Mrs. Amris Place

The World Education Games is the exciting event for schools and students around the world. It runs from 6-8 March, involving 5.5 million students from over 200 countries and territories. This is a global challenge to get students (4-18 years of age) excited about learning, and to give the top students in each school an opportunity to see how they measure up against the best.

We have been preparing ourselves to compete in the World Math Games on March 7th. We were encouraged to compete by our friends at Insel School in Germany who have competed in past years. How exciting to be united with other students around the world to improve our math skills in this way.

We are also planning on competing in World Spelling Day on March 6th and World Science Day, March 8th. We look forward to competing with students  all around the world and to challenge ourselves to be the best we can be.  I sent home students’ sign in cards that have their username and password so they can show you the site and practice at home if they want.  We are practicing here this week in preparation.  Let the Games and Learning Begin!

Dear Stafford families,

Every month 86,400 children depend on donated food in Oregon!

That is the alarming number of children who eat from emergency food boxes distributed through the Oregon Food Bank Network every month. To help with this effort, in 1971 High School Students organized a fight against hunger with Project Second Wind. A “second wind” of hunger relief after the holidays is always a great challenge to fulfill, because… Hunger doesn’t take a holiday!

Project Second Wind engages youth in the fight to end hunger and is truly an inspiring example of kids helping kids.

Over the course of forty-one years, Project Second Wind has collected 6,850,000 pounds of food.

This year, Stafford will one of the schools across Oregon participating in this food drive.  From February 21 to March 2 we will be collecting food outside Mr. Minor’s office by the library that will be given to the Oregon food bank. Mrs. Kenny’s 5th graders will be helping to steward this drive by organizing and tracking the amount of donations received.

Some of the most needed foods are:  Canned meats, canned or dried beans, canned and boxed meals (such as macaroni and cheese), canned fruits and vegetables, 100% fruit juice or vegetable juice, cooking oil, shelf-stable milk, pasta, rice, cereal and other healthy, low fat and low sugar products.

If you have the opportunity and are able to add some of these items to your weekly shopping list, we would greatly appreciate it.  All items can be placed on the table outside Mr. Minor’s office.

As always, thank you for your generosity and care!

Mr. Minor

Our connection with Mrs. Schicke’s class in Germany is showing us the truth in the words of a poem we know: “Friends can be near, or very, very far, but a friend is a friend wherever they are“.  Our friends are writing to us on our wikis, they are posting pictures of themselves, they are singing to us and teaching us songs (in German even), they are challenging us to learn together with them (collaborating).  How great is that?!

They, together with Flat Stanley, have shown us what it means to be a global citizen.  We want to stay connected to the world around us, and thanks to our friends in Germany we are on our way.  We created these beautiful word clouds with Wordle to express our appreciation to our friends.

Our message:  our friends’ names are beautiful, however you write them, exactly because they are your friends and you have the friendship connection.

Here is our Valentine’s Day Surprise!  It is a gift to our dads and our moms on this special day to celebrate love and friendship.  Happy Valentine’s Day to all!

Conference time is coming!  I am excited to meet with your parents to talk about your progress.  Parents can sign up online starting Tuesday, February 14th.   Our conferences will be on Tuesday and Wednesday, February 28th-29th between 2:30-5:30 PM and on Thursday, March 1st between 8:00-11:30 AM.  Parents, let me know if these times will not work for you.   Conferences are 30 minutes.  Students do not have to attend.

The atmosphere in class lately has been electrifying!  Seriously.  We are definitely experiencing what it means to be in “the flow” as we are reading the comments on our 2 Wikispaces: our own wiki called “On The Road With Flat Stanley“, and Mrs. Schicke’s wiki called “Flacher Franz“.  We are learning more about blogging as a tool for communicating and sharing our learning with others, as well as a tool to inspire and challenge us.

I can’t believe how much we are learning together (collaborating) with our new friends in Mrs. Schicke’s class in Langeoog, Germany.  First, they have really challenged us to use our technology skills to share our learning: we are uploading pictures and videos for them on their wiki as well as on our own.  We have explored Fotobabble to share our voice and pictures with them.

