Well, I'm heading back to my roots - I'll be teaching fourth grade again next year. I have loved every second of teaching second grade. Each one of my students stole my heart from the first moment I met them. I had the most fun, engaging, and fresh year and I will treasure every memory with my incredible little people.

Now, I'm onto a new adventure a little closer to home. I'll be reuniting with my old partner and working with the big kids again. I'm excited to see where this adventure leads me and how I'm going to incorporate everything I learned from my little ones into my new classroom.

Have a great summer and I'll see you on the other side of September.  

Want to watch our play? 2B's section is in the middle. Here it is!

     We have spent the past two weeks in social studies discussing citizenship and government. We learned that a citizen is given certain rights as a member of a community (right to vote, to speak your mind, to change your name). The government provides schools, roads, hospitals, and utilities to help us have healthy and productive lives. In return, we have certain responsibilities to help each other. We will complete a project to help the common good in a few days.
      We also discussed the inner workings of a city council and the mayor. We divided into council groups to name our town and discuss important city issues. We learned how hard it was to listen to others and to compromise when necessary. We also that the mayor of a city has a very difficult job as he/she must negotiate the city council to pass rules and laws.
     

Below are books we created about our trip to the Science Center. Each child reported on a specific exhibit that he/she visited. To create these videos, we used the iPad camera, a drawing program called PaintSparkle, and Book Creator for iPad. These videos are slow to load, so please be patient.

2B has been treated to a string of famous visitors over the past few weeks. Historical figures from past and present have stopped by to share their life stories with us. We have learned about so many people and their contributions to our lives! Below are pictures of the many famous people who have dropped in.

...and with it has come a serious case of spring fever! 2B students have been unusually rowdy these past few days. We spent our morning discussing appropriate school behavior and wrote some simple rules to follow for the rest of the year. 

Here they are:

     1. Behave appropriately - be respectful during learning times and save silliness for the appropriate times.
     2. Pay attention quietly and listen respectfully - talk only when you're called on and let others have their turn to speak.
     3. Walk through the hallways quietly - when you're in the halls, allow others to learn by being quiet and stay safe by walking. 

We noticed these three rules all fall under the golden rule of treating others with respect. We promise to work our hardest to follow these rules.  We have a lot to learn in this last month of school and we don't want to waste a minute!

On Thursday, we took a trip to the Maryland Science Center. The trip was divided into three parts.

Part 1 - Radical Reactions
           We did experiments about gas, liquids and solids. We poured substances together to make chemical reactions. 
Part II - Exhibits
            We were assigned an exhibit to explore. We had to figure out what was so important about the exhibit.
Part III - On Your Own
            We explored the museum with our chaperons. We got to do whatever we wanted to do.

Here are some of the things we liked:

Ryan - I liked the bed of nails and I also liked the tornado booth.
Jessica - I liked the thing where you push up the big heavy bowling and then you put it down and the tennis ball goes flying up.
Anthony - I loved a few things. I loved the bed of nails, the pulley, the tornado booth, and the thing you waved your hand and the water would make a tornado.
Daniel - I liked a couple of things. I liked the generator where you spun the wheel and it showed you how many volts you made. I liked that you controlled the city of Baltimore for a few days and tried not to make brown outs or black outs.
Julia B - I liked the thing where you smell and have to guess what it is. One was chocolate and the other was root beer. I thought the root beer was a cookie. It was hard to smell because the cafeteria was next door.
Asher - I liked a lot of things. I liked the tornado booth, the chair pulley, the photo booth, the machine that told how many years old you are. My body was actually 21 because I answered the questions funny. I also liked the bed of nails.
Jonah - I liked the light bulb thing where you have to turn the bicycle wheel and it showed how much energy you needed to light an LED bulb, a fluorescent bulb, and an incandescent bulb. It was easiest to light the LED bulb.
Oscar - I liked the pulley chair and I liked the bed of nails. I liked the hurricane booth and I liked the thing that Anthony said where you create a tornado. 
Julia L - I liked where you pulled the chair up and the hurricane booth. It goes 78 miles per hour. I also liked the shadow screen where you danced and it showed your shadow.
Jacob - My favorite part was losing my kippah in the hurricane simulator
Zach - My favorite things - bed of nails, the thing where the electricity goes up two poles and you have to control the electricity, and the bicycle where you had to make the electricity. I also liked the things that you touched and it turned hot cold. Sometimes it turned super duper hot and sometimes really cold. My last was the hypnotist that made you sleepy.
Hannah - My favorite part of the trip was the bed of nails, going tot he thing that you stand still and it measures how tall you are. I liked seeing my brain, seeing my cells, and trying to go into the photo booth, but Bubby wouldn't let, even though Mommy let Marissa and Julia do it. 

Our Lower Schoolers were treated to a heartfelt thank you today by one of our Bunches of Lunches recipients. She and her mother have enjoyed your lunches since October of last year. She couldn't wait to come to school to give the kids a huge air hug and thank each child for his/her generosity. She brought every lunchbag she and her mother have ever received - she saved them all! She loved the drawings, stickers, and notes written by our lower school students. 

To date, we have donated over 1,000 lunches to the isolated elderly in our community. Thank you, parents, for your generosity and commitment to making this program so successful!  A special shout out goes to the parents in 2B who volunteer each month to organize and deliver these lunches!

As you know, we have been studying adjectives this week. To complete this project, we brainstormed adjectives to describe our favorite food. Then we created a life-sized Venn diagram using hula hoops and compared our favorite foods. After we took a picture of our Venn diagrams, we explained the process and included sentences using comparative adjectives. Enjoy!
  

The Bo N'Daber theme for April was conflict resolution. We discussed the many conflicts in which second graders find themselves. We discovered that every conflict had a similarity - they all occurred at times there was no teacher around. Most of the time, the conflicts happened on the playground or at other unstructured play times. Sometimes, we realized we got into conflicts when we worked with partners on school projects. Here is a list of the conflicts that second graders get into:
   1. At recess - when teams aren't fair
   2. At play times - when someone feels excluded
   3. At play times - when we argue about the rules of a game
   4. At play times - when someone feels excluded
   5. When someone uses hurtful or mean words
   6. During a misunderstanding
   7. When answers are right or wrong

After we determined the sources of conflicts, we worked together to come up with some solutions to use to solve the conflict, Our goal is to find tools for us to use so we can solve the conflict ourselves, without asking a teacher for help. Of course, we know that if we can't solve the problem ourselves, our teachers are always available to help us.

Here is our list of solutions:
   1. Use "I" messages to let the other person know how we feel
   2. Take turns choosing
   3. Mix up the players for teams so the teams aren't always the same
   4. Walk away
   5. Remember that this is about playing and we shouldn't spend our time arguing
   6. Compromise so everyone gets a little of what they want
   7. Play rock, paper, scissors to find a solution

We have been learning about onomatopoeia. What is that, you ask? Listen and you shall learn!