You've been R.A.C.K.ed!

We've had an exceptional week (well, besides indoor recess most of the week due to temperatures)!  I received notification this week from adoptaclassroom.com.  We will be receiving $400 worth of new literacy materials!  The JCPenney store (Alma) and jcpcares made this happen!  Excited...doesn't even begin to describe how I was feeling.  I couldn't wait to get to school on Wednesday to tell the kids.  I knew they would go ballistic!  They did!  We felt so good about somebody choosing our classroom, that we decided to share the love.  We talked a lot about how good it felt to be surprised with a gift, but an even better feeling is giving.  So, we decided to go R.A.C.K. (Random Act of Classroom Kindness) some people around the school.  Our first stop was Mr. Sztuczko, then Mrs. Hammond, Mrs. Adams and Mrs. March.  We new our R.A.C.K.ing was successful because we got big smiles out of all of them.  Mrs. Hammond even decided to share her special treat with Mr. Howd.  Well, it felt so good to make others smile that the kids started asking if we could R.A.C.K. some more people on Thursday.  How can you say NO to that?  So, off we went this morning.  We stopped in the office and got Mrs.Cross, Mrs. Brecht, Ms. Leann, Mrs. Bailey and our speech teacher Mrs. Harrison.   Somehow, we ended up in the DHH room and R.A.C.K.ed them with some Tim Horton's Timbits.  The kids were so excited!  We just couldn't stop.  We made two more stops in classrooms and decided to R.A.C.K. Mrs. Vance and Mrs. Brown.  Check our their smiles and amazement as we told them "You've been R.A.C.K.ed!"

Mrs. Brown poses with her Timbits!  I heard Mrs. Brown
decided to R.A.C.K. her whole class today with no homework and
bubble gum.  Way to pass it on!

Check out this excitement!  

Mrs. Vance almost cried!  I think we made her day.

We R.A.C.K.ed Mrs. Cross with a yummy, fresh, fruit cup!

 ***All photographs were taken by our photographer of the day Balin.
They were taken on the classroom iPad, purchased by our awesome
St. Louis Technology Foundation.  

  

We WON!

Hi everyone, I am just hopping on the blog to update you on some very important news...WE WON!  The month of November has been focused on collecting, clipping, and counting Box Tops.  Students have been stalking the bottom of Kleenex boxes, cereal boxes, Ziploc bags, and your kitchen cupboards looking for Box Tops.  Today the winner of the November Box Top Challenge was announced! Students were in music when the announcement started so, I briskly walked  ran to the music room just in case we were the winners.  As the announcement came and we heard our class had won, the screaming started!  (Sorry Ms. Purcell, to say the kids weren't focused on music would be an understatement.)  It was awesome to see the kids congratulating each other on a job well done.  What an awesome ending to the day!  Students will be munching on free popcorn tomorrow!  I am so proud of the kids.  They worked hard to collect their Box Tops and most importantly we helped our school!

A Visit from Redbird!

If you haven't heard, Redbird came to visit us with some of their critters.  Students were thrilled to see the different animals.  We got a chance to look at a scorpion, gecko, guinea pig, parrot, and tortoise.   Emma was chosen to be the guinea pig holder.  She took the guinea pig around the group for everyone to see.
She did a great job.


Then the gal let the parrot go.  Apparently, our gym is much too small for a parrot to fly around.  It made a loop around the gym and got a little too close to my head.  I never thought I was scared of birds, but having it come so close to my head made me a little nervous. I must have been too rattled after the bird went for my head, I didn't manage to snap a picture.  I am sure my friends (Ms. Green) and students would assure you that the parrot, named Rose, was not after me BUT I think she was!  

Well, the fun continued when they got out the 22 year old tortoise named Shirley.  Shirley got the chance to sit on different kids.  Here are a few pictures of the kids enjoying her.

 To top it all off, they made the teachers sit on the floor for Shirley to climb on.

We had a great time!  Thank you to Redbird for visiting our school!  I'll leave you with one last photo.  This is a combination of our class and Mrs. Allen's!  We have AWESOME students.

Yup, that's right...we're rappers!

We've been working hard to learn our basic addition and subtraction facts.  We have all sorts of tricks and strategies to help us!  Students have learned the strategy of counting up, make a ten, commutative property (flip-flop), make a model, and double up.  Here is a rap video showing our skills as rappers!  Some students have let the fame of being a rap star go to their head!  I heard some students tell staff, "I can't sign autographs right now."  Enjoy our video!  

What happened to October?

Sorry we have been missing in action for about a month.  We have been crazy busy in the classroom.  Not to mention, my boys have kept me hopping at home.  My step-son David has been playing JV Football for Beaverton.  I LOVE to watch him play and it sure does get exciting.  However, staying out at a football game on a school night really throws me for a loop.  What can I say?  I like routine.  Anyhow, here is a snapshot from the Gladwin Tribune (David is #30)

On top of football season, Henry had a birthday.  He turned 3.  So needless to say, we have been very busy driving all sorts of tractors and cars around the house.  His biggest excitement of the season has been hauling soy beans to the elevator with his dad.  He really loves a tractor ride, not to mention the popcorn he gets at the elevator.  Here is one of his birthday pictures (our daycare provider is a photographer.  How perfect is that?  I send the boys with their clothes and they come home with awesome pictures).  