We have tried out Google Schribble Maps in order to discuss geography and look at how we would travel by boat to visit each other (they posed that question).

They introduced us to a cool, new presentation tool, Prezi, in order to share their answers to our question about what makes them happy.   It is very cool way to present your ideas. Learning this will be our next challenge!

We would love to meet our friends and have been discussing how to get there by boat.  We are looking at routes on the map and debating with Mrs. Schicke’s which route to take.  In the meantime we are practicing our rowing skills as we know it is a long way to Germany!

Our Evening of Poetry and Song last Thursday was truly glorious!  You were so well prepared and read your poems so beautifully.  You were enthusiastic and animated as you sang your songs!  Boys, you were handsome, and girls, you were beautiful.  As always I adore you!  Your parents were so proud of you, and their faces were beaming with love and pride–as was mine.

Congratulations on showcasing your reading fluency skills and bringing joy through your reading to others.  It was also an evening to take pride in our school community here at Stafford and feel that strong connection that makes it such a special place to be.

Here is our digital storytelling project, It’s a Beautiful World, that we made to show our learning around poetry and our original poems.  You are aspiring, young poets and an awesome crew!

Ben Franklin

We are selecting a person this week for our Great People in History project that we will be working on over the next 5 weeks.  The project should be completed and presented during the weeks of March 5th-March 21st.  We will be checking in with each other each week to see how the project is going.

Project based learning is a great way for us to take charge of our own learning and get excited about putting together all the pieces. We will be reading both at home and in class and sharing our findings with each along the way.  In class we will be practicing finding images to use for our project.

So far we have heard the stories of Martin Luther King Jr., Ben Franklin, Marie Curie, Thomas Edison, Florence Nightingale, Leonardo daVinci, Helen Keller, The Wright Brothers, Alexander Graham Bell, Harriet Tubman and Louis Pasteur. With each story we have noticed common characteristics that have helped this people be successful in their lives. Their accomplishments have affected the lives of so many people and have made a big difference in our world.

Marie Curie

We have gathered a list of the character strengths we observed in our study of these people: determination and perseverance, compassion and courage, curiosity and creativity, respect and responsibility, honesty and integrity. We have begun to see that great people often have these traits in common, even though they lived in different places and in different times.

Thomas Edison

We are hoping to learn from the stories from these great people, so one day we, too, might become great people! Yay for reading biographies! Yay for studying history!

We were excited to have Emily Willett, Sam’s sister who was home from college, read us a great story before she headed back to school.  Guess How Much I Love You is a wonderful book, written by Sam McBratney. Yay for college students as Mystery Readers!

On last Friday we were surprised when Soonita’s mom, Ms. Gruelle, came by to share her book, Pete the Cat, I Love My White Shoes (my new personal favorite!) by Eric Litkin.  She brought some very cheery, cherry Tootsie Pops to share with us during our SSR time. Yay for surprises!

We are inviting our dads to our Valentine’s Day Breakfast here at Stafford School on Tuesday, February 14th, from 7:50-9:00 AM!  We want to invite our dads (or grandfathers or uncles) to help us celebrate this special day.  Let’s enjoy some toaster waffles, fruit, juice, coffee for our dads, a little Valentine Bingo, AND OF COURSE A SPECIAL SURPRISE! What surprise, you ask?  Well, it wouldn’t be a surprise if we told you!  That is part of the fun.

What?!  Can you believe it? Flat Stanley is actually going to all these places very soon. Stanley is a well-known book character from Jeff Brown’s book, Flat Stanley. People all over the world have become connected through The Flat Stanley Project, where Flat Stanley (a paper figure) is sent to friends and family to explore new places.  It has been a wonderful way to support authentic literacy activities and learning opportunities for students of all ages.

We have been researching countries on our new website Country Reports, and reading about life for children around the world.  We got to thinking about new ways to connect with children around the world and decided to take action.  We went to the Flat Stanley website and registered our class in order to connect with other classes around the world.

