be able to tell you exactly what their job is!
• We got 5 Brownies on Wednesday and got to have an extra recess outside! We had a ton of fun playing in all the leaves that were all over our playground!
• Don't forget to return your decorated turkeys for us to hang up in the hallway!

I hope you have a great weekend and are ready for a quick week back before Thanksgiving!