Gobble, Gobble!

 Thank you, Arantza and Marisabel!

This year, I feel like I have more to be thankful for than ever, ever, ever before. I am graced each day by the presence of 16 lively, bright, unique students with special gifts to offer me and every other class member. I am humbled by a lovely, welcoming parent community who is willing to give and give. I am lucky to work in a kind, wonderful professional climate.

I think our second graders said it best in response to my question on the Morning Message "What's one thing you're thankful for in school?" Responses were mostly along the lines of: we're kind to each other, we are welcoming, we are nice, we are friendly, we have fun. Life is good in 2B.

In this spirit of Thanksgiving, Marisabel (Arantza's creative mom!) volunteered to facilitate an ADORABLE Thanksgiving craft for our second graders this week. She enabled our students to be festive and start their day off with some Thanksgiving fun. It was clear that her (and Arantza) has spent quite some time carefully preparing the tiny turkey feet, pairs of googly eyes, colorful neat feathers, and little orange beaks so that each student could make their own fun bird. They are complete with clothespin stands glued on the back to make a fun decoration for a Thanksgiving table, or what have you. On the back of their turkey's body, each student wrote one thing they were thankful for. I got a kick out of "I'm thankful for video games" and was warmed by many "I am thankful for my family and friends because they love me"s.

 Happy Thanksgiving!

 Some silly turkeys, for sure.

Solids, Liquids, and Parents

This week marked the start of our first science unit on States of Matter: Solids, Liquids and Gas and it quickly became clear that 2B is crazy for science!  Students are revved up about their investigations, observations, working in cooperative learning groups where everyone plays an important role, and making new discoveries about our natural world.

I loved the moment when Kaelan raised his hand this week and said "I just know this is gonna be a fun day!" And it was. On Wednesday, we had the special opportunity to involve our parent and family community in our science lesson for Parent Visitation Day. Our mission? To apply what we observed the previous day about various properties of solids to THE TOWER CHALLENGE! The students morphed into engineers and were responsible for constructing towers while also being able to articulate why certain objects made a "good base" or a "good top of the tower." What I liked best, though, was that our parent community was invited to take the challenge with their student, as well in a shared investigation. As I drank in the picture of parents twirling aluminum foil and wires and manipulating cloth squares and plastic containers, I thought that my classroom just felt 'right' at that moment. 

Our students were proud and deeply engaged in their work as engineers and I ended the day feeling confident that our parents got a healthy dose of what life in 2B feels like, looks like, and sounds like: the electric energy of active children (and teachers!!), various solid manipulatives strewn across desks with notebooks open to charts and tables, and the busy hum of thinking brains filling the pale blue walls.

Vote for SOMEBODY!

On the morning of November 6, I woke up giddy and wide-eyed at 5:00 am (a whole 45 minutes earlier than I usually rise!). I couldn't wait to exercise one of my most favorite freedoms, the right to vote. Admittedly, it's only my second time voting in a presidential election! As much as I couldn't wait to vote,  I really couldn't wait to share some Election Day learning with our second graders and was ecstatic at the questions and buzz in Room 2B about Election Day leading up to it. I was impressed and proud of how aware and informed our students are at such a young age.

As I walked out of my local middle school, ballot cast, I felt tears well up in my eyes. I don't know if it's because now-this year, for the first time-I have an audience of 16 in front of me, learning and growing before my eyes, and I felt like there was just so much I wanted to share with them....
-about democracy and our freedoms
-what it FEELS like to be able to vote
-what makes our country exceptional
-that we have the right in this country to disagree and hold strong beliefs and stand up for them and talk about them!
-the aspirations and accomplishments that they have to look forward to as our future leaders

So, after we tallied up our predictions on our Morning Message about which candidate we believed might win (Obama had more tallies), we greeted each other as follows: "Good Morning, Future President ________" (student last name). Our second graders giggled and scoffed playfully at this greeting, but I stopped them for a second. The room got quiet. And then I told them we are greeting each other like this today because I want you to know that you CAN be our nation's leader one day, and that's one of the beautiful things about our country, and I have no qualms that you are each brilliant and capable. We were pensive and silent for a moment. I watched the students drink this in. Still giggles during the greeting, though, which was rather fun.

Next, we quietly took our seats in front of our SMART Board and watched this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVkfNUxRh7g

Throughout the day, students participated in a mock election (Obama won it) and students voiced questions and wonderings about the election. Trying to explain the electoral college in response to Karsten's question of: "what if there's a tie?" was quite interesting! Then, students learned more about the election process with a read aloud: Duck for President by Doreen Cronin, complete with a duck puppet!

All day, students tried to figure out who I voted for. I explained the importance of listening closely to both candidates, asking and researching questions, thinking about what beliefs we each personally hold most dear, and keeping votes private-especially as their teacher. Still, Eli came up to me at the end of the day and said "Ms. Baier, I think I've got you figured out..." and to this I sang, "I'll never tell!"

