Super Second Grade Smarties: First Week of School and a Sweet Memory Book

Well, almost one week down.....lots to go! I was so excited to meet my sweet kiddos! We already feel like a family! We got started right away talking about ....rules....you know....the stuff you have to do on the first day. I didn't want to just bark out rules at the kids so I asked them to think about what they needed this year in order to learn. What should the classroom be like? They came up with some good things like no kicking, don't be a bully, take turns..so I gave each kid a sticky note and they wrote down something that they thought would be a good rule. I took all of the sticky notes and came up with only three rules. So the next day we came back together to talk about our three rules. Here they are:

So, number 1...use your manners. This one rule just about covers EVERYTHING that anyone could possibly do wrong so we talked about how this rule applies in the classroom and at school, like no talking when someone else is talking, and of course the no kicking comment came up! We talked about what good manners look like in the classroom, on the playground, in the cafeteria and at specials like music and P.E. The next rule could really be in rule number 1 but it is don't keep others from learning. The kids came up with some good examples of this also like not talking when the teacher is talking and not bothering our neighbor when they are trying to work. And finally, ALWAYS do your best. We zeroed in on always completing our work, doing our homework and staying on task during center time....you know, center time when you are working with one group and there is this one kid, or one group who loves to do everything except what they are assigned to do! Ha! So we talked about how we may slip up occasionally but we would always try our best. Finally, everyone signed their name and promised to do their best to keep these rules all year. I let them use my special fruit scented markers to sign their names so they thought that was cool! So for the past 3 days, I have been pointing out when I see one of our rules being broken...I tell you, use your manners basically covers EVERYTHING! So we are well on our way to being the best behaved class!
I wanted to go ahead and start reading and math centers this week. I used my Back To School Literacy and Math Centers. These were basically easy enough for the kids to figure out on their own and I could be free to walk around and monitor so I could get the behavior that I want from center time. Here is a look at a few of the centers.

Here is a look at the entire unit.

You can see the unit in my Teachers Pay Teachers store by clicking HERE!

Finally, we have Open House for Parents in a few weeks. We started on our Sweet Second Grade Memory Book today. The first page asks the kids to draw a picture of them selves. Here are a few of the masterpieces that I saw today!