We were connected immediately with Mrs. Schicke’s class which is a second grade class at Insel School in Langeoog, Germany.  They are excited to do their first Flat Stanley exchange and have already created a Flat Stanley wiki for our class in order for us to do collaborative projects. The German name for Flat Stanley is “Flacher Franz“. We are thrilled to begin our new friendship with Mrs. Schicke’s class.  We were also connected with Mrs. Moore’s second grade classroom in Hawaii and will be sending Stanley there as well.

We made our Flat Stanleys on Friday, and this week we will begin to write letters to our new friends.  We will be taking pictures of Stanley here at Stafford, so we can share what life is like for kids here in West Linn, Oregon.

Our classmate, Andi, is currently in flight on her way to South America for an 11 week adventure with her family to Chile, Peru, Argentina and Uruguay. Of course we sent Stanley along with her, too!  We look forward to following their adventures on her own blog she created. Andi On the Ground.

We started using Google Earth in order to see the places Flat Stanley will be going to. We are using our geography skills as we explore continents, countries, and cities all over the world. It is quite exciting to feel so connected with the world this way!  We were so in the flow (that means highly engaged) on Friday!

We will also learn how to set up our own Flat Stanley wiki in order to collaborate and share our learning with our friends around the world. This a great way to connect globally.  We are a global community and Flat Stanley is helping us see that! Oh Stanley, you are such a global citizen!  Look at some of the places Stanley has visited.

Visiting with soldiers in Iraq

Researching Clown Fish in Thailand

Meeting with President Obama, The First Lady and their friends

Attending the Academy Awards with actor and director Clint Eastwood

We were surprised last Friday to have been invited to “tea” by Ross’s mom, Mrs. Henderson.  As our Mystery Reader she read the great book called The Tiger Came to Tea, by Judith Kerr.  This is a wonderful story about the tradition of having an afternoon “tea” that includes delectable tea sandwiches and “biscuits” (cookies).  She even brought some to share during our SSR (silent reading time) time.  What a great way to improve our reading life: reading a good book, listening to calm music,  and enjoying a “tea” with friends.

Maybe you could start this tradition at your house this weekend! It would be a great snowy day idea (I hear it might snow by the way).  And, don’t worry about a tiger barging in to your fine, tea party.  They always knock first. Cheerio! That means “bye” in British English.

In this week before we celebrate the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. we will be looking at the idea of beauty in diversity and the power of our words.  Dr. King’s message was about the importance and the beauty of diversity in our world.  His words remind us to look at a person on the inside.  He encourages us to judge a friend based on their character and not by how they look on the outside. He reminds us to look at the things we have in common: a belief in the good in all people, a hope for a bright future and a love for all.

His words also inspire us to work hard to bring about positive changes in the world through peaceful ways: through our words. Words can make people happy, they express our feelings, they can change lives, and they can inspire us. However, words also have the power to make people sad and to hurt feelings.  We will invite Ms. Barbour to talk about the power of our thoughts and our words in helping us to have a positive attitude in our daily life.

We will also talk about friendships and how to be a good friend. We have talked about how each of us is unique and special. We have different tastes, different interests, and different opinions.  We are learning to see the good in others and compliment them. We are learning how to discuss our differences in a calm way. We are learning to listen well and listen respectfully to each other, so we can expand our friendships.  We are learning to admit mistakes to our friends and say, “I’m sorry” when we have hurt their feelings. We are learning strategies to help us stop unkind actions.

These are not easy goals, but Stafford is a place where students are kind and caring and they work on their friendship skills.  Let’s commit ourselves to these goals in the new year. It’s a beautiful world  and we have the power both to see this beauty around us each day and to help create it.

