January 30 in Room 11

• Room Eleveners left music class with smiles and a happy note from Mrs. Nelson, the music teacher. Good job, kiddos, you are an exuberant group!
• Students worked on their letter to a community helper this morning. Some hard-working community helper is soon to be the recipient of a letter of encouragement and gratitude labored over by a second grader.
• The final spelling test was a really difficult unit test. It is now over.
• Garrett's grandma, Mrs. King, helped with writing and math in our classroom today.
• Many students stayed in for recess to finish overdue work.
• The assigned job idea seems to be working well. Jacob was seen with a clipboard and check-off list this morning, asking students for their homework the moment they appeared at the doorway!
• The class continued writing about Hillcrest community helpers. They are getting a clearer idea of what kinds of work people at Hillcrest do just by thinking and writing about it.
• Work on "carrying" and place value continues in math class. Today many students used unifix cubes to figure out their work.

January 29 in Room 11

• Students worked on ABC order.
• Second graders began to write letters to a member of the Bay Area community.
• In the computer lab, researchers completed their information gathering on planets and satellites. In the afternoon, they drew and painted them.
• The Hearts-With-Faces project is nearing completion, too. The next step is gluing the cut-out faces to big red paper hearts to show the love and support people in our community have for each other.
• Students got new library books today. Zach read his already and got 100 percent on his AR test. Yay, Zach!

January 28 in Room 11

• Mrs. Craig played hula-hoop tag with the kids in P.E. today. They loved ganging up to catch her.
• Students worked on grammar usage, using "est" and "er" in the correct way.
• Spelling Gum-chewers: Meagan, Logan, Jonathan
• Math lessons are moving on to two column addition with regrouping without the use of manipulatives.
• Students are now old enough to take on some classroom chore responsibilities. They signed up for their job preferences this afternoonbut the teachers had final say in who got what job. Students appeared to be happy with their assignments. Some of them started today, others need some on-the-job training. Chore responsibilities run the gamut from sharpening pencils, watering the hibiscus, and keeping the board erased, to checking off who brought in homework and getting the recycling bin emptied. Good luck, community helpers!
• As part of our writing project about school community helpers and their responsibilities, for their second installment, second graders wrote about the responsibilites of being a student.

January 27 in Room 11

• Happy Birthday to Teron!
• Music today!
• Students worked with a partner to complete a comparison chart of this week's two reading stories.
• Regrouping and related concepts still occupy the most Math time, energy and thought in grade two. Getting a sense of numerical place value is a difficult and important concept that many of the students are only now beginning to understand. Their parents were expected to memorize the operations of borrowing and carrying. Today's second graders are taught to understand what process is actually happening when a number is changed, or moved from one column to another.
• Parents are reminded to have their children read as part of their homework Monday through Thursday evenings, and return their parent-signed reading charts to school on Friday.
• Teachers in Room 11 will soon be contacting people who wish to help with the Valentine's Day party.
• Students finished their shore bird projects this afternoon. Our Sandy Beach mural is alive with creatures who live along the shoreline!
• The class began a writing project about their school community. They brainstormed ideas about what work teachers do. They will be writing sentences about the work students do in their classroom and what kinds of things are expected of second graders at Hillcrest. when those sentences have been collected, they will organize their ideas and write them on one paper to make an essay about school community life.

January 26 in Room 11

• Room 11 class reviewed rules and manners for school. They practiced walking quietly in the hall and on the steps. There were also reminders about keeping hands to themselves, how to ask for help in class, as well suggestions for the most polite way to get to recess.
• Students spent time working on adding tens and ones using unifix cubes.
• Mrs. Craig hung up the reading class' graphic organizers of their fairy tale "problem, setting, characters, solution" project. Really cool!
• This morning began with a spelling word sort.
• The new story for the week is Grandpa's corner Store and Barrio. They discussed communities and compared and contrasted neighborhoods.
• Second graders worked on vocabulary.
• Students will soon be assigned to special chores as part of their classroom "community helper" participation. Mrs. Stebbins read the jobs that would be available, asking students to think about which jobs they would like to have and what they would be best at.

