'Tis the Season!

I hope you and you families had a wonderful, joyful, and relaxing Christmas!  We sure had a lot of fun during the last few weeks of school before break!  The 2nd and 3rd graders put on a play, we had a visiting elf from the North Pole, and we capped it all off with a Christmas party!  Warning:  lots of pictures to follow!

First, on December 8, the second and third graders performed "Santa's Holiday Hoedown," directed by our music teacher, Ms. Wiczer.

We had a special visitor in our classroom!  Mini Santa is a scout sent by Santa to keep an eye on our behavior.  Well... I can say for sure that the students' behavior was excellent, but I'm not so sure about Mini Santa's!

On the last day before break, we had a small celebration in our classroom.  We played games, made sugar cookie Christmas trees, and of course, opened gifts!

Have a Happy New Year!  I'm looking forward to hearing about your Christmas break!









Sequencing and Mini Santa

For the past couple of weeks, we have been working on sequencing stories.  We've learned that sequencing means putting things in order.  Second graders need to be able to retell the events of a story in order. 

Well, we've had a little elf visiting us from the North Pole (Mini Santa), so he has been helping us accomplish this learning goal!  Today in the computer lab we created a Capzle, which is an interactive, graphic-based timeline, to sequence Mini Santa's visits.

Click here to see our Capzles!

Computer Lab Fun

For the past couple of weeks, we have been exploring some new resources in the computer lab.  First, we made Prezis about groups of Native Americans, then we explored Glogster.  Today, we created a Voki.  A Voki is a talking avatar that you create.  We focused on learning the application today and just had fun with it.  In the future, we will use it to create academic projects.

Here are links to our first Vokis:
Lainey
Grace
Aaliyah
Maria
Chandrajo
Klayton
Kylie
Peyton
Troy
Macie
Caeson
Kenna
Jaiden
Allissa
Dakota
Reece
Sam
Shouri

(we're still working on how to get our avatars to say words!)

If you're interested, here are also links to our Native American Prezis:
Navajo Indians
Apache Indians
Illini Indians
Cherokee Indians
Pueblo Indians
Iroquois Indians


You can find these sites, along with the sign-in and passwords, on our iKeepBookmarks site.

November's Award Winners

Drumroll please......

Homework Club

(turned every homework assignment in on time)

To celebrate this accomplishment, we had lunch in the classroom and watched a Christmas movie while we ate.  Miss Jackson even brought cupcakes!

Rockin' Readers

(read 260 minutes in November)

To celebrate this award, we had a movie party with the other 2nd grade classes, complete with cookies!

Awesome Behavior

(stayed on green or higher every day in November)

To celebrate this accomplishment, we visited the treasure chest!

Congratulations on all of your hard work and accomplishments!



Thanksgiving Activities

Last week, we celebrated the completion of our second benchmark tests (the BIG test) with some fun Thanksgiving activities.

First, we made turkeys.

That craft really worked up our appetites, so we had to have some pumpkin pie!

The recipe for our pumpkin pie is from Illinois Ag in the Classroom and can be found here.



Sarah Hale: The Lady who Saved Thanksgiving

For the past couple of weeks, we have been learning about the history of our country.  We learned about the Native Americans, pilgrims, and a lady named Sarah Hale.  A long time ago, people started neglecting Thanksgiving.  This did not set well with Sarah!  She thought Thanksgiving was a valuable day and wanted to make it a national holiday. She wrote, and wrote, and wrote.  She wrote to 5 presidents, all of them turning her down, until Mr. Lincoln.  He finally granted her wish, and after a 38-year rally, Thanksgiving became a national holiday.

After learning all of this (Check out the book we read, called Thank You, Sarah!), the students teamed up to create either a news broadcast about Sarah or conducted a mock interview with her.

Here are the interviews.  One student acted as Sarah, and the other interviewed her.


Here are the news broadcasts:

Red Ribbon Week

Red Ribbon Week is one of the oldest drug prevention campaigns in our country.  The goal of this program is to teach young people the dangers of drug use and to provide them with healthier alternatives.  Last week, October 24-28, New Berlin Elementary celebrated Red Ribbon week by having fun dress-up days, creating posters, and doing writing projects.

If you get the chance to walk through the hallways of NBE soon, you'll see posters all over!  Students in all grade levels made posters to encourage their peers to stay drug-free.

We also made pledges to ourselves.  The Rockstars all came up with a healthier alternative than drugs.  Some ideas were eating fruit, eating vegetables, exercising, staying in school, and eating meat. 

The highlight of the week, definitely, though, were the dress-up days!  On Monday, we wore CrAzY socks because we would never do something as cRaZy as drugs!  On Tuesday, we dressed in sweats because choosing to stay drug free is NO SWEAT!   On Wednesday, we wore red in honor of Red Ribbon, and on Thursday we wore our team spirit gear to TEAM UP against drugs.

The boys on Sweats Day

The girls on Sweats Day

The girls on Red Day

The boys on Red Day

The boys showing their Pretzel pride

The girls showing their blue and orange Pretzel spirit

Our crazy socks