We can’t wait to celebrate our reading achievements at our Evening of Poetry and Song, on Thursday, January 26th from 6:30-8:00 PM.  We will be singing songs together as a second grade community in the MPR and then going to our classrooms for poetry readings.    It will be an wonderful evening!  Students will be practicing their poems in class over the next weeks.  Students are invited to dress in their finest and meet in our classroom at 6:15.  We are thrilled to share with our families the joy of reading and writing poetry.

“Believe and Achieve” are the words on a plaque that hangs on the wall in our class room. But, these are not just words for us.  This is a motto we try to practice in the work we do each day in school and at home.  The picture above is of the group of students who believed in themselves and rose to the challenge to answer the math story that I posted before the break.  They all did incredible work showing their thinking through multiple representations.  Nice work, Ronen, Nevin, Eli, Liam, and Hannah!

We have learned that achievement comes when we put effort into practicing the skills we have: it is a formula we talk about in class:  Skill + Effort = Achievement.  The work we do in class is important. We are developing our “skills”. The more time we spend doing important work, the more we learn.  This is called “effort“. We have to put effort into a job to do it well.  When tasks become more difficult, or we are confused or become tired with doing a task, that is when we have to have”grit” to continue.  ”Grit” helps you stay with a difficult task.  But, grit does not come naturally. We have to build grit, and that takes practice.  This is a picture of us demonstrating what is going on inside our heads when we are using grit:

Let’s make a New Year’s resolution to practice using “grit”, both at home and at school. We can do it!  We can do anything, if we we believe in ourselves and work hard. Let’s see how many of us will rise to the challenge in 2012. We are starting up with homework this week.  Let’s put effort into our homework each week, doing our best work and using grit when we need it.  Let’s see how many use grit to do more Enrichment Work as well.  Let’s do it!  Show me your grit!

Oh ya! That’s it!

Keep it going!

Yay for the first day of your holiday break!  I am hoping you are enjoying the time with your families.  In the last few weeks before the break we wrote a type of poem called a metaphor for our moms and dads to give them as a gift. We also worked on using words, pictures, videos and music to create a digital project (a movie) as a gift too!

There is no greater gift than the love we receive from family and friends. Enjoy watching the movie with your family!  I want to thank you for the hugs, smiles, cookies, candy, cards, the gifts a plenty, words of support and appreciation and your tremendous generosity as my Stafford family.  A heart-felt thanks goes out to you all.

The second movie is about our buddy class, Mr. Hsieh’s 5th grade.  On Friday they shared a poem they used as the lyrics to a song for us to enjoy.  What a gift!  Happy Holidays to all!

What is winter? Snowflakes in the air, and hot cocao by a warm fire. Whatever our thoughts and feelings around winter, we are excited for its annual arrival.  We will be writing some winter poetry, experimenting with free verse and writing a winter haiku.

We are looking forward to presenting what we know about poetry at our Evening of Poetry and Song, Thursday, January 26th from 6:30-8:00.  We will be singing songs and reciting poetry for our families.  It will be a great night where we celebrate both our reading skills and our second grade community. It is a night to invite our parents, dress in our finest, and celebrate!

You are invited to our Polar Express Party, on Friday, December 16th from 8:00- 9:00 as we enjoy hot chocolate, and apple strudel toast as we prepare to take a ride on the Polar Express as a second grade community.  We will wear our pajamas and robes and enjoy a cozy morning together.  All Aboard!

Once again we enjoyed a wonderful book read to us by our mystery reader, Mrs. Bryant, Megan’s mom. Ordinary Mary’s Extraordinary Deed, by Emily Pearson, was a lesson in how one small act of kindness can grow exponentially (that is a math word, by the way)!

Here is part one of your challenge: a story problem on a Saturday (your day off). There are 22 students in our classroom and each student does five good deeds over the weekend, how many good deeds will Mrs. Amri’s class complete in all. Show me your thinking.

I will award  20 thousand points for each student who gives the full explanation of their thinking (pictures, number sentence, circle and underlining the key words and numbers)

Here is part two of your challenge: a second story problem.  If there are 22 students in Mrs. Amri’s class and each student gets 20,000 points for their story problem, how many points will the class earn all together?  Hmm…?  Bring in your work Monday. Who will rise to the challenge?  How many points will we earn?!  Show me your thinking.