Ms. Baier is Missing

After a totally wacky week, why not making it wackier by hosting a guest teacher!? The evil substitute from Harry Allard's acclaimed picture book, Miss Nelson is Missing actually APPEARED in Room 2B on Thursday morning. When Ms. Baier inconspicuously disappeared after music and before Read Aloud time, none of the students thought anything of it! Mrs. Fraser cracked open Miss Nelson is Missing; our second graders love this series of woeful days at school with an evil "sub." Students laughed and screamed at the parts when Miss Viola Swamp, the dark, hideous substitute appeared. But never did they think that she was lurking just outside the classroom, waiting to storm in.

Miss Viola Swamp thought she would be greeted with terrified screams when instead, she was greeted by shrieking giggles and surprised stares. Miss Swamp stormed in the room and demanded attention in a gravelly voice, cloaked in all black with witch-like leather heels, black lipstick and eyeshadow, and a vampiress wig the color the midnight.

Her alibi? That Ms. Baier had to leave suddenly, terribly sick. Her job? To introduce students to their Reader Response journals, teach them the expected format, and give them their first formal assignment in it: How is the Viola Swamp in your classroom similar to the Viola Swamp in the book Miss Nelson is Missing? How is she different?

A sample of a student response:
"The Viola Swamp in our room and the Viola Swamp in the book are both creepy. They both wear black and they both YELLLLLLL!!!! The Viola Swamp in our classroom is different from the one in the book because she is bad on the outside but good on the inside, because she's Ms. Baier."

I thought I'd have them FOOLED more than I did!!! (Couldn't help but smile at the expressions on their faces; it gave me away!) Alas, they saw through the facade. Still, it was tons of fun to dive into character in the spirit of Halloween, a favorite read, and the beauty of bringing books to life.

Effort and Ease

At 10:15 each Sunday morning, I walk into a wonderfully peaceful yoga studio with a kind and inspirational instructor, Natasha, for an hour and fifteen minutes of re-centering, inner peace, and quiet thought. Natasha engages in this interesting stream-of-consciousness type thought, an offering for feeding her students' minds and bodies. What she says sticks with me many days, but today particularly, one small phrase stuck...and for the rest of the practice, I let my own thoughts draw parallels between my yoga practice, my teaching practice, and our second grade students' learning. 

In regards to the pose we were doing at the moment, the words Natasha used were:

We're searching for effort and ease.

Effort and ease.

I said them over and over to myself, a mantra. What I then began to think about was this:

Since my first day with our second graders, in the classroom, I have been searching for effort and ease there. I have been hoping for effort and ease on the part of my students, for myself, and for our class to collectively feel. I just wasn't able to so eloquently state it.

As a new teacher, I am searching for this balance of effort and ease in my teaching practice. I am putting forth immense effort--effort in planning each lesson for each day, wrapping my head around the essential questions and enduring understandings for each unit for each content area, studying the curriculum, growing by reading professional publications, providing thoughtful written feedback to students, setting professional goals, contributing on a professional level with my colleagues, collaborating with parents--the list goes on. In the midst of all this, though, I began to recognize that I am feeling at ease in many ways, too--ease in feeling comfortable in my own skin as a teacher, feeling at ease in the fact that though I'm putting forth my best effort every single day, teaching is imperfect (and that's actually, contrary to my inner perfectionist, okay!!). I'm recognizing ease in the fact that I know my students quite well already and I will continue to get to know them better as learners and thinkers and individuals, ease in the fact that our parent and family community in 2B is wonderful in so many ways, ease in the fact that I insist on kindness, on a culture of learning, on a community of trust.

Effort in conferring on writing personal narratives, ease in knowing I'm meeting student needs in this moment

Effort in planning SMART Board lessons, ease in engaging students (sparking as well as witnessing many smiles while learning)

Somewhere in between the spine series and balance series in this Sunday morning class, my focus shifted away from what this phrase meant for me as a teacher to ponder what it might mean for our students. For our second graders, I thought about the ways effort manifests itself in our students' written response to reading and in Writer's Workshop, verbal responses in classroom discussions, justification of thinking in math, creative thinking, interpersonal problem solving, practicing self-control, responsibility, respect in Morning Meeting and throughout our day. I thought about my hopes that these efforts are in fact made possible by the ease our students feel--ease in the fact that they exist in a safe, respectful classroom that accepts them fully as an individual and values them uniquely, ease in feeling comfortable to take risks (whether it be raising a hand or sharing news from their personal life or asking for help when they feel like they need it), ease in the fact that they are learning and growing in a room where we make learning fun yet push each other to try new things and think in new ways and gain new understanding every single day.

