PBIS Winner

Our school has been implementing PBIS (Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports) at WT. Our rules are to be respectful, responsible, and safe in the hallways, restrooms, lunchroom, and on the playground. If your child is caught doing the right behaviors and following the rules they are given a ticket. Your child writes his/her name on the ticket and places the ticket in a classroom jar. Every Friday I draw a ticket. This child gets a small prize from the office and dumps our tickets into a fish tank. Every Monday Mrs. Beenblossom draws 2 names from the fish tank and those children receive a big prize. Today a student from our class won a big prize! Way to go, Elisha! Keep up the good work being respectful, responsible, and safe second graders!

Homecoming Week- Crazy Hair/Crazy Sock Day

Today was Crazy Hair/Crazy Sock Day for homecoming week. Take a look at our crazy hairdos and crazy socks!

Fifth Grade Reading Buddies

Mrs. Simon's second grade class and Mrs. Adam's fifth grade class are partnering up this year to be reading buddies. We will be meeting with our fifth grade reading buddies on Day 5 for 20 minutes. Today was our first day with our reading buddies. We had so much fun!

Stuffed Animal Day

We did it! We filled our classroom marble jar in record time - 4 days! Our class voted to have a stuffed animal day for our reward. We enjoyed having our stuffed animals at school today!

Pete the Cat

This week we are doing an author study on Eric Litwin. He writes the very popular Pete the Cat series of picture books. Today, Mrs. Simon read two Pete the Cat books, Pete the Cat Rocking in My School Shoes and Pete the Cat I Love My White Shoes. We all loved the books! It's so much fun signing along with Pete the Cat and saying at the end of every Pete the Cat story "because it's all good".

After reading our Pete the Cat stories we made a quick, but an extremely adorable Pete the Cat craft. These will be displayed in the hallway at school.

Also, in case you are unfamiliar with Pete the Cat. Here are some videos for you to enjoy!

Welcome Super Second Graders!

And we're off to another fantastic school year! I have a GREAT group of second grade students. Here are the super stars!

Lori Simon's Slidely by Slidely Slideshow

2013-2014 School Year Slideshow

This slideshow was shown on the last day of school. We had a great time going down memory lane of all our adventures we had over the year.

Have a great summer!

Box Tops for Education Contest

WT was challenged to collect 2,500 Box Tops in 2 weeks. We did it! Our reward was to throw waterballoons at Mr. Randy. Mr. Slabaugh created this wonderful video of highlights from today!

Sign Language Mini Lesson

In our reading series we read the story Moses Goes to a Concert. Moses is a boy who is deaf and communicates using sign language. In the story there are illustrations showing how to sign words and phrases. All the students loved learning the signs! We have a Grant Wood teacher, Kim, that comes in to our school to work with deaf and hard of hearing students. We asked her if she would do a mini lesson on sign language and she did! Here are some pictures and a video of us learning how to sign.

Kim also let us borrow some sign language books to help us learn even more signs! Thanks again for coming into our classroom and helping us learn sign language, Kim!

Writer's Workshop- Instructions and Story Creator App

This week we are having a writer's workshop. Our writing topic is instructions. We are using the Story Creator app on the iPads to showcase and present our instructions. Look at all the great learning taking place!

Happy May Day!

Today we celebrated May Day in our classroom. Miss Ashley taught us about this history of May Day, the many traditions, and places in our area that have big May Day celebrations. After that, we made our own May Day baskets and snacked on our treats in our baskets. Thanks Miss Ashley for the great (and yummy) lesson on May Day!

April Fools!

Today I gave my students an iPad. They were not very thrilled to see inside the box an eye pad, instead of an iPad!

At the end of the day I passed out brownies to all the students. However, the students did not find their brown Es tasty!

These kiddos were great sports today! I hope you all had a great April Fools Day!

Summer Camps!

Below are two emails I received for summer camps. 

Camp Invention is an adventure in creativity that immerses children in exciting, hands-on activities that reinvent summer fun.  Led by educators, girls and boys are challenged to explore connections between science, technology, engineering and innovation. Participants spend their time building original prototypes and creating a personalized motor-powered vehicle, while designing, improving and analyzing their own inventions in a team setting. Don’t miss out on all new challenges! 

June 16-20, Lincoln Elementary School, Washington, IA

Monday-Friday, 9:00 am -3:00 pm 

For students entering grades 1-6

Directors:  Julie Timmins & Janet Conrad

To register:  800-968-4332 or www.campinvention.org

Save $25!  Register by March 28th for only $200!

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Lego Robotics Camps for students in grades 1-9 sponsored by the UI Department of Engineering

http://www.engineering.uiowa.edu/ess/future-students/k-12/summer-camps-and-programs

Germs!

Nurse Jenna taught our second grade class a lesson on germs. Students shared what they knew about germs by passing a tennis ball to each other. What the students didn't know was that the tennis ball was covered in "germs". After passing the tennis ball around students looked at their hands under a black light. Many students were shocked to see that the germs were not only on their hands, but on the face, shirt, pants, and hair! Some students were asked to wash their hands with soap and water, with just water, and sanitizer. After washing their hands, the students looked at their hands under the black light again. Students that washed their hands with soap and water got rid of many of their germs. While soap and sanitizer hardly got rid of any germs at all. Thanks for the great lesson on germs, Nurse Jenna!

Measurement

We are now on Unit 9 in our math series, which focuses on measurement. Students have been learning about the different units of measurement. So far they have learned about meters, yards, decimeters, feet, inches, and centimeters. We've had a lot of fun measuring items in the classroom with a partner!