Okay, Crew, the challenge is on!

We loved hearing the adventures of that very special cat, Skippyjon Jones in Mummy Trouble, read to us before the holiday by our last mystery reader, Sarah, who is Hannah Bader’s mom.  With Skippy John Jones there is never a dull moment with that incredible imagination.  Yay, for Skippy John, and yay for Sarah for bringing us so much fun!  And, of course, the cookies were great too.

During this season of giving we have been given an opportunity as a school to make a difference in the life of a student at Pakati School.  We have been challenged by a service learning group (an enrichment class) here at Stafford to help send at least one student to school for a year by raising $25.00 before the holiday break.

They are asking each Stafford student to bring in pennies and put them in their Pennies for Pakati box that they will put in each classroom.  What a great way for us to help make a difference in the life of others–one child at a time.  Let’s do what we can to support their efforts.  Here is their presentation!

We had a wonderful Africa Bridge assembly on Friday.  We met Barry, Jennifer, Rebecca and Emily and listened to their stories from our friends at Pakati School.   They presented us with 7 beautifully hand woven baskets as a gift to Stafford School students, as well as thank you letters written by the students. We will display them in the library next to their picture and mat we received from earlier.

The Africa Bridge Team made a video thank you card from our friends at Pakati School and from Barry Childs of Africa Bridge.  It is precious to see their faces as they watch the video gift we sent them (A Simple Gift) for their celebration of their new classrooms in October.   We can’t help but feel more and more connected to our friends in Tanzania!   We are grateful for our friendship, and look forward to learning more about each other.  Enjoy your video thank you card!

Well, it is in fact the first man in the history of aviation to fly with a jet-propelled wing. It is amazing to see how years of imagining what seemed to be the impossible finally come into being.  I watched these two videos and wanted to share them with you as a testament to the importance of our imagination and hard work in making our dreams one day a reality. Let’s keep on dreaming!

Over the past few months we have been practicing seeing our “glass have full”.  That means we are trying to appreciate and be grateful for the simple gifts we are given daily: our good health, the natural beauty of each day, and the love of our friends and family.

We know that we practice this when we do the WWW (What Went Well ) writing and sharing activity at the beginning or end of our day.  When we celebrate a classmate’s birthday, we have learned how to make a birthday wish that will last a life time rather than a material gift that loses its excitement after a time period. We have learned to appreciate our friends with a book filled with positive expressions of friendship when we write the Star of the Week letters.

We learned that this is an important skill that will help us be happier in our lives.  We learned that training positive thinking or a positive attitude in life is possible. When we feel sad or unhappy we have practiced journaling in this way to help us through the difficult times.  Wow, it is amazing how powerful the skill of writing, and sharing our thoughts and our feelings can be.  Let’s give thanks for our new skills!

“What?!” I cried out as I finished calculating the number of grains of rice you all donated through Freerice this last week. Mr. Amri looked over and asked me, “What are you looking at?  What is it?”.  ”Well” I said, “My students are incredible.  They learned tons of new facts over the past week, and at the same time, they donated over 33, 796 grains of rice to people who are hungry in other parts of the world.”  Mr. Amri was so impressed.

What can I say.  I am so proud of your effort to increase your learning and to reach out to make a difference in the lives of others.  That is no small deed.  What am I thankful during this Thanksgiving season?  Well, I am thankful for you–each and every one of you.  You are an awesome group, Crew!  Thank you for being you!

Well, we were surprised last Friday when Kaila’s Grandfather, David Caraher, arrived with his great book, Tops and Bottoms, by Janet Stevens.  We learned that he loves reading about life on the farm and this book was perfect.  It talked about planting and harvesting food, friendship, and how friends learn to be fair with each other.

