Dear Santa

As part of our reading and writing lessons, students practiced writing friendly letters by writing to Santa Claus. Each letter expressed gratitude to Santa, told something the writer liked, asked a question they wanted to know more about, and listed items they'd like to receive for Christmas. Students were thrilled to receive a prompt reply and were so excited to read their responses. As you can tell from the photos, we loved our letters from Santa. Students especially enjoyed the parts of their letter where Santa mentioned personal bits of information about each student. Everyone was happy to take home their personal letter from Santa Claus.

Tis the Season of Giving!

Our class was happy to meet our goal of reading 100 books by Dec. 19th. We participated in the Scholastic Book Clubs ClassroomsCare Program. AFter we met our goal Scholastic Book Clubs donated books to needy children in St. Landry Parish, Lousianna. The point of the initiative is not just to encourage reading, but to empower children to make a difference in the lives of other kids. Reading IS giving in the ClassroomsCare program! We continue to participate in the food donation drive for the area Food Pantry. Both of this worthy causes allow us to exhibit our character education trait of the month which is GIVING! Students get to sign a "Giving" poster in our room whenever they exhibit this characteristic. Rewards are given to students at the end of the month.

We enjoyed practicing our letter writing skills by writing a letter to Santa Claus. Today we were thrilled to each receive a personal response! Students did a fine job writing their letters. I was very proud of them.

We look forward to having our picture taken with a reindeer next week.

This will be my last post until school resumes after New Year's. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Teddy Bear Time

Students in Mrs. Wells and Mrs. Little's class used their teddy bears as inspiration for writing this week. Our Treasures reading series asked students to write a persuasive poster so our classes chose to encourage everyone to have a teddy bear (or stuffed animal). They listed their reasons and concluded with an illustration of one of their reasons. Students enjoyed listening to the Legend of the Teddy Bear, a true story, along with the story of Ira Sleeps Over, about a boy who sleeps with a teddy bear. They were happy to snuggle with their bears during this time. Everyone then wrote a paragraph about their bears and an experience which they'd shared with him/her. Next, they colored a bear to resemble their own. Posters, paragraphs, and bears are all displayed in the hallway. Students stated that they really enjoyed these special bear lessons!

We are participating in a food drive for the area Food Pantry. Please send in your donations! The winning class gets a pizza party! Thank you!

We made red/white beaded icicle ornaments this week for our tree. They look so pretty! Our room is decorated in red and green and looks so festive.

Students are looking forward to "Santa Shopping" on Thursday, provided by the WHE PTO. Remember your money for shopping for your family.

Parent Teacher Conferences

Thank you to all who took the time to come meet with me to discuss your child's progress in school. Talking together provides an opportunity to share about home and school and ways to assist each other in helping your child be successful at school. I enjoyed meeting with each of you and hope you find the information included in your folder helpful as you work with your child at home. Enjoy the recipes from our class as our Thanksgiving gift to you! Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving

Our class studied about Thanksgiving this week. On Monday we learned about the Native Americans-the Wampanoag tribe through the book entitled Tappenum's Day. Mrs. Wells made a circle the exact size of a wetu and we tried to imagine how crowded it would be to live inside with 10 people! On Tuesday we studied about the Pilgrims through the books Sarah Morton's Day and Samuel Eaton's Day. On Wednesday we learned about the Mayflower through the book Life on the Mayflower. Students enjoyed a Pilgrim breakfast in the morning. In the afternoon we pretended to be tween decks on the Mayflower and enjoyed a Mayflower meal. And on Thursday, we studied about the terrific turkey through the book Turkeys. To bring together all our studies, students made a mural about what they had discovered each day. We were all excited to travel back in time to learn about the history of our country.

Parent Teacher Conferences

Just a reminder! Parent Teacher Conferences are Monday, November 24 and Tuesday, November 25 starting at 2:30 and ending at 7:00. All parents have an assigned time slot. Remember notices will be sent home on Friday. I look forward to meeting with each of you to discuss your child's progress and learn more from you about your child. See you then!

Veteran's Day

The second grade teachers have planned an activity to teach our students about Veteran's Day. On Monday, Jim Rogers, (kindergarten teacher, Tiffany Rogers' husband) will speak to the second grade about Veteran's Day. He served during Desert Storm. We will also be reading the book about John McCain's life. The second grade teachers made a flag on the wall in the hallway outside the gym to honor Veteran's during the month of November. All students and staff were given a star in keeping with our theme "Our Veteran's are our stars!" to decorate with the name of a Veteran family member or friend. They could also include the branch of service, a photo copy of a photograph, years served, and/or places they were stationed. Students returned the stars to school to be placed on our wall. Students and staff are enjoying reading the "stars" on our flag. We will leave the stars up through parent/teacher conferences for all to view.

