May 16, 2013

Wow! So many things have been happening in Room 13, and we are so excited to share some! Sorry it's been a while. We have been seriously caught up in Fairy Tale Land!

Scientist of the Week
We would like to share with you our three most current Scientist's of the Week.  They all taught us so many wonderful and fascinating things about science!

First up...Skylar taught us how to make fake snow! 
Check this out!

Next...Dylan showed us how to stab a strong potato with a flimsy straw! Who knew???

Finally, Serena taught us that different substances contain different masses! Click for your viewing pleasure.

Career Day!

Thank you Mrs. Marchand, Nurse Practicioner  and Mr. Jaffe, Lawyer and Volunteer Paramedic for teaching us all about your important professions!

Earth Day!
Our Shared Reading had students discussing how each and every person can "Save the Planet!"

Astronaut Ice Cream!!!!!!!
As a culmination to our Solar System unit of study, Ms. O'Neil provided a sweet treat to eat.

See Ya Real Soon!  

Hear Ye-Hear-Ye- Team Marsen has been HARD AT WORK preparing for our Royal Gala Event. See you Wednesday at 9 AM (SHARP) for a magical showing of our writing, acting, singing, and creativity!

April 5, 2013

Welcome Back!

We can't believe it is already the beginning of April! The children seemed to come back refreshed from a great vacation! We SPRUNG right back into work and had a lot of fun doing it!

Back-up!

The week before vacation was SOOO busy! We had two special events that we would like to share. 

The Star Lab!

The Star Lab was truly an amazing adventure that the Marsens took together.  We were able to learn all about the sun, the planets, the constellations, and so much more!   Room 13 loved every minute in the space bubble! Check out the picture of our class after returning to Earth!


Suzy Kline Author Visit

This was an amazing visit by a truly wonderful author! In the weeks leading up to Suzy Kline's visit, we conducted an author study of many Suzy Kline books.  The children truly loved reading, listening to, and discussing many Horrible Harry books.   The day Suzy came was exciting and interesting.  She shared with us her writing process, and what she does as a writer.  She shared her inspirations for many of her stories, and we loved hearing how she collected her ideas (the seeds).  Some advice she offered was, "Always carry a small notebook in your pocket. You never know when a seed to a story will happen." Suzy then had the teachers, Mr. Sinanis, and Mr. Grishman(wow!!!) perform a play from a part of her Herbie Jones series! Ask your child about our acting skills! Finally, Suzy took the opportunity to give the children and the teachers a couple of writing prompts.  She had us share what we wrote, and provided postitive feedback to all! Thank you Suzy Kline!

Folktales:
(People/Tales) Old and Retold!!
Room 13 was back at work and ready to launch Round 4 of the writing process! We began the week by immersing ourselves in different kinds of Folktales.  We read Tall Tales, Fairytales, and Fables OH MY!!!!  Ask your children about some of the wonderful Fables we read and the lessons they learned!  We are so proud of our all the children for actively trying to apply the lessons they are learning to their lives each day! We are looking forward to our trip next week to the Hofstra Playhouse to see Aesops Fables!

                                                                     

Text Savvy

As the year moves on, the children continue to learn about different kinds of texts.  The past two weeks, we learned all about Flyers during our Shared Reading process.  Each child then  began creating their own Flyer advertising something that they are experts on and that they could help others with, in the computer lab.  Look out for these, flying home sometime next week!

Scientist of the Week- Sam!

This week, Sam truly left his "mark" on the entire class.  He posed the question "What colors are in a black marker?" He clearly demonstrated that when a marker is drawn on a paper towel and then dipped into water, it contains the colors blue, red, and green! Check out Sam the Scientist in action!

March 22, 2013

March Madness!

It's hard to believe that we are almost at the end of March! What a month it has been! Room 13 has been super busy with so many fun and exciting activties.



PARP WEEK
Last week, we finally celebrated Parents As Reading Partners (PARP) Week.  We has so much fun during PARB (Parents As Reading Buddies), when many parents joined our classroom for our daily reading.  All the kids were excited to read with an adult and practice important reading skills during just right reading time. After four nights of reading at home, Team Marsen read a total of 1,371 minutes! Go Marsen Readers!!!!! Last Thursday was the Jester Jim Assembly. The audience was surely engaged in his performance!  Jester Jim created many different beats and tricks that entertained us all.  The highlight was watching Sadie get picked from the audience to juggle.  Way to handle being in the spotlight Sadie!