And, if that was not enough fun, today Olivia’s mother, Mrs. Maiden, surprised us with one of her favorite stories, Prairie Story, by Laura Ingalls Wilder.  It was a story she enjoyed as a child, and it was fun for us to compare life during the days of the pioneers with our lives today.  She even brought her own cookies.  Luckily, I always have a jug of milk on hand for any surprise visitors during our silent reading time.  Yay for surprises!

Beginning this week we want to interview family members to gain a better understanding of the importance of the family unit as the foundation of a strong community. Spending time with family members and listening carefully to stories they tell about their lives is an important way we learn about family values and traditions.   This is the perfect time of year to look to our families and listen to their stories. Enjoy the Thanksgiving Holiday and I look forward to hearing some of your great stories on your return.

Click on the links below to download more interview forms if you decide to do more than the required number of interviews.  Family stories are a simple gift.  Enjoy time with your family:

Family Interview 2011-2012

Family Study Reflections 2011 PDF

We are so excited to have begun exploring the site called Freerice. Freerice is a wonderful way for us to learn all sorts of things, and at the same time help provide food to hungry people in our world.  Today, with each new fact we learned, we donated 10 grains of rice to the UN World Food Programme.

This organization passes on the rice to countries in the world that need it.  This week we will be working hard, learning tons of new and interesting information, having incredible fun, and helping the hungry throughout the world!   Keep track of the number of grains of rice you donate throughout the week, and we will see how much rice we donate as a class by next Monday.   In our Thanksgiving Journals we have been sharing our thoughts around the fact that food is a gift we should be grateful for everyday.  Let’s get to learning!  Let’s feed our minds and help feed the hungry!

This week, as a continuing part of our study of “Communities”, we will start to talk more about “Families”.  Traditions are an important part of creating a strong bond between family members.  Over the next few weeks we want to select a family tradition to share with the class.   We will invite your family, or a single family member, to join you for your presentation.  The presentations will be scheduled for the weeks of December 5th-15th.  We are excited to learn about your family and your special traditions.

We are in the midst of our study of the life cycle of salmon and the spirit of inquiry in the classroom is inspiring.  Students are asking questions, reading books, and exploring websites online.

We  have learned how important it is in the research process to use a variety of resources to gather information about salmon as we prepare to share our findings in a book about the life cycle of salmon.

We have also been sharing information we learned from our field experience to Eagle Creek in the Columbia Gorge.  Beth and Ian were incredible experts about salmon anatomy, the spawning process, and salmon habitat.

As scientists we continue to observe our Chinook salmon eggs in the tank outside our classroom, and await the hatching into alevin, which is the next stage in the life cycle. We are keeping a scientific log to record changes over time.  We are excited to be able to observe this incredible journey as we continue in our research.

November is a month to reflect and give thanks: Thanks for our beautiful natural surroundings here in Oregon, the bountiful food that comes through the harvest, and the people in our lives that make each day bright.  Throughout the month we will focus on our friends, our families and the simple gifts that each brings to our lives to make them filled with simple abundance. We want to start by saying thank you to all the parents who helped with the planning and preparation for last Friday’s Harvest Party.  It was a wonderful celebration for everyone!

Our last Mystery Reader was Mrs. Anderson, Hannah’s mom.  She amazed us with not one, but two great books about Halloween.   I Need My Monster by Amanda Noll and My New Neighbors by Keith Faulkner. Both books were great fun.  We relaxed with our own good books afterward and enjoyed some M&Ms as our treat.  The elements of a little mystery, food, fun, friends and family makes for a great experience!  Yay for our Mystery Reader, Mrs. Anderson!  Who will be next? Hmm?!

The beautiful fall leaves inspired us to write some poetry over the past weeks and we have put it together into a Voicethread.  As writers and poets we did a lot of preparation before we started our writing: We gathered leaves and observed the beautiful shapes and colors.  We read some books about fall leaves and looked at the great pictures.  Next, we began making listed of words and phases we liked.  We selected words that created clear images in our minds of the sights and sounds of fall leaves.  The result: we created a beautiful set of haikus.

