Wednesday, June 2, 2010: Trip to TZE

This morning we went to TZE to visit the school. Adam was happy to see his school next year. Meaghan also was excited to see the school. Today was Dylan A., Emma, Eesha, Jacob, Victoria, and Dylan M.’s first time being there. Sarah was a little afraid of getting lost. We rode on the bus with Mrs. Ochman’s class. All of the first grade classes went so we had to wait a few minutes to come inside. We all went into the cafeteria to meet Dr. Lee and Ms. Lipton. We saw photos of the people who work in the school. Ms. Lipton explained different things that we will learn about or participate in. After that, the expert panel of second graders answered questions from the first graders. Mrs. Fanning, one of the second grade teachers, came to greet us in the cafeteria. She gave us a tour of the school with her students. We saw the colored hallways. They are lemon, raspberry, watermelon, and blueberry. Our last stop was Mrs. Fanning’s class. The students in her class answered the questions that we posted on the blog. That was very helpful for us. While we were talking, Stephen’s sister and her friend came into the classroom. Madison, Stephen’s sister, had Ms. Stern AND Mrs. Fanning in first and second grade. Before the trip, Dylan A. was nervous about going to the new school. After the trip, he felt really great about TZE and is excited to go next year. Lauria thought the best part of the trip was when Mrs. Fanning’s students answered our questions. Jacob liked standing in the rotunda and looking at all of the different hallways. Hunter liked getting to see an actual second grade classroom and thought it was interesting that the classrooms have 5 walls and not 4, like us.

Before our trip, we did some careful thinking about our classmates in order to give Ms. Stern information about people that we think would be good and bad matches for us to move to second grade with. We thought of 3 people who are helpful and good for our learning. At least two of them had to be in our class. Then we had to explain why they are positive people for our learning. After that, we thought about 3 people that stop us from being the best learners. They could be our friends and tempt us to talk or not be our best listeners. Or they might be people that we don’t always get along well with. Sasha found it really easy to list the people she would like to be with. Whenever she works with them, she learns a lot and completes her work. Stephen also thought it was pretty easy thinking of people he works well with. Ms. Stern told us that she can’t make any promises that we will or will not be in a second grade class with the children that we named.

Yesterday we started reading our last chapter book of the year: The BFG, written by Roald Dahl. It’s about a big friendly giant that takes a girl named Sophie during the “witching hour” because she spotted him in the street. Today we continued reading two more chapters.

We continued working on place value during math. We are doing a lot of partner work. Today we played Building On. Each set of partners picked 1 tile out of a bag. We built that number out of linker cubes by making tens and ones. We had to keep adding one more and recording until we reach 100.

Tomorrow is Gum Day. The children are allowed to chew gum in the classroom only. There will be a bubble blowing contest in the afternoon.