Guest Readers

Hello, Giraffe Families!

We will begin having weekly Guest Readers in the Giraffe Class. As a guest reader, you can bring in 1-2 picture books to share with the class and help us grow our reading brains! All family and friends are welcome :) If you are interested, please sign up for one of the dates listed on our Sign Up Genius. If the dates/times listed do not work for you, please reach out to me and we can arrange another time for you to come in.

We will also begin having Center Volunteers every Friday. As a volunteer, you would be helping the giraffes with either a math/literacy game or a craft activity. All friends and family are welcome to come in to volunteer. If you would like to sign up for one of our available slots, please click here! If the dates/times listed on our Sign Up Genius do not work for you but you would still like to join us, please feel free to reach out so we can figure out a time that does :) Thank you for your support!

Meeting Mrs. Wormwood!

On Monday, Mrs. Wormwood hopped up off the pages of our read-aloud book Matilda and came to visit our classroom!

Mrs. Wormwood took time away from her busy schedule at the BINGO hall to visit the giraffes. We'd been looking forward to her visit for over a week, and we had lots of questions for her that had come up in our reading. We asked her about her family, her life, and about the decisions she had made in the story. While she doesn't like kids, she said we were "not annoying" and she "didn't mind us"! 

Because she missed her daily Bingo session to visit us, we decided to play some Matilda-themed bingo as a class! 

Even if Mrs. Wormwood isn't the nicest or most caring character, she was VERY funny and we loved being able to hang out with a character from our book! We hope she might come to our Character Soiree on Friday, February 7th to meet some more characters from the Giraffe Class :)

Growing Our Literacy Lens

Over the last few weeks, we've been working on growing our reading and writing stamina. We've also begun to think beyond our stories through read-alouds, turn and talks, and partner reading. 

Mrs. Belanger, our new Assistant Principal at SMS, came into our classroom to read the story Going Places by Peter and Paul Reynolds. During the story, she asked us to think about how we could work together to create new ideas and collaborate to make our work even better. We loved seeing how two brains could be better than one!

The giraffes continued to do an amazing job talking about and sharing stories when we began partner reading at the end of our Reader's Workshop. Everyone was focused on their partners and they were all very flexible when it came to taking turns reading and sharing the stories from their book bins!

In order to help us generate ideas for our small moment stories, all of the giraffes were asked to bring in pictures of the people, places, and things they love most. On Thursday, we used those pictures to decorate our writing folders, which we will use throughout the year to inspire our writing. 

We loved seeing everyone's folders once they were complete. Many of us were able to make several connections over the pictures we had! We will continue to grow our literacy lens as we begin to dive deeper into our reading and writing, and we can't wait to see where our new literacy skills will take us in second grade and beyond!

GRA 2016: Welcome to Giant Country

We officially began our Global Read Aloud book for 2016, which is The BFG by Roald Dahl. 

During the witching hour, Sophie awakes and looks out the window to find a giant creature hiding in the shadows of night. The shadowy figure notices her, and even though she rushes back to her bed to hide beneath her covers, the creature reaches in and grabs her up, bed sheets and all. He whisks her away to Giant Country, where he reveals that he is the Big Friendly Giant, the smallest  (and kindest) giant in Giant Country. While we began to read, The BFG also stopped by our classroom to reach in and take us on an adventure as well! 

Many other classrooms around the world are also reading this story, and we will be connecting with them through twitter (using our classroom handle @2rgiraffes and the hashtag #GRABFG), skype, letters, and postcards as we read this wonderful tale together. All of the classrooms are following the same pacing guide, and every week we will respond to questions about the chapters we have read. This week, we sent out over 20 postcards to classrooms across the U.S and Canada who are also reading The BFG, and we talked with a few classrooms on Twitter about our thoughts from the beginning of the story. 

Ms. Riley picked up some NH postcards to send out to our fellow BFG readers. We brainstormed together as a class to write to our GRA buddies about our community. This is what we wrote:

Hello, Global Read Aloud Buddies!

We are second graders at Stratham Memorial School in Stratham, NH. We are in Ms. Riley’s class, and we call ourselves the 2R Giraffes. We have 18 kids in our class: 11 boys and 7 girls. Our school mascot is the wolf and our school colors are blue, grey, and white.. We just celebrated our town’s 300th anniversary with a parade! We get a lot of snow in the winter. We live close to the beach and sometimes, there are high waves during storms. Right now, it is fall and the leaves are changing color! New Hampshire is also known as the Granite State. We have the White Mountains up north, and we also have a bunch of nice lakes. We are excited to read the BFG, and we hope you are as well. Happy Reading!

Your Granite State Friends,

The 2R Giraffes

On Friday, we received our first postcard and added it to the map! This card came from Cambridge, Ontario in Canada Thank you to Mrs. Crits and your second graders for the awesome card!

We also put together a package for our mystery skype GRA Buddies, who are going to be skyping with us for the first time later next week. We are going to try to guess where they are located based on their answers to our questions, and they are going to try to guess where we are as well. Once we make our guesses, we will each open up our mystery boxes from one another to reveal items that represent our communities. In our box, we included maple candies and maple cotton candy, granite, a NH postcard, a book about the NH seacoast, and a NH magnet (since we've been studying them!). We also drew pictures to send along of what the BFG would see if he came to visit us:

SMS

Barns

Autumn Leaves

Moose

The White Mountains

Symbols of New Hampshire and New England 

Stratham Hill Park

Ms. Riley sent out our package to our buddies on Friday, and it should arrive just in time for our mystery skype at the end of the week. We hope they enjoy a small slice of New England, and we are already full of guesses for where our buddies could be located (but Ms. Riley's lips are sealed!)

We are so excited to continue reading when we return to school on Tuesday! Happy Long Weekend, Giraffes! 

Sign-Up for Mystery Reader

Hello, Families!

Earlier tonight, I sent out an email with a link to Sign Up Genius to sign up to be one of our Mystery Readers. We would love to have you come in to read with us!

Mystery Reader will take place every Blue Day from 12:45-1:15 pm. When it is your turn to be our mystery reader, please email Ms. Riley 3 clues about yourself to help us guess who you might be. If the dates and times listed on Sign Up Genius do not work for you, please let Ms. Riley know and she would be happy to arrange another day/time for you to come in to read with us. To sign up for a time or to check your time, click here!