Best Wishes

One of the things I love best about school is that you don’t always have to get it right the first time. If a lesson doesn’t take, you can teach it over in a slightly different way. If a child makes a mistake, you can set him up to try again - and again. School is all about “in progress” and “to be continued" and not so much about "done." We take the long view. With 179 days, it feels like time is on our side.

Until, suddenly, it isn't.

We are fast approaching the end of second grade. And it’s more than just a school calendar that tells me that we are nearly done. The plants that are part of our science experiment are overflowing their cups. Our math workbooks are full. Our markers have run dry and our crayons are broken. We are out of pink erasers. The squares on our carpet that once easily held 18 little bodies just aren’t big enough now.

I can tell that these second graders are ready for more. They are ready for things like writer’s notebooks, multiplication tables, Gmail, and cursive. I hear them sometimes talk of second grade in the past tense now. I see them peek into their third-grade neighbors’ classroom, intrigued. On our field trip to downtown Milwaukee yesterday, they charged around the city like big kids, fearless and full of adventure.

We have had a great time. Catapults, clocks, valentines and Secret Snowflakes. Thoughtful Logs, character riddles, maps, and math mountains. Book boxes, clay beads, goal cards, biomes, and every week, Stars and Wishes. We won a trophy together. We had some bumpy times, too, and learned, I hope, important life lessons about friendship, tolerance, and respect.

New to second grade this year, I’ve had plenty of times when I didn’t get it right the first time. The challenges of learning a new curriculum and other things were greater than I’d expected. I hope that what I lacked in know-how, I eventually made up for with hard work and heart. I will be forever grateful that I made the move from first to second grade. It is a joy to work with children who are so curious and capable. They amaze me.

Thank you for your kindness, your patience, and your willingness to help whenever I’ve asked - and even when I haven't. Thank you for reading this blog. Writing it has been my way to reflect; to take stock and put small moments from the classroom into a larger context; to think about next steps for the children. And there are always next steps. These children’s school stories, though done by one measure, are really just “to be continued.”

I wish them and all of you the very best.

Mark Your Calendars:

Mon., May 29 - Memorial Day. No school.

Wed., May 31 - First grade visit to second grade.

Thurs., June 1 - All-school field trip to Bayside Middle School to see the musical (AM).

Fri., June 2 - Stormonth Talent Show, K-2 performers (AM).

Sat., June 3 - PTO-sponsored Cupcake Run/Walk and Carnival. See you there!

Mon., June 5 - Stormonth Talent Show, Grades 3 and 4 performers (PM).

Tues., June 6 - Field Trip to the Boerner Botanical Gardens (AM). Keep those permission slip coming!

Wed., June 7 - Volunteer Breakfast (8 AM) and Year-End Assembly (9 AM); Poetry Cafe in our classroom, (2 PM).

Thurs., June 8 - Last day of school for students.

Fri., June 9 - Last day of school for teachers.

Why Poetry?

Why poetry?
Why?
Why sunsets?
Why trees?
Why birds?
Why seas?

This is an excerpt from a poem by Lee Bennett Hopkins that I shared with the boys and girls on our very first day of reading and writing poetry. I wanted to send a message then that poetry is special - so special that some people can't imagine a world without it. I told them that poetry brought together meaning and music and that the result could be powerful and exciting. They bought it! The boys and girls spent this week finding some amazing poems that touch their hearts and others that tickle their funny bones. And they have been writing poems that often do the same for me.

If poetry seems frivolous, think again. This week, I heard Wisconsin's poet laureate, Karla Houston, speak. She said,"When you write poetry, any other writing you do is the better for it" because it requires a precision and a tight sense of organization that are assets to any genre. And reading poetry, she said, stretches our minds, requiring us to see an old tree as a grandma or find beauty in a spider's web. Please plan to come and share some poetry with us at 2 PM on Wed., June 6, at our Poetry Cafe. 