Scientist of the Week
Maytal "brightened" our classroom last week as Scientist of the Week! She taught the class that when milk, food coloring, and dish soap are combined, at first the food coloring floats on the surface of the milk.  This is because it is less dense than milk.  Then, the dish soap breaks down the fat molecules in the milk, which causes the water that is left in the milk and the food coloring to push out and move around, creating a tie dye design.  Thank you Matal for making this a truly colorful experience!

Skylar's a Winner!

At the Board of Education Meeting last Thursday night, Skylar was honored as one of the winners for the 2013 LIPC Essay Contest. She wrote an essay on "How School Makes Her Feel", and it was truly impressive! Her essay complimented her teachers and principal. We truly had our buckets filled! Thank you Skylar! Click on the link below to hear Skylar read her essay!(Thank you Mr. Sinanis for capturing this very special moment!)
http://youtu.be/zUS5Ax7Elns

We hope everyone has a wonderful "Spring Break" next week!

Enjoy this time with family and friends!

 

March 8, 2013

What a Connection!                        

Everyone knows Room 13 loves their weekly visits to the Cantiague Library on Fridays.  When it came time to learn about "Women in History", Team Marsen had the idea to collaborate with the amazing Ms. Tedesco on a culminating lesson about Ruby Bridges.

The background knowledge started to build when the class read the autobiography Ruby Bridges Goes to School- My True Story and learned of the challenges a young girl faced during the days of segregation.  We learned that Ruby Bridges was the first African-American girl to attend an all white school.  Due to her bravery, African-American children started attending all white schools.  The emphasis of this read aloud was celebrating a change that one female made in our history.

The next step was to read an article about Ruby Bridges that came from Scholastic News entitled "Ruby the Brave", which was an article giving us more information about Ruby Bridges and the struggles and triumphs that stemmed from her bravery.  We used this information to demonstrate our understanding of a text and answer comprehension questions on this topic.

The final puzzle piece was completed when Mrs. Tedesco joined our class for a fun-filled station teaching lesson. The students were broken up into three random groups.  Each group attended each station for approximately ten minutes.   Here is a "snapshot" of what happened in these three stations.

Station #1
Location: Front Carpet
Happenings at this station:
Mrs. Martin guided the children in an exploration of how the article "Ruby the Brave" and the autobiography Ruby Bridges Goes to School- My True Story, were alike and different.  The children were challenged to complete a Venn Diagram with the information ellicted from a book and an article.  Mrs. Martin was TRULY impressed with what the children came up with!                                                 
Findings: 
Students found many things in common from the article and autobiography! Spoiler Alert- they were both Scholastic publications! Ask your child what else they found that were the same in both texts and what was different about each text.

Station #2
Location: Back Carpet
Happenings at this station:
Mrs. Rosen led a discussion on the different non-fiction text features that can be found in an article.  Students were then asked to take a labeled word of a specific text feature and place it where it belongs on the article; "Ruby the Brave".  As each feature (ex. caption, bold text, subheadings etc.) was labeled, the children were asked to think about why it was included in the article and how it helped us to further understand Ruby Bridges and her story.  Bravo to all the children for being true detectives and finding out where the word belonged and why that feature was important in this non-fiction text.
Findings: 
Non-fiction text features help a reader navigate a text and truly understand the author's purpose for including these features.

Station #3
Location: Hallway
Happenings at this station:
Ms. Tedesco greeted the children in the hallway with warm smiles and cool books! She allowed the children to explore other Women in History books. This wonderful experience gave the children time to explore the importance of  specific women and celebrate their accomplishments during "Women in History" month.  They were exposed to texts about women like Michelle Obama, Amelia Earhart, Eleanor Roosevelt, Pocahontas, Anne Frank etc.  The children were asked to reflect on what they learned about their woman in history and what they are still wondering about that person. 

Wow! Can you believe this ACTION PACKED lesson happened in about 45 minutes!!!!!! Talk about making the most of your time!  

