This school year I decided to change the theme of my classroom. I embraced the nautical theme and love how it turned out!

The Home Stretch

As we begin the 4th quarter of yet another school year ticking by, I am seeing the familiar trends of the students becoming restless.  Living in Wisconsin, we have endured a rather long, cold, and snowy Winter and it seems Spring is not wanting to arrive.  We are inching closer and closer to our Spring Break, which adds another element of excitement to the air.  The students are beginning to become more careless with their work and seem to rush through and not put forth their best effort on all occasions.  As a parent, you can help by reminding  your child to take the time at night to complete their homework with their best effort, and to check their work for quality.  If you are not seeing their best work at home, it is okay to have them re-do it! :)  Thank you, as always, for your tremendous support outside of the classroom!

Mrs. Lemke

Lesson Plans

To all my teacher friends out there!  At one of our staff development days, a fellow 2nd grade teacher shared with me an amazing resource that I have been taking advantage of and have fallen in love with!  Head on over to planbook.com and check it out for yourself!

Common Core Math

  These words seem to cause much controversy and some confusion. I will have to admit, as an educator, when I first heard of Common Core and was trained on things such as rigor and relevance, I thought to myself "what does all of this mean?"  What happened to the old fashioned way of doing math problems and memorizing math facts?"  This past school year was the first year in which Common Core was implemented into our curriculum.  At the beginning, the students had to struggle to overcome their mental block of answering the question "How do you know that is the answer to the problem?" with something other than "I just know!!!!"  I have spent this school year watching my students blossom into amazing math students who have taken their knowledge and thinking deeper and deeper.  It became evident to me that these kids were really starting to benefit from this Common Core when I had many students coming into class and exclaiming to me "My mom/dad could not help me with my math homework, so I had to teach them how to do it!"  That right there, was one of those ah-ha moments in which the students realized that they are capable of not only learning this more rigorous math, but also, teaching it to someone!  They are now beginning to see how some of this will transfer into the "real world."  
   Next school year, we will implement Language Arts Common Core into the curriculum and I think that the students will again find it to be very challenging in the beginning as they adjust to more non-fiction reading.  My hope is that as the year progresses and they learn in this new way, they will again see the "real world" connection that they will be able to use not only now, but years down the road in their education.

Non-Fiction Turkey Fact Feathers

With Thanksgiving right around the corner, here are some examples of a project my second graders did last year.  They were to read a non-fiction book and write facts they learned from the book onto the colored feathers.  They then took the colored feathers and created some type of turkey or Native American head-dress.  I can't wait to see what my class will come up with this year for the project!

Beginning a new year!

It is that time of year again for the students to head back into the classroom.  The floors are freshly waxed, the desks are clean, and all bulletin boards are newly decorated.  This summer, I made a few additions to my owl- themed classroom.  Also, my husband was kind enough to build some new furniture for my room.  See pictures below. :)

Pumpkin Character

Although it is June, I wanted to share a project the second graders did back in October. They had to choose a fiction book and pick out the main character from the story.  Then, they decorated a pumpkin to look like the main character.  As always, there was a writing aspect to go with the project, and parents were encouraged to help with the the artistic part at home.  They all turned out amazing!!!!