In other parts of our days, the boys and girls are revisiting the topic of measurement in math. Science has been lively as we've watched our mealworms go through various stages, from larva to pupa to adult Darkling beetle. We'll be observing a second group of insects - milkweed bugs - move through the stages of eggs, nymphs, and adults. And we are growing Brassica plants, and noticing how plants, too, follow a life cycle.

What an honor to have another student from our class chosen as one of the Sensational Six at this week's all-school assembly. Congratulations, Tierney! Your class is proud of you.

Mark Your Calendars:

Wed., May 24 - MAP Test - Language (PM); early release day for students; Milwaukee landmark projects due. Thanks for helping your child with this at home.

Thurs., May 25 - Field trip (AM). Walking tour of downtown Milwaukee. Thank you for returning your permission slip and fee.

Mon., May 29 - Memorial Day. No school.

Thurs., June 1 - All-school field trip to Bayside Middle School to see the musical (AM).

Fri., June 2 - Stormonth Talent Show, K-2 performers (AM).

Sat., June 3 - PTO-sponsored Cupcake Run/Walk and Carnival. See you there!

Mon., June 5 - Stormonth Talent Show, Grades 3 and 4 performers (PM).

Tues., June 6 - Field Trip to the Boerner Botanical Gardens (AM).

Wed., June 7 - Volunteer Breakfast (8 AM) and Year-End Assembly (9 AM); Poetry Cafe in our classroom, (2 PM).

Thurs., June 8 - Last day of school for students.

Fri., June 9 - Last day of school for teachers.

Poetry, Please!

The children have seen themselves as authors for some time now. This week, they began to see themselves as poets, too - able to look closely and carefully at even ordinary things like a pencil sharpener or a crayon and to tell about them in new and unexpected ways. They are understanding that poetry is about the sounds of words, as well as the silences that poets create by breaking lines apart to trail down a page. The kind of poetry that the children are writing now is free verse. It does not have to rhyme; it does not need a certain number of syllables or lines. This is more about capturing ideas and presenting them in lyrical ways. After the very heavy work of nonfiction research and writing, poetry feels like a breath of fresh air.

At reading times, we've immersed ourselves in the poetry of others. The first days of the this new unit were spent simply reading from the large collection of poetry books now in our classroom library - sports poems, animal poems, weather poems, classic poems from the likes of Langston Hughes, Robert Frost, and Emily Dickinson,  poems from new and unfamiliar sources, and poems in different shapes and sizes. Next week, we'll begin to study more explicitly how poems are created and we'll delve into the deeper meanings of some poems.

As a celebration of our poetry units - and our year together - we would like to invite you to a Poetry Cafe at 2 PM on Wed., June 7. The boys and girls will present some of their favorite poems. We'll have treats - and memories - to share. Watch for an official invitation in your child's binder.

We started math this week with extension lessons on symmetry and perimeter. We made and measured paper kites to help solidify the concepts. Now, we have began the final unit in our Math Expressions curriculum. We've covered arrays and fractions so far.

We finished our science unit on solids and liquids this week with an experiment on the changing properties of matter. We investigated the effects of melting and freezing on ice, margarine, and chocolate chips. Now, we can devote our full attention to plants and insects. We got a jump start on this work, though. A couple of weeks ago we began observing mealworms. We are watching closely as these insects make their way through a metamorphosis that is very much like a butterfly's. Fascinating!

It was a real treat this week to meet Lester Laminack, a specialist in children's literacy who has written six picture books and numerous texts for teachers. His visit to Stormonth was sponsored by the PTO. Second-graders listened as he deconstructed a familiar book, pulling apart the words to reveal the important decisions the author had made. He left students with an inspiring message to live like readers and writers.

Mark Your Calendars:

Mon., May 15 - MAP Test - Math (AM)

Thurs., May 18 - Safety Day with the Fox Point Police Department (AM); I will be out of the classroom all day for a second-grade team meeting. Mrs. Maier will be the sub.

Fri. May 19 - Karenna's last day before leaving for China. Class mini-concert during Music (12:20-12;50 PM)

Wed., May 24 - MAP Test - Language (PM); early release day for students; Milwaukee landmark projects due.