Room 13 loves stations!!!!!!!!!!!!

Scientist of the Week- David...."SHINES!"

Last week, Scientist David truly showed us how to be squeaky clean! We learned that vinegar and salt can turn something very dark and dirty (like an old penny) into something clean, shiny, and new!  
Thank you David for demonstrating this amazing experiment!

                                              

February 11, 2013

Fantastic February- The Literacy Edition!  

February started out truly fantastic in Room 13!  The children continue to be hard working, kind, and truly dedicated to learning.  

Reading Workshop

This month, we began our author study of Suzy Kline.  We are so excited for her author visit next month.  We kicked off learning about her books by reading Horrible Harry in Room 2B in both the classroom and in the Library with Mrs. Tedesco! This week, we zoomed in on Character Traits.  We learned about internal and external character traits, and how they are both used to describe a character in detail! We challenged the students to produce three star (***) "Stop and Jots".  

Here is the rubric for a three star post-it: 
* = identify a character trait
** =  identify a character trait and provide text evidence
*** = identify a character trait, provide text evidence, and include how this makes you think or feel!

We are so impressed with our *** work! GO READERS!

Writing Workshop
Our Biography Unit continues to be interesting and informative.  Now that our interviews are complete, the writing has begun! This week, we learned how to organize our writing into paragraphs and vary how we begin our sentences!  No one wants to read a writing piece that says he, he, he, he, he!  We truly appreciate the time the children and their families took to interview their special person and record some very interesting and important information about his/her life.  As always, the home school connection is truly appreciated.  Thank you to all the amazing parents! 

Landforms in the Making!
Clay, Diaramas, Posters, and a Wordsearch...OH MY!!!!!!!!! 
Who could ask for anything more? Check out the pics below of our architects in action!

Scientist of the Week
Last week, Logan truly sparkled with her amazing Glitter Globe experiment! Thank you to Logan for showing us that the glitter did in fact "stick" to the globe!  Check out Logan's jewels below!

Valentine's Day Celebration
In addition to all the exciting things happening above, we also had our Valentine's Day Celebration this week. We loved all the creative mailboxes made for this special day. Everyone enjoyed delivering their cards and treats around the room. Team Marsen loved reading all their "loving" cards from our students. Thank you to Mrs. Silverman and Mrs. Woo for helping celebrate with us.

Principal for a Day

Congrats to Ajer for winning "Principal for a Day"! We are so proud of everyone in the Cantiague Community that helped raise $5700 dollars to help our adopted school on the south shore that was destroyed during Hurricane Sandy. We know the money will help purchase materials needed for their students' education.  Principal Ajer is going to have a great day today, walking around the building to make sure that Cantiague students and staff members are safe, responsible, kind, respectful, positive and super stars!

We hope all of you have a wonderful break next week! Enjoy the time spent with friends and family!

January 30th- Please Post A Comment

Radical Research in Room 13!

As the Marsens embark on a new and exciting unit of Landforms, they once again impress us with their ability to learn about new topics and expand their already vast knowledge!  After learning about many different kinds of landforms, children were asked to pick one landform to become  an expert on!  The children began researching their landform in books, on the computer, and in resources in the Cantiague Library!

In addition to choosing which landform he/she wanted to research, students had a choice of which style presentation they wanted to represent the knowlege he/she gained during this unit of study. Ask your child what landform he/she is researching in class and the kind of project he/she will be making next week in school! We are so excited to see the final projects and reports when they are all complete!

Scientist of the Week

Our Scientist of the Week was none other than the talented, Zack Spector! Thank you Zack, for teaching the class that molecules move faster in hot water than in cold water.  See below to watch Zack's fantastic experiment! 

Jump-A-Thon 2013!!!

Last Friday was our annual Jump-A-Thon!  Our class headed down to the gym ready to jump our little hearts out.  We have to say we are one physically fit class.  Bravo!  Congrats to Maytal and Zack who jumped for over 5 minutes! Congrats to Mrs. Rosen who jumped the longest out of the partcipating Second Grade staff members.  Her husband (a physical education teacher in the city schools) would have loved to have been here to witness this accomplishment! Here are some pictures of our class jumping away!