Mrs. Harju’s Classroom Blog

The second graders (now almost third graders!) love their dads! Sit back and enjoy our video tribute to our wonderful dads.

As the school year comes to a close, it is a great time to reflect on what we liked, what we learned and other favorites. I love to read the responses of the children as I never know what activities or lessons will be their favorites. They always surprise me and delight me. I know I have included that they like the teacher, but that is as it should be. If a second grader does not like the teacher, then we have a problem!

Here are their responses to the following prompts:

My favorite thing about second grade…..
It is the best in the entire world, I get to meet new friends, technology, Reading, Accelerated Reader testing, that we have fun everyday, the teachers, recess, the wiki, praying and learning about God.

My favorite Field trip….
The Critter Barn (Zeeland Michigan, great place!), Zoo, Lollipops Concert, Jersey Junction

This year I learned….
How to do math better, and read better, and write and I learned poetry, multiplication, rocket math, that people can be really fun, how to play Sparkle, Claymation, about technology.

Here are some of the best things about second grade….
Story time, everything, cool poems, dancing for Accelerated Reader points, reading, writing, math, poetry, class wiki and blog, you get to meet the best teachers, you get to go on field trips, you get to learn things, First Communion, recording poems on the computer, my friends, recess, songs, pancake breakfast, we play games, writing and publishing books, pizza party at Uno’s, Rocket Math, Add it Up, learning multiplication, Claymation, making videos and watching our videos.

Just typing it all puts a smile on my face. I am glad that we had time to write stories, make videos, read poetry, play math games and read books. I know that we did have a great year, that learning did occur, and these children are leaving second grade with some great memories and wonderful experiences. It has been a wonderful year!

On Tuesday, May 27, the children had Art with Mrs. Glanz (we LOVE Art with Mrs. Glanz!) She taught the children how to fold paper to make puppets. The children used colorful paper and added details to jazz up their puppet. When I went to the art room to get the class, I saw that they were happily talking to each other with their puppets. When we got back to the classroom, I asked the children to work in small groups and write a play for their puppet and we could perform the plays for the class. They were very excited and got right to work. They wrote a story and then asked for paper to make a background. While they worked on this, I put together a stage. When all were finished with their stories, the show began. Below is a video of all of the children’s puppet shows. The children had a great time and we thank Mrs. Glanz for inspiring us with the great puppet making lesson.

We want to wish all of our Moms a Happy Mother’s Day. The second graders have shared many special thoughts about mom in this wonderful video. Make sure you have the tissue box handy, and enjoy!

Today was Miss Haywood’s last day of student teaching. We celebrated our wonderful time together with a great party. Cupcakes, Gatorade, Cookies and Ice Cream put smiles on our faces. Miss Haywood read to us, played another great game of SPARKLE with us and quizzed us on how well we knew her. (I think we knew her pretty well!) We also had double Rocket Math tests and were very proud of how well we did! We know we will see Miss Haywood again as she has a date to substitute teach at the end of the month and we hope she gets called to sub more than that. Miss Haywood is a great teacher and we were very lucky to have her in our classroom!

The children had a great time at Uno’s today. They were wonderfully behaved and polite throughout the trip. The bus ride was comfortable - high soft seats! At Uno’s each child created his or her own pizza, enjoyed way too much soda, nibbled on some french fries and saw the kitchen area of Uno’s. They have an enormous refridgerator (it could hold enough ice cream for a year!) and they make a lot of pizza - As many as 600 in one day. (The second graders could probably eat almost that much.) Everyone enjoyed eating the pizza they created and chatting with each other and with our great waitress, Jess. It was a wonderful way to celebrate the children’s amazing reading achievement. We again thank Ms. Dolan for arranging the trip for us.

We did do some work when we arrived back at school. Last week we wrote our own version of the Dr. Suess story, A Wocket in My Pocket, and today we each illustrated our line from the poem and rewrote our line. The new poem and illustrations are displayed outside of our classroom. We also worked on place value in math and listened as Mrs. Harju read about Pippi Longstocking.

We are thrilled to have everyone in the class past the 100 AR point level. Our celebration will be at Uno’s (Thank you Ms. Dolan!) next week Tuesday. The children will make their own pizza, get a tour of the restaurant, enjoy beverages while we wait for our pizza and Eat Great Pizza! We have worked very hard to get to this level and all of the students are excited to have this wonderful opportunity to celebrate.

The children arrived excited to learn (well actually they didn’t care for the let’s get to work welcome that I gave them!) We tried something new today that I called 4 Corners. The children have 4 kinds of activities to choose, with two assignments in each category. They could work on what they wanted first and choose partners when needed. They especially enjoyed the two poetry activities. The children had to choose a poem, practice reading it, and have someone else video tape them reciting it. We were able to watch a few of the videos later in the day and learned a few things. We also had a few bloopers — a few people didn’t know they had left the video camera on and one camera person made us a little seasick with the back and forth motion! We will work on these activities more Tuesday.