New Student Wiki Space

The children are completing some wonderful Technology Projects, so I've created a new Student Wiki Space to showcase their work. Updates are coming soon! Here's the link: https://settingthestageforsuccessstudents.wikispaces.com/

Let It Snow, Let It Snow...

We've been busy reading about Wilson Bentley (the Snowflake Man), learning about the Arctic Region, building an igloo in our classroom, and creating some "snow" related technology projects. It surely would be nice it our NC weather would cooperate and scatter a flew lovely flakes for us! Unfortunately for us snow lovers, our temperatures have been on the mild side. One of our Computer Lab activities was to create a flake using the program KidPix. Hope you will enjoy a few of our computer generated flakes! Scroll down to take a look at our class picture on January 20, 2012. The temperature was a comfortable 51 degrees! Notice that most of the coats were missing...

Igloo Construction Day 3

Our little workers continue to diligently "lay those cartons" on Friday. We're wondering how many cartons we will need to complete the igloo.

Day 2: "Igloo Construction Engineers"

Today we managed to rearrange our foundation and build another layer on our igloo. In fact, we got half way through the third layer of milk containers. Twenty-two construction engineers certainly make the job go quickly. Hopefully we will soon finish our quarter assessments and can dedicate a little more time to this Reading/Math/Social Studies project. Parents please keep sending in those empty containers! Also if you have extra tops we would appreciate them. Special thanks to Corrinne's mom, who has made two trips to Starbucks! Take a look at "today's work"...

The Building Begins!

Our little builders began laying the foundation for our "Winter Wonder....an Igloo" after much thought, teamwork, and arranging of milk cartons. Now the trick will be to keep this together with our hot glue and how to add the next row of cartons. We are immersed in an "Arctic Animal" Reading Unit and learning about our economy and how it works in Social Studies. This seemed to be a great way to connect our themes across our curriculum. We are having fun using these consumer by-products to produce a winter home which could be found in the Arctic Region where Polar Bears roam! We'll keep you updated on our building adventure!!!

Arrivals and Departures

Christmas Holidays used to be quite simple at the Lyerly house. Four children were little, nestled all snug in their beds with a mommy and daddy close by. Time flew quickly and four little children were suddenly all grown up. Tonight I'm waiting restlessly for a flight to land. One daughter has been in the airport most of the day, as her flight was delayed. I was at school with my precious 22 occasionally checking messages for updates.
Thank goodness for Drew, who flew to NC for a holiday visit and is flying back to school with Allison and for Drew's mom, who is waiting to pick them up at the airport. Between watching Flight Aware Live and Real Time Flight, I've managed to create a holiday video. It has helped calm me a bit and keep me awake. (Only 50 more minutes in the air...) Thankfully the twins are tucked in bed upstairs for a few more nights and older daughter is getting a few winks before seeing her patients tomorrow. I hope you will enjoy a quick snapshot of our family.
Thank you families for sharing your precious 22 with me each day. Hold tight and enjoy each of your memories!

Winter Celebration in Room 309

In Room 309 we love to celebrate! With the support of our wonderful parents and our two special Room Moms, we sampled tasty treats and created several holiday keepsakes.

December Events

Our second grade class literally traveled around the globe in December! Our entire grade level participated in a "Holiday Serendipity" so that we could learn more about different cultures and their holiday celebrations. Students boarded the Meadowlark Holiday Express with passports and luggage in hand each day. Our travels included the countries of Germany, China, Holland, Norway, Australia, and Mexico. We were very fortunate to have Aidan's mom share Hannukah traditions with us and Reesa's grandmother visited our classroom to share Moravian customs/traditions. America is truly a "melting pot". We enjoyed comparing/contrasting holiday traditions and creating paper crafts. The tasty food samples were delectable! Do you know which country gave us the tradition of the lighted tree? What was the original purpose of the Moravian star? Ask your child to "share" their souvenirs from their suitcase and tell you about what they discovered on their journey. We hope that you will enjoy these "snapshots" from their trip!
Learning About Hannukah on PhotoPeach



Moravian Customs/Traditions on PhotoPeach

Thanksgiving

The students in Room 309 celebrated the season with a "Friendship Feast" they prepared! They mixed cans of vegetables into a crock pot, stirred, and patiently waited throughout the morning as the scrumptious aroma filled the air. In the meantime, the children read, wrote, and completed math activities relating to why the new settlers in America celebrated their first harvest. Dessert proved to be an adventure, as we used Oreo cookies, frosting, and some candies to create an edible turkey!

Second Grade Teachers At Work!