Students are learning to write a friendly letter. Students selected a favorite aspect of second grade to write about to a first grade student. In this way they can tell first grade students about the changes in their life to second grade. We have scheduled a time to read our letters to Mrs. Hoesman's first grade class next week. Hopefully, we will have grown in our letter writing skills while giving our first grade friends some insight into second grade.

Our class is finishing a chapter on habitats in science. They made habitat booklets showing the landscape and animals that live in each habitat. Science books were sent home to review for the test this week.

As Thanksgiving approaches, we begin to think about our Thanksgiving dinners. Students brought home a recipe form to be filled out with a favorite recipe from your family. Thank you for taking the time to share a recipe with us.

Happy Halloween!

White Hall Elementary students enjoyed a Halloween Parade and Hallway of Fun on Monday evening. Although the weather was very cold, many parents and children braved the weather in their Halloween finest for this annual WHE PTO Halloween activity. Look for the photos on the WHE website. Everyone looked great!

This week ends the "pink" month of cancer awareness for women. Make sure the women in your life get checked!

Mrs. Tammy Winters, former WHE teacher, returned to our classroom, after teaching us about an art print last week,to make 3-D paper stars with us. She suggested the students make them in patriotic colors in honor of November's voting day and Veteran's Day. Later, they could make them in Christmas colors for decorating on a Christmas tree. We appreciate Mrs. Winters and her efforts to share the world of art with us.

Our students enjoyed sharing their leaf booklets with Mrs. Hoesman's first grade class. Next week during writing, we plan to write a friendly letter to them about our new life in second grade.

Students enjoyed their first trip this year to our Accelerated Reader store to redeem points earned for passing comprehension tests on the computer over books read during guided reading class and when time allows during the rest of their school day. Thank you for sending in donations we requested. The students really do appreciate the reward.

Thank you to everyone who contributed to our Halloween classroom party! We appreciate your efforts to help us celebrate through donations or help during the party.

Please remember to be safe this Halloween. Trick or treat with an adult. Make sure you can see clearly out of your costume and that cars can see you. Visit homes you know. Check treats before eating. Be safe and you will have fun!

Important Change of Halloween Parade Date

Due the forecast of rain on Friday evening, the White Hall Elementary PTO costume parade has been changed to Monday, October 27 from 5:30-6:30. See you there!

Leaf Collections

Our first science unit was about plants. Although we have since moved on to our study of animals and animal habitats, we are following up our plant unit with a study of leaves since Autumn is a great time for making our leaf collection books. Students were asked to find leaves that fit a list of descriptions such as orange, tiny, pointed, etc. They do not have to know the type of tree. We are just learning about the differences in leaves and hopefully having fun as we explore our world. Students also make use of their writing and language skills as they write a sentence about each leaf in their booklet. They are due Friday, October 24. We will share our leaf booklets and leaf knowledge with the first grade classes as we read our books to them. Our second graders remember being read to last year!

This was our week to assess students in reading skills. Each teacher worked with each student individually to listen to them read, make predictions, answer questions, retell orally, or summarize in writing about the story they read. We look for reading fluency by observing rate, expression, word accuracy, and phrasing. Errors are evaluated to determine types and stratigies used. We use this test to determine specific ways we can meet the students' needs in upcoming lessons. We also use the information to determine their reading level for finding books that are on their instructional level for small group work with a teacher in guided reading. In addition, we use the information to guide work with even smaller groups of students for RtI (response to intervention)which gives students who need more assistance extra time with an adult working on specific skills over an extended period of time to try to bridge the gap from where they are performing to where they need to be at this time. Students in our class used the time when they were not being tested to use the internet to discover answers to questions about spiders, made a glittery web, and spider for their web, wrote a retelling of a book they read in "spider web" fashion, and read and took Accelerated Reader tests on the computer over books they read. They are trying to earn lots of points to turn in at the Accelerated Reader Store at the end of the quarter. If you would like to donate items for the store, we would appreciate anything you could send. Suggested items are: tiny toy items, microwave popcorn, cans or bottles of soda, candy bars/wrapped candies, small stuffed animals, balls of all sizes, and just about anything you could think of that a grade 1-3 child would like would be good for our store. No guns, knives, or swords, though. Just send them to school to Mrs. Dokka, our reading specialist teacher, labeled for the AR store. She and her team of helpers will set a date for the store, set it up, and have parent helpers run it during the day scheduled. Thank you!

