We “Marched” into Read Across America Week!

On Monday, March 2nd, we came together as a school to have a “Read Across America Assembly.” Principal Smith welcomed community members and other special guests to our school and we took a reading oath to “make reading our way to feed our brains what they need every day!”

We were lucky to have TWO special guest readers. The first was school committee woman Allison Volpe. She read a newly published Dr. Seuss book called the “Horse Museum.” 

Mrs. Volpe reading to the class.

Thank you Mrs. Volpe!

Our second guest reader was Representative Colleen Garry (who is also Mrs. Riordan’s sister). She read the story “Grace Goes to Washington”, answered lots of questions and donated the book to our class.

Thank you Representative Garry!

We celebrated reading the rest of the week with spirit week.  On Monday, we dressed up in red, white and black for Dr. Seuss.

Keviane, Calista, Alina, Adrianna, Natalie and Andrew dressed as Superheros!

On Tuesday, some friends dressed up in their best Superhero outfits. 

On Wednesday, the students dressed up in outfits that showed us what they wanted to be when they grow up. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a photo of all the students who wore their outfits. Luckily, Tim was still there to take a photo of to represent this spirit day.

On Thursday, we celebrated by wearing our favorite hats. Here are our crazy, favorite hats. Alexis was out of the room so Calista is holding the hat Alexis wore.

We finished the week by dressing up as our favorite character. Here are Alexis, Calista and Alina on favorite character day.

This was a special week that I think Dr. Seuss would have enjoyed!

 

The New Year 2020 Begins and There’s SO Much Learning Going On In C8!

We came back in January with lots of hopes and goals for the rest of the school year. The students chose a word to describe the new year and then wrote three goals to achieve it.

We also took some time to celebrate achievements. We recognized behavior and responsibility with a combined November and December lunch bunch. 

Kendall, Keviane, Natalie, Shay, Devin, Alina, Kaylee, Ethan, Timothy, Daniel and Nathan are proudly displaying their November lunch bunch certificates.

Our December lunch bunch group holding their certificates are Kendall, Keviane, Shay, Alina, Kaylee, Shiloh, Victoria, Ethan, Timothy, Daniel and Nathan.

Amber wasn’t in school for the group photo but I wanted to make sure we all knew she was in BOTH lunch bunches!

Congratulations to Michael for being the first student this year to complete Addition on Xtramath! This means that Michael is able to answer each of the 100 addition facts in 3 seconds or  less.  We’re proud of you!

Victoria was the second student to complete Addition on Xtramath. These students have moved on in the program to work on subtraction fact mastery. Special kudos to Victoria who has been practicing Xtramath at home. All students are welcome to do Xtramath at home. It is free if done on a computer although the app for the phone or tablet does costs $5.00. Thank you to the families that have signed up for this at home. 

We played a “Roll to a Dollar” game. It was boys vs. girls.

It was close but the girls won!

We learned about measurement and money in math. In balanced literacy, we’ve  been studying about trickster tales and learning about nonfiction. Second graders have lots of opinions so we have been focusing on opinion writing. But some of the most exciting times in January were when we did Mystery Science. 

We spent a lot of time with our Mystery Science Unit on the Work of Water. This unit helped students develop the idea that water is a powerful force that reshapes the earth’s surface. Students see that water isn’t just something we drink. It carries sand to create beaches, carves out canyons and valleys and, as ice, scrapes entire areas flat. Through videos and experiments, the students asked questions and performed experiments to find the answers.

In this first Mystery lesson, students developed a model of the earth’s surface and use it to discover an important principle about how rivers work. In the experiment, Paper Mountains, students take turns using a spray bottle to make rain fall on paper models of mountains to observe patterns of how water and rivers flow.

We displayed our Paper Mountains in the hall along with the ones from Mrs. Messer’s class.

In our second mystery lesson, students investigated the effects of rocks tumbling in a river. Based on their observations, they constructed an explanation for why there is sand at a beach. In the activity, Rocking the River, students pretended to be a river and tore up pieces of construction paper to model what happens to rocks as they travel along the river. In the third mystery lesson, students made hypotheses and investigated the causes of canyons. In the activity, Cornmeal Canyons, students created a model landform using cornmeal. Then they dripped water over this “land” to observe how water can change its shape and understand how, over long periods of time, canyons can be formed through a similar process.