On a recent stormy evening, our second grade team traveled to the VFW Post to score essays for a special contest sponsored by the VFW. We were honored to be asked to help with this task! Little did we know that Lanie Pope had issued a tornado watch. As the rain poured and the wind blew, we were enjoying the company of the kind American Veterans at the Post and our "off campus" time together!
2nd Grade Teachers At Work!
on PhotoPeach

"Night Flyers"

We have been reading informational text to learn more about "Bats", those special creatures of the night! Reesa's mom, from ASU, visited our class to help us have a better understanding about why bats are important to us and how scientists gather information about these fascinating mammals. We certainly enjoyed the paired learning activity about "echolocation"!

              

All About Bats on PhotoPeach

Celebrating Veteran's Day

Our Second Grade Classes at Meadowlark spent time learning more about the history of Veteran's Day and why we observe this special day each year. As a culminating activity, a Vietnam War Veteran from a Winston-Salem VFW Post visited us on Thursday. Mr. Frank shared information about this National Holiday and about his service time. Our classes also made cards for veterans to thank them for protecting and preserving our freedom.
Salute to Our American Veterans on PhotoPeach

Building "Place Value" Schema

Last week our math lessons involved showing numbers in different ways. We used our unifix cubes, place value blocks, some online interactive base ten blocks, and a little story about Ten's Town on our Smartboard.  By Thursday, we just needed a little extra "pizzaz" during math time, so a trip to the grocery store provided just what we needed to "cement the concepts" in our schema files. It's amazing what food does for a lesson plan. This time, pretzels and Cheerios were that little "extra" that helped us better understand how to "regroup" numbers and express numbers in different ways as well as adding those two digit numbers together.
Learning About Place Value on PhotoPeach

Book Reports

Our first attempt at completing a Book Report involved a little creativity. Thank you parents for your support at home with this project! As you can see from the pictures below, the projects turned out beautifully. We certainly enjoyed sharing our reports in class!
Story Skeleton Book Reports on PhotoPeach

Pumpkin Day 2011

Thanks to our wonderful parent helpers, we celebrated the season with our annual "Pumpkin Day" activities. We reviewed our math and literacy skills by participating in this global technology project. You can read more about this project here: http://www.jenuinetech.com/Projects/2011PS/2011ps_information.html

Our second graders worked in teams to determine the size of various pumpkins and whether a pumpkin would sink or float. We also used our counting strategies to find the total number of seeds our 5 pound pumpkin had. We didn't realize how many seeds could be in a pumpkin! Check out the website to see the number of seeds we found.

Of course this project had a tasting event! We enjoyed eating and writing about the yummy pumpkin treats! Thank you moms for helping us!!!

Customize your own digital scrapbooking design

Project O.R.E.O.

Our second graders joined other students around the globe to determine how many Oreo cookies we could stack in a tower before the tower tumbled. Working with a partner, we first made our estimate. Then, the stacking began! We each had two attempts and recorded the greatest number of our stacked cookies. After everyone stacked, counted, and recorded, we combined our results to get our class total. That took a little bit of work. We had to use some interesting addition strategies to determine our total number. Of course the calculator came in handy. Then the teachers helped out by finding the "average" number of cookies our class stacked by dividing (or as we say, "diving up") the total by the number of students who stacked. It was fun to compare our results with other students around the globe! Enjoy our pictures and check out this global technology project here: http://www.jenuinetech.com/Projects/2011oreo/2011oresults.html
 Project O.R.E.O. on PhotoPeach

Catching Up!

It's hard to believe how quickly the days fly by! I seem to have less time each day to get things accomplished. Each night I chat with my mom and tell her that I need to add some more hours in my day. She's at the phase in her life that hours seem to drag along, so she just can't imagine why I want to add more hours. In our second grade classroom, we try to engage in interesting projects daily, however, we've been in "assessing mode" with our end of quarter and standardized assessment requirements. At any rate, I'm finally getting around to posting some pictures of my terrific second graders! Just taking a peek at their sweet little faces working together in learning tasks lets you see how a classroom is "the" place to be.
Days in Second Grade on PhotoPeach

Eensy Weensy Spiders...

Our Reading Groups have just completed a Spider Unit. We've built on our "spider schema" and discovered some more interesting facts. Of course, creating an edible visual always helps us remember what we're learning!

A Quick Snapshot of Our Daily Math

Have you ever thought about how many tasks you do each day that require you to do some measuring? We brainstormed some ways that we use measurement in the world around us and then spent some time working together measuring items in different ways. This quarter our focus was on measuring with non standard units and then inches. In the coming months we'll refine our measuring skills and learn about the metric system too!

This slideshow made with Smilebox Measuring: How Can We Use Non Standard Units?   on PhotoPeach

Releasing Our Painted Ladies

A few weeks ago our butterflies were finally ready to enter the beautiful outdoor world. The children were such wonderful "parents" for these creatures that began as a tiny caterpillar!