Thurs., May 25 - Field trip (AM). Walking tour of downtown Milwaukee. If you haven't don't so already, please return your permission slip and fee.

Mon., May 29 - Memorial Day. No school.

Thurs., June 1 - All-school field trip to Bayside Middle School to see the musical (AM).

Fri., June 2 - Stormonth Talent Show, K-2 performers (AM).

Sat., June 3 - PTO-sponsored Cupcake Run/Walk and Carnival. See you there!

Mon., June 5 - Stormonth Talent Show, Grades 3 and 4 performers (PM).

Tues., June 6 - Field Trip to the Boerner Botanical Gardens (AM).

Wed., June 7 - Volunteer Breakfast (8 AM) and Year-End Assembly (9 AM); Poetry Cafe in our classroom, (2 PM).

Thurs., June 8 - Last day of school for students.

Fri., June 9 - Last day of school for teachers.

Depths of Knowledge

Creating a replica of a rain forest, tundra, or ocean using assorted craft supplies, stuffed animals, recyclables, and a big roll of duct tape may not seem like it would require deep thinking, but I would argue otherwise. As evidence I submit some of the "talk" I heard as the boys and girls worked on their biome projects this week:

• "What if we hung the fish at different levels to show the different ocean zones?"
• "We want to show what the rain forest was like before pollution started wrecking things."
• "We should put cattails here so the frogs could hide from predators."
• "The elf owl has to be in the cactus. That's the only place it builds its nest."
• "This is a temperate forest so the trees have to be leafy kind."
• "The permafrost looks good, but now how can we make the northern lights?"

Can you hear it, too? These boys and girls really know their stuff. In their own ways, they are taking the knowledge that they acquired through research and assimilated through extensive writing - and they are applying it in a fresh, new way.

An education scientist named Norman Webb created a system for categorizing academic tasks according to the level of thinking required to successfully complete them. He envisioned four levels of cognitive demand with the lowest being basic recall and the highest being what he calls "extended thinking." Webb used words such as connect, create, design, and prove to describe what "extended thinking" meant to him. It seems to  me that the  biome project work going on in the classroom this week meets his criteria. And the best part is that these second graders had a blast doing it!

Watch for your child's biome book to come home soon and with it a photo from his or her biome. I think that you, too, will be impressed by their hard work as readers and writers, their incredible use of imagination, - and their deep thinking.

In other subject areas this week, we completed our math unit on multi-digit addition and subtraction (with regrouping and ungrouping), we studied contractions, and we continued to investigate liquids and solids, particularly mixtures of each.

A word about class placements for next year. There has been a fair amount of confusion around the third-/fourth-grade multi-age class. I apologize for adding to that in my conversations with some of you at conferences. I simply had not been told what was going on. I hope that Karen Grimm-Nilsen's letter, which you should have received on Wednesday, helped to clarify things, including the makeup and operation of the MAC classes. I will meet with the other second-grade teachers next week to begin creating heterogeneous classes for third grade, including the MAC class. This is a very thoughtful process. We consider reading levels and math abilities. We look for students who would seem to connect well socially. We consider special needs of all kinds. If you have questions or concerns, please share them with me by Monday so that I can take these into account as we work to create groupings for next year.

Finally, it's been a wonderful Teacher Appreciation Week. Thank you to the PTO, all of you, and the children for filling this week for special treats and surprises. I feel extremely fortunate to be part of a district with such caring and supportive families.

Mark Your Calendars:

Wed., May 10 - MAP Test - Reading (AM); early release day for students

Thurs. May 11 - Visit with author Lester Laminack sponsored by the PTO

Fri., May 12 - PTO-sponsored Special Interest Day (PM)

Mon., May 15 - MAP Test - Math (AM)

Thurs., May 18 - Safety Day with the Fox Point Police Department (AM)

Fri. May 19 - Class mini-concert during Music (12:20-12;50 PM)

Wed., May 24 - MAP Test - Language (PM); early release day for students

Thurs., May 25 - Field trip. Walking tour of downtown Milwaukee. A letter and permission slip were sent home today.

Mon., May 29 - Memorial Day. No school.