Teacher Exchange Read Aloud

On Friday we celebrated I Love to Read Month with a teacher exchange.  I went down and read a few of our favorite books to the 5th grade class, and Mrs. Ruen came up to our room to share a book that she had written about her cat when she was younger.  The students really enjoyed Mrs. Ruen's book, and it was fun for me to head downstairs and see some familiar faces.  We also had a read in.

Magic Norm!

Last Friday Magic Norm visited Lanesboro to share with our students all the exciting places that reading can take us.  It was a great show!  The look of amazement in these young faces when watching a magic show is priceless!

Winter Authors' Celebration

Thanks to all the families that were able to make it on Friday to our Authors' Celebration.  The students really enjoy sharing their writing with their family, and I'm so proud of them for all their hard work!

Happy Valentine's Day!

This week we had fun decorating our classroom, decorating Valentine holders, and enjoying our party.  The students loved sledding on Friday.  We wished it would have been warmer so we could have enjoyed it for longer, but it was so fun for the short time we had!  Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

I Love to Read Month

We've been enjoying the kickoff to the Star Wars themed I Love to Read month.  The first Friday of the month, 2nd graders met up with a 5th grade buddy to share some good books.  We want to continue to meet up with the 5th graders once a month through the rest of the year because we enjoyed it so much!

Yesterday we had an all elementary read in.  Everyone stopped what they were doing to dive into a good book!  Students chose a spot that was right for them and got to reading!

Happy Snowmen

The class was so excited to start art with Miss Potter this last Thursday!  I also love doing art in the classroom and early last week we made happy snowmen.  This project fits this class so well... happy snowmen to represent happy students.

Piggie and Elephant Day!

Today we invited in the first grade class to share our Piggie and Elephant books.  Each 2nd grade partnership read the Mo Willems' Piggie and Elephant books they've been practicing with the focus of reading with expression.  We also shared the books we wrote ourselves.  Our goal in writing our own books was to capture the personality of these two lovable characters.  We've so enjoyed this character study and writing unit!  We celebrated our day with some Piggie and Elephant cake as well! I love to see how proud the students are of their work, and how excited they are to share it.

My son, Mason, who is now in 4th grade also stopped by to share the Piggie and Elephant book he wrote in my class as a 1st grader.  Piggie and Elephant Day came to be when he sat down at our kitchen table one day and started writing his own Piggie and Elephant book.  This sparked the idea that the whole class could do this, and then we could celebrate our hard work.  I also think it's a great example for the class to show how progress in our writing and spelling and handwriting takes time and effort. We were able to look at Mason's first grade work and say, "Hey, look at these great ideas! There may be words that are spelled wrong or letters going the wrong way, and that is part of the process for us as we grow into better writers through practice!"  The class had many thoughtful questions for Mason about his writing process.  What a fun afternoon!