Celebrating Our Writing Craft

We are becoming such great writers this year!  This past unit we decided to learn from the best!  No, not Mrs. Hammerick...REAL AUTHORS!!!  Authors like Jonathan London, Patricia Pollacco, and Angela Johnson.  We read a bunch of their books and paid special attention to what they wrote in their stories.  We noticed they did a lot of neat and fun things. 

 

They wrote...ellipses, time words, comeback phrases, repeat-a-words, similes, onomatopoeia's (sound words), and adjectives.  We learned from all their good ideas and added craft into our stories!!! 

 

This writing celebration was a bit different than the others in the past.  This time we were partnered up with a friend or two from Ms. Thomas' and Ms. Dickson's classes.  We shared our stories with them and they shared theirs with us.

 

Not only did we read our stories to our second grade friends...but we had to prove we learned a thing or two from this past writing unit.  We had to show our friends where we added craft into our story.  We filled out a checklist and had to write what our comeback phrase was, what our simile was, and what adjectives, time words, and sound words we wrote. 

...and...of course...a celebration isn't really a celebration without a a fun snack...or two.  Thanks, moms and dads for all the goodies you manage to send in last minute.  The snacks are what we look forward to most on a celebration day! 

I really hope all our parents enjoyed reading our latest and greatest story we brought home from our writing celebration.  We really worked hard at proving we learned from a few great authors in this last writing unit. 

Behavior BINGO!!!

We did it!!!  We filled up our bingo board!!!  Can you believe it?  We've been working for quite a long time to earn a reward.  We've been working really hard by walking quietly in the hallway (hoping to receive a compliment from a teacher or Mrs. Funk), being responsible by remembering to get our mail and lunchboxes at the end of the school day, having great behavior at assemblies and respect circle and whenever we have a quest teacher. 

Our job was to cross out as many numbers as we could earn in a day until we got to 100!  As a reward, we voted to bring a toy to school for a day...yep!  Any toy we wanted to bring from home...iPads, Lego's, dolls, Beyblades...anything!

My girls with their dolls and animals

My boys and their electronic toys

Lego's and Beyblades

Checking out Matthews rock collection

Not only was it pajama day today at Doherty...the last school day of 2012, before we head off on WINTER BREAK...but it was also BRING A TOY TO SCHOOL DAY in Mrs. Hammerick's room!

Happy Holidays!!!

We have been learning SOOOO MUCH about adding craft into our writing.  We have been studying mentor authors like, Jonathan London, Patricia Pollocco, and Angela Johnson.  We've noticed so many things they do!  They add dialogue, onomatopoeia's and similes in their writing.  They also write ... (dot, dot, dot), use a lot of punctuation, and write many, many details.  We like when they write comeback phrases and repeat words too. We've been working really hard to write like our mentor authors. 

 

 

This holiday season we made a special gift to give to our families.  We traveled through the writing process...first we thought of a small moment about our families and planned out how our story would go.  We wrote our draft including ALL the things we learned from our mentor authors...remembering to illustrate and revise afterwards.  Our stories are magnificent!!!

We published our books by making a fancy cover, a title page, a dedications page, an about the author page...and we even included a letter to our families explaining why the story we choose to write about was so special to us!  Our families are going to LOVE them!!!!

After our books were all put together, we wrapped them up to take home to our families!  Thanks to Kohls I was able to put their books in a nice box...when the cashier said I could take a few from the pile...I hope she really meant 26!

I should work at Macy's in the gift wrapping department!

We added the finishing touches with a handmade card and bow!  I really hope our parents will treasure this wonderful story their 2nd grader is bringing home for them!  They worked really hard!

Happy Holidays!!!! 

Election Day

With the big day approaching tomorrow, we took a few minutes today to talk about this years election.  The kids all know who our two presidential candidates are.  Over the past few weeks I've overheard a few conversations about who will win the title of President of the USA.  These conversations usually happened during work time when they should have been focusing on other tasks.  I thought it would be fun to see who would be the next president if it were up to our class. 

We learned about how important it is to vote and hold an election.  We set up our own election booth and held an election.  Each student took a few seconds to sit down and privately vote for their candidate. 

THE RESULTS ARE IN!!!  By a vote of 11 to 10...OBAMA was our winner!!!  We had a few voting cards that were not counted because some students couldn't decided or didn't know who to vote for.  What a CLOSE vote!

We graphed our results in our packet and compared our results.  I guess we'll find out tomorrow (on our DAY OFF) who the next president will be.

Happy Halloween!

Check out the fabulous time we had on Halloween in second grade!!!  Thank you Mrs. Jovic for capturing us on this special day.  We could hardly contain our excitement all day long waiting for the parade and party to begin in the afternoon. 

 

After lunch we all climbed into our costumes and got ready for the Doherty Halloween Parade! 

 



 

 

 

Back in the room had so many fun festivities to participate in! We made a yummy cupcake!

 

 

 

 

 

 

We made a cool Halloween bookmark to take home and use during all the reading I make them do EVERY NIGHT!!!  (Except on Halloween night).

 

 

 

We even got fun Halloween tattoos!

 

 

 

Thanks so all our volunteers for helping out during the party and planning such a fun event for the class.  They really appreciate all you do for them.

 

 

 

Just hanging out a little waiting for school to be over and TRICK-OR-TREATING to begin!  "Is it time to go home yet?"