Wall of Hope

Today was a special day at MES, not only did we have our grandparents come to visit (sorry I didn't get any pics because the kids that didn't have grandparents come had to go back to the room with me and eat lunch), we also commemorated the 10th anniversary of the September 11th events. The kids had a hard time understanding what happened that day, so we watched a fantastic clip from Nick News that explained the events in a way that is kid-friendly.

http://www.nick.com/videos/clip/nick-news-what-happened-the-true-story-of-september-11th-full-episode.html

We also went outside for a special ceremony. We created a Wall of Hope, if you drive by MES and look at the fence you will see many ribbons tied to the fence. Several classes, including ours, participated by tying ribbons to the fence and then each 5th grade class released 10 balloons in honor of the 10th anniversary.

 Tying our ribbons to the fence!

 Waiting for the ceremony to start.

 Some of the 3rd grade ribbons.

Each 5th grade class had a different color balloon.

 We counted down and they released their balloons!!

 There they go!!

 What a great way to remember and honor all those effected by the events of that day!!

This Week

This week we have been reading the story:

It is a very cute story!!

and we read a non-fiction story about Stars!!

We also learned how to do a few of our Daily Five activities. One of which involves using our:

and Play-Doh!

We used Play-Doh and practiced spelling out our words. The kids loved it!! I think this might be our favorite station by far!

 Jainayah hard at work!

 TayShaun had several words spelled out!

 Amalia spelled hand!

Chrissy spelled out ask!

This was so much fun!! Thanks to the parents who sent in Play-Doh!! It will get a lot of use! :)

Last Week

Last week we read:

The kids loved it!! They were really interested in space!!

They worked so hard last week! We had a great week!!

A few pictures from last week!!

Here are a few pics from last week!

We started our first reading unit of the semester. We are going to be talking about:

Our first story was:

They are working hard on reading practice pages:

We also decorated "offices" to use on test days! I laminated them so they will last the entire year!

They worked hard on these and enjoyed seeing them laminated!! I bet every one of them asked me if they will get to take them home at the end of the school year! :)

Tuesday and Wednesday

We have had a busy two days at school! Tuesday during math time, we played Addition bingo to practice our facts.

 Everyone was wanting to yell BINGO!

 We then read "Chrysanthemum" and the students wrote their name on dot stickers and put a sticker for each letter on a unifix cube. We then grouped the girls and boys together to see which group had the most letters when they combined all their names. The girls won!!

 The boys were working hard!

 All our names on the cubes!

 On Wednesday, we read "Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs" and the students drew a picture of what kind of food they would like to see falling from the sky!

 We have some great artists in our class!

 We also started our Social Studies unit " Where We Live". They were working hard looking up vocabulary words!

 A few finished early and enjoyed reading in the library.

 Our words!

We have had a fabulous week so far!



We had a great first day!!

We had a pretty awesome first day of school if I must say so myself!! We read "Miss Nelson is Missing" and made a missing person poster for either Miss Nelson or Miss Swamp. We learned our class rules and procedures and we read "Where the Wild Things Are" and used it to learn a new comprehension strategy, Check for Understanding. 

After lunch we did an activity called "Summing up our Classmates". The kids had to go around and ask their classmates questions and for each question they got answered they got so many points. When time was up they added up their points to see which student had the most points!

 Working together to get some points!!

 Making new friends!!

 Sydney Belle and Hartley

Doing a great job working together!!

 Jainayah and Hartley

 Abraham

 Chrissy, Amalia, Jainayah

Chrissy, Jordan, and Joshua

Drew

They did a great job!! Looking forward to even more fun tomorrow!!

A new school year is upon us!

Summer is coming to an end and it is time to get back into that school routine again! I am so excited about meeting my new group of 2nd graders!! I know we are going to have a FANTASTIC year!!

I want to take a little time to introduce myself, my name is Jennifer Blevins and this is my 2nd year at Monrovia teaching 2nd grade. I am from Decatur and married to Rodney Blevins. We do not have any children, but we do have an adorable Yorkie named Conrad and the kids will hear me talk about him alot! :) I graduated from Athens State University with my Bachelors Degree in Elementary Education  and am currently working on my Masters Degree at UNA in Collaborative Education. I am an active runner! Some people think I am crazy for doing it but I love it!! I have ran 7 half marathons, 1 full marathon (I am currently training for my 2nd), and a 12 hour race where I ran 43 miles.

I will have several ways of communicating with you throughout the school year.  I will email newsletters out every Friday. I will also post copies of the newsletter on our class website.  On the website you will find links to both this blog and our class wiki.  This blog will be used as a fun way to share whats going on in class. I will share activities and post pics of the kids doing them on here.  I will also post reminders. Please subscribe to the blog and you will get email updates whenever I post something new. The wiki will be used to post student work. If the kids to do an in-class project or something special I will post it to the wiki, so you can see and share with others. It might be a student reading a story they wrote in class or I might attach a slide show they complete in computer. Just anything that can not physically be sent home that you might want to see! I will let you know when I add new stuff so you can check it out! :)

I am so excited about this school year and can not wait to meet everyone! Don't forget 2nd grade orientation is August 11 at 6:45pm.

See you soon!
Mrs. Blevins