We learned that a haiku is a pattern poem.  It has three lines and each line has a certain number of syllables in the pattern of 5, 7, 5.  We also created a crayon rub of the leaves we collected and they are hanging in our classroom.

Finally, we practiced our fluency skills by creating a Voicethread.  A Voicethread gives us the opportunity to listen to ourselves read aloud and helps us evaluate our own fluency.  Enjoy listening to our wonderful fall poetry.  Be inspired to take a walk this week and look at the beautiful leaves all around us!  Maybe you will be inspired to write even more haiku!

Well, our next mystery reader was our one and only “Gaga”, who some know as Edna Gaston, Ross’s Grandma.  We were excited to hear her read one of her favorite books, Room on the Broom, written by Julia Donaldson.  How much fun to sit back, relax and enjoy the story telling ability of this great author.   Our special story time ended with a special treat of juice and shortbread cookies.  Hmm… good!  Thanks Gaga!

We are happy to announce the arrival of 500 Chinook salmon eggs in our second grade fish tank!  They have been entrusted to our care for the next 6 weeks or so until they reach the “fry” stage.   At that point we will release them into the Clackamas River to continue on their amazing journey.  As young wildlife biologists, we will be tracking their growth over time and will keep a log filled with our observations.  Thanks to a PTSA grant we have an underwater camera, so we can watch them “live” on our projector from the classroom.  It is awesome!  You are all invited to stop by and see “our” salmon.

We finished our first movie last week.  It is called A Simple Gift.  We made it for our friends at our sister school in Ntandabala, Tanzania, Pakati School.  In our study of communities we learned that “a community is a group of people who live together and care for each other”.  Well, we may not live so close to our friends in the village of Ntandabala. In fact, we learned that Tanzania is 9536 miles (19 hours and 48 minutes) away from Oregon. However, we do live on the same planet, Earth, and we know that “friends can be friends wherever they are”.  And, who knew?  We speak the same language, the universal language: MDLL  which stands for Music, Dance, Laughter and Love.

We couldn’t stop smiling after we realized that.  Am I right?  We put together some great video clips we got from the Pakati School students last year with our own clips we took last week and it is obvious:  We are friends and we care about each other.  WE ARE THINKING ABOUT YOU, PAKATI SCHOOL!  TUNAWAFAKIRIA!  We are using Google translator to try to learn some Swahili, the native language in Tanzania.

The idea for this project came from a group called The Africa Bridge Kids Team, who have been working together with the second grade classes over the past 3 years to build our relationship with the students at Pakati School.   Thanks to the current 5th graders Hannah, Katie, Sheridan and Courtney for their creativity and dedication to making a difference in the lives of others!  They are role models for us on how to think globally and take action to reach out to help others all around the world.

Watch our movie!  It is a simple gift for our friends, but it has a big message.

We really enjoyed our field trip to visit some of the important businesses in our community: Market of Choice, Key Bank, Sierk Orthodontics and The West Linn Library.  We had been reading and talking about how these places help fulfill our wants and our needs.

Before going on our trip we had a wonderful discussion in class about what our basic needs really are.  We decided our basic needs are food, water, shelter and clothes.  We looked at our list of wants and thought about how they are different.  Great discussion, Crew!  Really.  You helped me change my own thinking.  Thanks for being willing to share your opinions. I told you we learn from each other!

Our tour guides, Anne Marie, Deborah, Dr. Sierk, and Becky all had the same message for us: West Linn is a great commmunity because people really care about each other and want to help to make it a wonderful place to live and work.

The other message:  Work hard in school in reading, writing, math, science and practice your communication skills so you, too, can grow up to get a job that will make you happy and will help your community flourish (that means be well and happy).

All of these are wonderful lessons for us to learn!

Next week, October 10th, 11th and 12th I get to conference with all of your parents!  I am excited to talk about your goals, and share some of the great work you are doing in class. Parents, I look forward to our time together.  Check your conference time on the Stafford wiki!

http://www.wlwv.k12.or.us/wiki/index.php/Amri

Today we welcomed Officer Mike Francis from the West Linn Police Department. He talked to us about the important role the police play in helping create a safe community. What a great job he has!  We noticed how passionate he is about helping others, and loves working with students and grown ups to teach them how to be safe.