If you click the link below, you will see a short video of one of the results of the experiment.

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In the final mystery “How can you stop a landslide?”, students compared multiple solutions for preventing erosion. In the activity, Erosion Engineering, they designed and tested ways to keep water from washing away a hill modeled out of cornmeal.

Since our students can’t get enough science, we also did a winter themed mini-lesson on hibernation. In this mini-lesson, students reasoned about why some animals hibernate and others do not. In the activity, Get Ready to Hibernate, students played a memory card game where they pretended to be bears searching for food. As they played the game, they considered how different foods might affect bears as they prepare for their winter hibernation. It also integrated math as the students had to add up the point values to see if they had eaten enough food to hibernate.

Can’t believe the school year is already half over!  On to February!

March Madness!

Our wonderful PTO made this awesome bulletin board!

We started off the month of March with our school-wide Read Across America event. This is a special day where important people from our community join us to share and celebrate reading!

Principal Smith kicks off the celebration!

Roseann Sdoia, Boston Marathon Bombing survivor, was our special guest speaker this year!

Mrs. McCarthy, our Reading specialist, Roseann Sdoia and Principal Smith

Lots of special readers ready to read to Brookside students.

Showing the way for our guest readers.

The Canaligator and Rowdy greet the students as they leave the assembly!

My sister, State Representative Colleen Garry, read to our students on the following Monday as she was unavailable to attend on Read Across America Day.

This was the special book that was purchased this year for each classroom and read by each guest reader.

Since she had to come another day, Rep. Garry stayed extra long to read TWO books to our class and answer lots of questions!

But that wasn’t the only special visitors we had this month! We had a PTO sponsored storyteller named Tony Toledo come to share his storytelling skills with us!

But the craziest visitors we had were from Ireland!

At first things were a little unusual. 

Irish books were left out with Irish stamps as a bookmark and a piece of leather???

Mrs. Riordan’s leprechaun decoration kept moving to different locations around the classroom.

And it appears they had a messy tea party while we weren’t here!

Then they got into even more mischief! Check it out!

They stacked up our library chairs and hung stuffed animals, puppets and dinosaurs all over them!

Samil noticed that they stacked up our computer stools and topped it off with our globe!

We knew that we had to do something to stop the madness. Eight creative and resourceful children made leprechaun catchers to try to capture the little mischief makers. 

We can’t figure out how they managed to move all those chairs!

This is what we found on Monday morning March 18th! Those leprechauns not only weren’t caught….they had made a real mess of our classroom AND had stolen from all the leprechauns catchers! And then on Monday afternoon, our school secretary, Mrs. Treska, called our classroom and said that she heard a tiny man’s voice…and saw a small green hat… before he disappeared….leaving this for our class. And underneath the gold candies, we found all the things the leprechauns had stolen from the catchers!

Maybe they aren’t so bad after all!

Chloe holding the pot of gold left for us!

A week in September…the serious and the silly!

We had a special visitor for Constitution Day, September 17th. State Representative Colleen Garry came to talk to Brookside’s second graders about the Constitution, government, the law, and so much more. The students listened, learned and asked lots of questions.

Our class also created our own class constitution and came up with five rules that we all agreed to follow!

The next day we had our first visit from Zero the Hero! Zero is a math superhero who gives the students math challenges and rewards them. Zero has been known to visit every 10 days. Zero challenged the students to use their imaginations to draw what they thought Zero looks like. The students did a great job on this challenge. Zero rewarded them by leaving a book about Zero the Hero for me to read to them and they also each got a life savor ….because it is shaped like a zero!

Here some “pirates” play the pirate reading game with Mrs. Nelson!

On Wednesday, September 19th, we joined the rest of Brookside’s second grade celebrating “Talk Like a Pirate Day”. Many of the students dressed like pirates. We read a pirate story and did some pirate worksheets.  Some of us got to play a pirate reading game. We had a jolly good time with our mates!

The Pirates of C8!

Celebrating Special C8 Students and Zero the Hero!

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Dracut Library Summer Readers!!