Effort in creative writing, ease in quiet independence

Effort in collaborative group work, ease in the freedom to be themselves

At about this time, my brain was quietly humming with these very active thoughts, but Natasha's far away voice told us it was time for shavasana, or final relaxation. This was my cue to quiet my mind and just be still. The thing was, though, that it was one of those days where I couldn't quiet my brain, not at all. Because this new mantra--the search for a striking a balance between effort and ease--as it applies to our life in Room 2B was buzzing in my brain, and I was thrilled that I had a new way to frame my goals for myself and our students. I couldn't wait to write about it.

Meticulous Measurers

2B has been buzzing each day at 1:00. Sometimes, learning is loud...it's loud in a fluttering-with-activity kind of way. It's loud with a sense of urgent movements as students parade around fitted with rulers, metersticks, and yardsticks. It's loud with a "oh!! Let's see how many meters long the SMART Board is!" kind of way. So, while personally I am a proponent of calm and quiet focus, I can still appreciate the messy, somewhat raucous-but meaningful-thinking, talking, and doing that has gone down in 2B over the past two weeks.

On Friday, students were addressed in the Morning Message as "Meticulous Measurers." They read on to learn that the word "meticulous" means "careful." We have measured objects in our room--and a few at home--in inches, feet, yards, meters, and centimeters. Students are learning the business of careful measuring. They are learning to slow themselves down and appreciate the precision required in actually measuring as well as the reasonableness that a good estimate should have. Students are showing evidence of visualizing units of measurement in their head.

I know this because I ask them to estimate before they measure anything and then, they can bet that I'll ask "why does that estimate make sense?" or "how do you know that's a good estimate?" I gently nod and offer a smile as I watch the wheels turning in their head, putting together an explanation of the fact that they visualized "what a ruler looks like" to help them make a thoughtful guess. These kinds of justifications of mathematical thinking are challenging for our second graders to work through and verbalize, but they are making gains in doing so.

Enjoy some pictures of our busy classroom during math!

 Fitted with a meter-long link belt and a ninja meter stick

 Visualizing and solidifying understanding of how long a meter really is using links

Discovery: 1 meter is 30 links long

Post-measuring bonanza

(They had just captured me and added to their list "Ms. Baier: About 2 meters tall")

SMART Board Unveiled

In September, we welcomed our long awaited, much anticipated SMART Board! Leading up to its appearance, the students regularly posted sticky notes on our parking lot that said "when is the SMART Board coming?" and "how do we use a SMART Board?" and "what is a SMART Board?" Our parking lot is a place where students can post questions that are floating in their brain and that can't be answered right at that moment. At some point later on that day or week, I always get around to discussing parking lot questions. Anyway, one afternoon, two burly men appeared in our classroom after school hours and installed our SMART Board. I was so excited they were there; I even took pictures of the installation process to show the students. Yay!!!

So, what is a SMART Board anyway? It is an interactive white board with a touch screen. It has a sturdy steel back and is connected to one of our classroom computers. I have all of the SMART Board software downloaded to my school and personal computers to work with from home and plan lessons. It is a highly engaging learning tool that we can write on (in all different ways...with our fingers, with the special pens, using calligraphic ink, using magic disappearing ink...the list goes on and on). Many interactive lesson plans are already uploaded to an incredible, safe site called SMART Exchange and are aligned with Common Core State Standards. I can create our own SMART Board lessons, which I do from time to time, but the resources we have available to us that are already made and ready to rock are amazing. Two students can interact with the board at a time. I usually pull popsicle sticks for students to come to the board. So far, we have used it for all subject areas and will continue to do so throughout the year.

This technology was new to our second grade youngsters, but I wasn't at all surprised that within 10 minutes of using it, our students were itching to explore with it...no cold feet in our room! Our students and their generation have been coined "digital natives" and rightfully so; our second graders are savvy with this unique tool and though we have just dipped our toes in the huge ocean of SMART technology, our students are acclimated and comfortable with it. 

What have we done on the SMART Board so far? 

-Interactively graphed how many teeth we have lost in 2B and interpreted our data

-Shared-writing journaling about fall: different students come up and add a sentence to a whole-class journal entry using our 5 senses (to be continued this week)

-Watched kid-friendly videos to help the even/odd digits stick in our brains

-Learned about Viking clothing, occupations, homes, and locations

-Written story problems using a gumball machine with digital manipulative gumballs

-Worked with money by filling up digital coin purses and writing corresponding number sentences

-Watched Ms. Baier model the art of journaling about fall topics

...and much more to come this week (and the next, and the next!)

Here is a photo sampling. I took some screen shots of our SMART Notebook files to give you a taste of what our work together has looked like. It doesn't exactly do it justice, as the uber cool interactive piece is missing, but at least you get an idea of what this is all about!

I began our lesson about creating and interpreting bar graphs by setting the purpose with this silly slide!

We dragged our pictures to the appropriate bars on the graph to create and interpret a class graph about teeth lost in 2B!

I wrote this entry in front of the students to model the process of journaling and living a writerly life.

Stay tuned for more SMART updates!