January 23 in Room 11

• The children wrote thoughts about their favorite story in their journals.
• It was a musical day in Room 11 today. Besides music class, Mrs Craig played some Beethoven music and asked the students to make their crayons "dance across the paper" in one continuous motion while they listened. Then they traded drawings and completed a paper about the piece of art, answering these questions, "What does this remind you of?" and "How does it make you feel and why?" It was a really fun activity.
• Spelling final, scores not in yet.
• Math was a hands on project. Students were asked to use cubes to show tens and ones, then combine the ones to reconfigure their groups, placing them in order on math work mats. Because it was a new activity, most of the students were confused, but after trying several examples, many of them understood and became fun. More work of this type is in the offing.
• Mrs. Callery helped students look up a shore bird of their choice on the computer, then print it out. After that, they produced a scientific drawing of their bird, cut it out, and pasted it on the Sandy Beach mural in the front of the room. Not everyone finished this project. More time will be spent on it later.

January 22 in Room 11

• ABC order skills are improving!
• The class made a pictograph of how many teeth students in this room have lost. The graph shows in a very clear way which kids have lost the most teeth, and which kids will probably be losing some soon. A discussion of graphs ensued. there will be more on graph work as the year progresses.
• In the computer lab, some students looked up planets, and others researched constellations. This information will be used for a painting of the night sky.
• Mr. Dunn assigned a picture of a shore bird from each child. He requested that students note the bird's special features, like feet and beaks. Knowing these details helps scientists learn more about how the bird lives.
• The class learned more about how to get pictures on the computer, and how to get a small image to switch to a larger image.
• The class finished reading Rumplestiltskin. Some of the students have already taken a computer (AR) test on it and got 100 per cent!
• The entire second grade class was tested in reading fluency today in the gym. This is called a D.I.B.E.L.S. (Dynamic Indicaters of Basic Early Literacy Skills) test, and is a tool to help teachers evaluate just how to assist individual children's reading needs.
• The ongoing "Faces in a Heart" project keeps everyone busy with scissors and magazines.
• The class painted in art today. Woo-hoo!!

January 21 in Room 11

• Students did a spelling word-sort based on what pattern their words had. (ee, ea, e)
• Because reading testing was going on in the gym, P.E. was cancelled, so students began an art project. It is a combination Martin Luther King and Valentine's day project, based on Mr. King's beliefs in the triumph of love and community. They are cutting out faces from magazines, of all kinds of people and will be pasting them on large hearts. This will be finished with a poem in the center of the heart of faces.
• The big pre-spelling test and self-correct produced four gum-chewers: Logan, Trinity, Garrett and Riley.
• Babe came to school today to cheer everyone with her enthusiastically wagging tail!
• Second-grade mathematicians did two worksheets today, still concentrating on place value.
• During a discussion about the inauguration, the presidency, and the oath of office, Mrs. Craig and Mrs. Stebbins were both pleased to hear how much students remembered about the Constitution. The kids also brought up some interesting ideas about Mr. Obama's job and family.
• Just about everybody has finished their writing paper about life on a communications satellite.
• The reading group listened to a tape of this week's story: Jamaica Louise James.
• Most students have a good grasp of the relationship in adding ones ond tens. The next step is adding two columns.

January 20 in Room 11

• Most of the students at Hillcrest had the opportunity to watch history being made in the inauguration of Mr. Barak Obama as the first African-American to become president of the United States. In room 11, Mrs. Craig found CNN on her computer and projected it onto the class SmartBoard.
• The writing and portrait projects on the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. have been completed.
• This week's spelling pattern is "when two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking and the second one is silent," with examples of ee, ea, and ie words.
• In math, students are still working on place value.
• Mr. Dunn taught about waves in our M.A.R.E. class. Students experimented with wave creation and size using rocks, straws and corks in a pan of water. Then they wrote sentences answering questions about waves.
• The students worked with partners as they read their Weekly Readers. After the class had read it, they took a Senteo test. This is a survey-like multiple-choice questionnaire projected on the SmartBoard. Students each have a remote ("clicker") with which they record their answer by pressing a button. Its a fun way to review and record, and they are getting better at it.

January 16 in Room 11

• Room 11-ers had music today.
• Students watched a movie about the Reverend Martin Luther King's life, work and legacy. It would be worth the time to discuss the meaning of his work with the children at home, as many of the students had comments and questions that were not able to be addressed in class.
• Many students had great success on the final spelling test.
• The second graders seem to be grasping the meanings of place value and what the numbers look like. Spelling out the words (e.g. one hundred fifty eight) still remains a challenge.
• So far, the salmon eggs remain eggs. Two are reported to have died.
• Thanks to Jacob's and Logan's moms for their help in school today.