#GRAMem

This year, we participated in Global Read Aloud with a picture book author study of Mem Fox. Mem is from Australia and writes from multiple different perspectives, and we were able to reflect on the similarities and differences between the characters in her books and ourselves as we read a new book every week throughout the month of October. Classrooms all around the world were also reading these stories, and we were able to connect with many of them through the hashtags #GRA17 and #GRAMem. To culminate our Global Read Aloud experience, we participated in a Travel Log with schools from around the world!

Each classroom participating in the Travel Log received a picture of a character from one of Mem's stories. We got a picture of Hattie from Hattie and The Fox, and we took her to the Giraffe Class, Maker Space, and out to recess! 

We shared some of our pictures on a Travel Log on Google Slides so other schools could see what adventures Hattie had been on in Stratham, NH. 

You can check out the whole Travel Log here!

Global Kind Project-Kindness in Words

This week, we kicked off the first week of The Global Kind Project (Kindness in words) by writing kind messages for all the students at SMS to read when they came out to recess. 

Before vacation, each of the giraffes got ready for The Global Kind Project by participating in Mission Possible, where each of the giraffes performed seven random acts of kindness. These activities included doing chores around the house, helping friends with a job at school, writing anonymous kind notes, and even smiling at others in the hallway! After performing our random acts of kindness, before our break, we were ready to carry out one more random act of kindness together as a class as we covered the blacktop with positive messages. 

While the rain washed away our kind messages after school on Monday, it also brought us this beautiful rainbow that many of us saw from our homes :) 

On Wednesday, we got to video chat with our #GKP17 buddies! We discovered our buddies go to school in Princeton, New Jersey, and despite being in a different state, we have a LOT in common with our second grade friends! (Fun fact: their school mascot is a giraffe named Ravioli!!) They taught us a fun game called Just Like Me that we played over our Google Hangout. Next week, we are going to be writing them letters to tell them a bit more about ourselves. 

Before we ended our video chat, we got to read an awesome book about Kindness together. We are excited to chat with them again soon!

We also began another project as part of the Global Kind Project, but we are going to keep it under wraps until it is complete! We can share this with you though--it might bring on a few happy tears when you see it :) 

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! 

Show Us Your Reading Muscles!

Hello, Giraffes! 

I hope your summer is off to an amazing start! I am sure lots of you have already been diving into some great books, and I wanted to share this opportunity from Scholastic with you. They want you to show off your best "Reading Muscles" and share a picture with them on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram with the hashtags #readingmuscles and #summerreading (with the help/permission of your parents, of course!) Every week, they will pick one winner who will receive a "Reading Superhero" prize pack! I am off to Acadia, so I will be sure to share some pictures with you from one of our favorite National Parks :) 

Good luck, and Happy Reading!