I can’t believe we’ve been in school for 40 days already! The first two months have seemed to fly by so fast! I want to share with you some of the students that have been recognized for their reading and math achievements. First, we had three students, Emma, Jesse and Mia, that received special certificates for their participation in the Dracut Library’s summer reading program! Great job to our three summer library readers!

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Dracut Public Schools Summer Reading!

Next, I’d like to recognize the five students who passed in their Dracut Public Schools summer reading logs. They were Sampson, Aubrey, Jesse, Shamus, and Emma! Summer reading is so important! Awesome job to you all!

Finally, three of our students have completed the addition level of Xtramath in record time! To do this, they had to be able successfully answer all 100 addition facts within 3 seconds for each fact! They are Kayden, Aubrey, and Jesse! They are officially Xtramath superstars and have moved to subtraction. Remember that the students can do Xtramath at home too if they have access to the Internet.  I wonder who will be our next Xtramath superstar?

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This year, a special math superhero called “Zero the Hero” has been visiting our classroom every tenth day of school. We’re not sure if Zero is a boy or girl superhero so I’ll just use the pronoun “he”.  He gives the students a note with math challenges and leaves them treats if they complete the challenge. The first time he came, he asked them to draw what they thought he looked like. Another time he came, there was a math book about Zero that he asked them to have me read. A third time he came, the students were challenged to write as many sentences as they could that had the answer of zero. On Friday, Day 40, he challenged them to estimate the number of eyeballs in the jar! The children love when Zero visits.

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Here is one of Zero’s notes with the book and treat he left!

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They had to estimate the number of Life Savors that Zero left as a treat. Cameron and Anthony were the best estimators that day!

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One of Zero’s treats were clementines because they were “round like a zero and looked like a fall pumpkin!”

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Some of our students working hard packing the food drive donations for the Dracut Food Pantry.

Before I end this post, I want to thank all the families that donated to the Great Penny Race and the Food Drive. The second grade students donated the most nonperishable food to our food drive. Our class helped to box up all the food and carry it out to the volunteers from the food pantry that came to collect it. This is teaching our students to not only think about and care about others but to DO for others!  Stay tuned for additional posts about our field trip, our dinosaur & fossils studies and more!

May Celebrations!

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Here are the book bags the second graders donated.

We certainly had a lot to celebrate in May! We celebrate that we are a Community of Caring when we shared the results of the second grade students Community of Caring Read-a-Thon! We invited Miss Penny from the Dracut Library and Dr. McNamara of the Dracut School Committee to come to our school in order to receive the five book bags that our students were able to fund through the Read-a-Thon. This provides not only the Dracut Library but the entire MVLC with much needed children’s book kits. One of the books we donated was written by Sherrie Ninteau, a Dracut Public School teacher.

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Thank you to Miss Penny, Dr. McNamara, and Ms. Smith for attending our presentation!

The Brookside second graders are learning that it is important to give to others. Another way they participated in giving to others was the way they and the rest of the school contributed to our PAWS for a Cause by donating for Rett Syndrome. As an added bonus they raised so much that they were able to see Miss Jen duct taped to the wall of the school. Miss Jen was such a good sport as it was very hot that morning.

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The Garden of Hope for a Cause!

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Hooray for Miss Jen!

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We are also celebrating academic achievement! Ms. Smith came to our classroom to present several students with third quarter honors certificates! Congratulations to Mary, Brad, Brian, Nicholas, Shiwaum, Mia and Britney!

Congratulations also go out to four new Xtramath Superstars this month! Hooray Ava, Gabriela, Mary and Emily!Version 2IMG_3636IMG_3706IMG_3709

We also celebrate Shiwaum for being the only student in our class to participate in the Six Flags Read to Succeed program.

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Finally we celebrated our mothers!

The C8 students wrote about their mothers and drew a special picture of themselves with their mother.

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The students enjoyed make a special m & m game to play with their moms.

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Celebrating Reading, St. Patrick’s Day and Two Special Xtramath Stars in C-8

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This was the 50th Anniversary of Dr. Seuss’s Fox In Socks!

We attended a school-wide celebration for the national Read Across America Day. The second grade performed wonderfully on stage. Our class performed a song about reading with Mrs. Cooke’s students while Mrs. Porcello’s students did a skit about where they read. The entire school watched a powerpoint by Ms. Smith about Dr. Seuss and reading and the entire school recited the reading oath. 