Some of us might want to be police officers when we grow up.  We better keep working on our descriptive writing and our problem solving skills.  Officer Francis emphasized how important these skills are for his job.  Another word of advice from Officer Francis:  Be kind and caring and talk out your problems.  Thanks Officer Francis!

What a great community we have at Stafford Primary School!  I really enjoyed being able to talk to your parents at our Curriculum Night, as we begin our journey together in second grade.  I look forward to talking with them again at our Parent Conferences next week.

The city of West Linn is such a great place to live.  This week we will begin to look at the people in our community and the important roles they play in our lives.  Tuesday we will have the police departments here to talk to our classes.  Later this month the fire department will come and talk about their jobs.  On Wednesday we will visit a bank, the library, the grocery store and an orthodontist to hear about the important goods and services they provide us.  One of our learning goals to be thinking about our own set of skills and talents, and exploring the different types of jobs we might want to do when we grow up.

We will continue to learn more about the power of community and how we can make a difference in the lives of the students at our sister school, Pakati Primary, in Tanzania.  It is a week packed full of activities and learning around our understanding of what a community is.  That is exciting!

Yes, your ears did, in fact, perk up like a bunch of kittens who spied a mouse, as I explained that we would be making our Mystery Reader welcome by offering milk and cookies after the reading. Good for you!  You were all so attentive, sitting nicely at the carpet, eyes on the guest, raising your hand to speak and showing our Mystery Reader, my mom, Mrs. Kuhnhausen, what responsible and respectful learners you are already. Congratulations on a job well done!

I was so excited as our leaders brought my mom into the classroom and introduced her to the class.  What a surprise!  We all enjoyed hearing one of her favorite books, Elbert’s Bad Word.  It was a wonderful story of a boy who accidently swallowed a bad word, but was able to find some new strong words to use instead thanks to the Garden Wizard.  Gadzooks! Blistering Hoptoads!  These are just a few of the fun, strong words we learned in case we need them.  Look out for some great new sounds from room 23!  We all enjoyed milk and cookies with our silent reading time that followed.  Yay for our Mystery Reader, Mrs. Kuhnhausen!

We are excited to begin with our homework packets this week.  Each week we will have fluency practice with the poem of the week, 10 spelling words, math practice, fun stories, research projects and more.  Homework is a great time to get into the habit of setting aside a special time as well as a special place where you can practice the skills we learn in class.  Twenty minutes each night is about how much time you should allow for homework.  Some of you may want to spend more time.  Be sure you are spending at least 10 minutes of that time reading.  Spelling tests are usually on Fridays when the homework is due.

The enrichment section is meant for you to do if you finish with the required work.  You may pick and choose work from any of the enrichment options.  You do not need to do it all. Decide on a topic for a research project and enjoy the process of doing independent research.  Challenge yourself!!

http://www.kideos.com/video/wheres-matt

We have begun our journey in the classroom exploring different countries around the world through a wonderful book called Children Just Like Me, and a website called CultureGrams.

In our research we have learned that there are so many different people, different languages, different clothes and different foods.  But, what we are also discovering is that there are many things that are the same.  We all have dreams about what we want to be when we grow up.  We all wish for our families to safe and healthy.  We all wish to make a difference in the lives of the people around us.

Wow, the world is not as big as it sometimes seems.  We can feel connected to each other in many ways.  And, one in particular is quite apparent: The Universal language: MDLL (Music, Dance, Laughter and Love).  Click on the link below the picture to watch a video and see how the people all around the world speak this language.  In our study of “Wellness” we have learned that each of these elements is important for us to be well and to thrive or “flourish”.

Your challenge this week:  Choose one the countries you do not recognize and do some research and share it with the class!  Where in the world are they speaking MDLL?  Let us know!