Our P.T.O. Halloween Parade and Contest will be Friday, October 24 from 5:30-6:30. Please come to see the wonderful costumes! We'll parade through downtown and back to Whiteside Park if you'd like to come out to see us.

Fire Safety Week

Students enjoyed learning about fire safety this week. The White Hall Volunteer Fire Department presented a fire safety program for the school. A firemen was dressed in full gear to help students know what to expect in the event of a fire. They viewed a short video and were given informational materials about fire safety. Thank you, White Hall Fire Department. We are glad to have caring community members such as you!

Our class learned about Columbus in observance of Columbus Day. Students listened to stories about Columbus and saw a video.

We reviewed in reading, took our first unit test, and wrote our first paragraph without assistance. We are looking forward to our Unit 2 from our reading Treasures series.

No school Friday due to our teacher's Institute. No school Monday due to Columbus Day. Enjoy the fine weather with Fall activities this weekend!

Field Trip Fun and Homecoming Parade

Students attended the Annual Prairie Land Heritage Days in Jacksonville on Friday. We had beautiful weather for our day outdoors. Upon arriving students compared long ago to today by viewing a blacksmith shop, general store, various types of transportation including tractors, and a museum housing rooms such as a kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, a vet and doctor's office. They also toured an old church, working barn, and an old one-room school building. They observed lye soap making, wheat weaving, quilting, and cutting trees into lumber. Rides were definitely a highlight of their day. They had many to choose from such as the steam engine train, bumpy wagon ride, bumpy pole ride, horse-drawn wagon ride, and were even able to drive a tractor themselves! Souvenir money could be spent on fields full of flea market items or simply on tasty treats such as kettle corn, homemade ice cream, elephant ears, corndogs, and soda. We witnessed a Civil War scurmish and some of us rode the train with Abe Lincoln. Our parents and WHE cafeteria cooks prepared great sack lunches for us to enjoy at lunch. Mr. Hoesman arranged for us to be able to leave Prairie Land and get back in time to take in the NGHS Homecoming Parade. We enjoyed the many floats, band, other entries, and seeing our high school friends and family. It was a perfect way to end a perfect day!

Thank you to all the wonderful parents who chaperoned small groups of students and helped us compare long ago to today. We learned so much with your help. Thank you for sharing your day with us and taking the time to help us learn. We appreciate it very much!

Homework for next week was sent home on Thursday. It is due Friday, Oct. 3.
Remember to checkout the homework link on the WHE website if you need to know our homework assignments.

Midterm Progress Reports were sent home Friday.

Students will be using their experience at Prairie Land to write a paragraph next week during writing class. We will be using photos to jog our memories. Students will publish their work by displaying it in the hallway outside our room when it is completed.

This week in math, we worked on strategies for addition such as the nine-shortcut, plus one, minus one, and doubles. Students also honed their skills playing math games on the computer that coordinate with our math book.

We began our new unit of science about animals by learning our new vocabulary words in preparation for reading the chapters next week.

We are looking forward to the Scholastic Book Fair next week. We love to buy books!

Treasures Online

Each week you can go online to complete activities in our Treasures reading series. You have the following topics to choose from for the week we are on: oral language, spelling, vocabulary, research and inquiry, computer technology, and author/illustrator. This week we will be on week 4 unit 1. You could also review weeks 1,2, and 3 and see how much you learned. This will be a great way to practice our new vocabulary words and spelling words each week in a fun way! Enjoy!

Read All About It!

As we explore our new reading series in class you can also explore it through online activities. Just click on the Treasures Reading link and see all the activities you can do! I also listed two other online reading sites for you to enjoy! Remember to read every evening at home. Find the "treasures" waiting inside each book just for you!

Counting to 1000

Students have been writing numbers to 1,000 for several weeks. We are finally finished! Students received a candy bar (100 Grand) for their hard work. We proudly hung these in the hallway.

I was sick T-W-Th. We were happy to have Mr. Butler's help in our classroom this week while I was sick at home.

Our math centers this week were penny cup, domino top-it, and beat the calculator. In reading we enjoyed reading about Firefighters. We viewed two videos about fire safety and the jobs of firemen. Mr. Chad Hoesman was our guest speaker on Wednesday to help us learn about the job of firefighters. Thank you, Mr. Hoesman!

We look forward to our field trip to Jacksonville's Prairie Land Heritage Day next Friday, September 26.

Welcome to Mrs. Little's Second Grade Classroom Blog!

This is my first time "blogging". It is a new experience for me. I welcome visitors.