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Our class on stage ready to perform!

After the assembly, the guest readers read to the classes. We were lucky that our guest reader was State Representative Colleen Garry (who is also Mrs. Riordan’s sister).  She read a biography of Dr. Seuss and posed for a photo. She answered a few questions but since she had to leave to attend another reading event at Englesby, she promised to come back again. Thank you, Rep. Garry!

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Say “READ” instead of cheese!

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Rep. Garry reading to the students.

On Monday, March 16th, five of our students brought in their creative homemade leprechaun catchers to try and catch a live leprechaun. We left them on the table in the back of the classroom at the end of the school day.

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Brooklynn was absent when we took the photo of her leprechaun catcher.

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Mary’s leprechaun catcher had gold eggs, shiny green shamrocks and a rainbow ramp!

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Chloe was absent but she sent in her catcher with her older sister.

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Dominic’s catcher included an Irish flag.

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Nick’s catcher had pot of gold.

This is what the students found when they came in on March 17th, St. Patrick’s Day. 

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The leprechauns left a message on our projector!

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They stacked our special library chairs….

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and they had a party with our book character stuffed animals!

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They hung a rainbow over Mrs. Riordan’s desk and messed up all the students’ desks and chairs!

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The leprechaun catchers were great but they couldn’t outsmart our tricky visitors who used our car magnets to drive all over the table! They also “borrowed” many things from the leprechaun catchers!

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Boy, were the students excited to find the results of all the shenanigans!

Mrs. Riordan gave each child a special snack bag of Lucky Charms that said “I’m so lucky to have you in my class!”

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Special St. Patrick’s Day snack!

The students did a creative writing craft activity. They had to write about “Who is worth more to you than gold?” They wrote and illustrated and then put it on a pot of gold complete with gold coins and rainbow streamers. We hung them up in the hallway for everyone to see.

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The students’ writing on proud display!

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Mia’s writing project

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Britney’s pot of gold

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I have to confess that Ava’s was my favorite!

Near the end of the day, we got a call from the office that there had been a delivery by two little men from Ireland. They asked if we could send two children to the office to pick it up. And as you can see, those tricky leprechauns gave us their pot of gold. Well, it was gold candy….and underneath the candy, we found all the things they had “borrowed” from our catchers. They returned everything they had taken after all! Each child got two pieces of gold candy.

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The leprechaun’s pot of gold

Finally, we need to congratulate our two fantastic Xtramath Superstars. Both Britney and Nicholas have now completed the subtraction level of Xtramath and are currently working on multiplication facts. We have a few other students that are getting close to finishing a level. Don’t forget you can practice Xtramath at home after school or on the weekends!

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Celebrating Special Children and Caring for Others in C-8!

We celebrate love and caring in the month of February. One of our classmates, Hannah, was recognized this quarter at the special PAWS recognition breakfast. Hannah was one of eleven children in the school to receive this recognition. She was nominated for her patience and kindness toward a fellow classmate when she helped him in their reading group. Hannah received her award from State Representative Colleen Garry. We are very proud of you Hannah!! You set a great example for the rest of the students!

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Hannah front and center after receiving her special PAWS recognition award.

 

We are also proud of two of our students who have completed the Addition level of Xtramath!

Way to go Brian and Victoria!

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Finally, as part of our Brookside Community of Caring, our class participated in the second grade Read-a-thon. They spent the entire day reading! This reading took the form of independent reading, buddy reading, listening to a book on CD or read aloud by a teacher. We even read math literature! The money we raised will enable us to create and donate book kits to the Dracut Library that can be used by the entire library system. Thank you to all the families and friends who generously donated to this special cause. What a great way to show that we care about reading and giving to others. I hope you enjoy looking at these photos of the Read-a-Thon.

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Comfy children reading on the rug!

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Snuggled up with their books!

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Gabriela and Alyssa….best buddies with their books!

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Reading is double the fun in C-8!

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Some of our boys took over the library!

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Gaige and Brian so deep into their stories they didn’t even see me capture this moment!

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Sharing a penguin book with a friend while istening to the CD at the listening center.

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Looks like a sleepover!