 Of course Halloween kept us busy too.  What more can I say?  Monkeys seemed to be very fitting costumes for these two...

Enough about me and back to the classroom.  I really think I have an AWESOME class this year.  We have a lot of great kids, not to mention some really smarties.  We are having a great time learning together!  We been reading tons of books.  Daily 5 has been a great addition to our classroom.  It gives the students freedom to read books at their own levels.  

Through all my trial and error, I finally got our iMovie from the School Woods to load! Here is a movie with all our snapshots. 

***It is important to know all our videos and pictures are taken with our iPads.  We have two full-sized iPads that have been purchased through the St. Louis Technology Foundation.  The Technology Foundation will be doing their annual fundraiser on February 1st.    

We're Movie Stars!

We might not be the rich and famous movies stars, but we are loving every minute of our classroom movies.  In the classroom, we have been learning about the different parts of a plant and their jobs.  Students created a flower out of torn pieces of paper, labeled it and ta-da we have ourselves a diagram.  We have practiced using our diagrams to create short videos teaching the different parts of a plant. This was really an assessment...shhh don't tell the kids! They had a blast using the iPads and recording each other. Here are a couple examples of how the videos turned out.

Here's what we've been up to...

We've been busy practicing all the procedures in our classroom.  Once we have them down, it'll run like a well oiled machine!  During our math time, we have been learning all about place value.  We started off using the base ten blocks.  The kids were AWESOME!  So we moved on to another fun activity where we were eating our math!  You should have seen the looks on those cute, little faces when I said, "Boy and girls today I was thinking we would eat our math."  We had some excitement and a lot of confusion.  However, once we got going the kids were enjoying the activity and snacking along the way.  Since we were working on place value, what better way to build numbers than with pretzel sticks, marshmallows, and crackers?  Here is a little video clip from Connor explaining what exactly we were up to...

In reading, we've been busy working out of our texbook. A couple weeks ago we read a story about Poppleton and the Grapefruit.  Poppleton is a pig who wants to live to be 100.  He hears a news report that if he eats grapefruit, he'll live longer.  Needless to say, Poppleton puckers at the thought of grapefruit.  However, he eats it anyway and makes himself sick.  Luckily, his friend Hudson teaches him a life lesson about friendship.  Students were able to taste test some grapefruit.  We were trying to build that text-to-self connection.  Hoping students would be able to relate to how Poppleton felt about grapefruit.  I tried to snap some picture of their puckering faces.  Surprisingly, most students LOVED the grapefruit and were asking for more.  

Who has the jitters?

Our first day of second grade was a success!  We started the day off making a memory book.  We'll be working on our memory books all week.  Watch for it to come home, it'll be a keeper!  We also read a book called First Day Jitters!   We had a lot of people in our classroom admit to having the jitters, teacher included.  We'll keep talking about the jitters throughout the week.  Tomorrow we're going to attempt to cure our jitters with some "jitter juice."  I'll try to remember to snap some pictures.  Once we talked about the jitters and knew others were feeling the same way, we moved on with the day.  We continued on with reading  The Kissing Hand.  We were able to squeeze in a game here and there.  I really felt like we got to know each other a little bit.  I have always had high expectations of my students and this class is going to amaze me... I can already tell.  As we start our second grade year, get ready to watch your child grow and achieve amazing things.  Thank you so much for letting me work with your child everyday.  I always say, " I have the BEST job in the world."
 

Meet Mrs. Jenkins

Hello everyone!  My name is Mrs. Jenkins.  I am so excited to be teaching 2nd grade this year.  We are going to have a great year! This will be my 11th year of teaching in St. Louis (Go Sharks!).  I've taught several different grade levels, but 2nd grade is my favorite!  I earned my undergraduate degree from CMU with a major in Languge Arts and  minor in Math.  I also earned my Master's degree in Reading from CMU (FIRE UP CHIPS!) 
     Somewhere along the way, I got married to my husband Jason.  I have one awesome step-son, David.  David is going to be a high school freshman in Beaverton.  Our little family kept growing with the addition of Henry in 2010.   He is an easy going, fun-loving kid.  Henry can usually be found driving trains, tractors and Hot Wheels all over the house.  This past school year, we welcomed Max into our family.  He is a great baby, we immediately fell in love with him. 
     I love being in the classroom.  I find a lot of joy watching the children develop as independent learners.  Second grade is a grade where we'll see a lot of growth, so get ready to be amazed.  You can expect your child to come home excited about learning.  We have a lot of fun, which makes learning easy in our classroom.  I look forward to having a great year!  Please feel free to contact me anytime.   

           

Welcome to my classroom blog!

I am so excited to be starting a blog!  My goal this summer is to create a blog for my second grade classroom.