October is has been an exciting time in second grade! We've really gotten into our routines and now we're busy learning, laughing and having lots of fun!

We started out the month with a study of our community: Fairfield, CT. We went to the library to work with our amazing Media Specialist, Mrs. Josovitz. She had a giant map of Fairfield to share with us. We got to find our street own on the map and put a little dot to show where we each live. It was fun to see how close we all are to each other, and to our school. The next time we went to see Mrs. Josovitz, she had the map cut into different peices, each one representing one of the 11 Elementary School districts in Fairfield. It was fun trying to put Fairfield back together again! On our last visit with Mrs. Josovitz, we went into the computer lab to look at Fairfield in Google Earth. We had such fun finding our own houses, and caculating the distance between each of our houses and the school. We even calculated how long it would take to walk, drive, or bike ride to our school. Cool!
We began working in small groups for reading instruction this month. We are all making such terrific progress! During our reading time, we are engaged in many different elements of the Reader's Workshop; mini-lessons with the whole group, small group instruction with the teacher, partner reading, independent reading with our "Just Right Book Baggies," comprehension activities, shared reading, interactive reading when we work together to solve problems and talk about text, and lots and lots of talking about books! We also LOVE when our Guest Readers come in to read their favorite books to us- what a treat! Probably our favorite times are when we cozy up with friends and read together. If you would like to be a Guest Reader in 1H, please visit our Volunteer Schedule to find a date that might work for you!
The writers of 1H are absolutely bursting with stories! Writer's Workshop is certainly a favorite time of day in 1H. Our authors are using punctuation, proper spelling, quotation marks, commas, great lead sentences, lots of dialogue, and details, details, details to write exciting stories to share with each other. Some of us are writing chapter books, and some of us are working together to create a series of books to share with their friends. Mrs. Healey can barely keep up with the 1H writers! It is terrific to watch everyone use their resources (like their dictionaries) to help them spell words they don't know. It is even more fun to watch them help each other with spelling, or some suggestions on where a story could go next. Bravo 1H!
In mathematics this month, we worked on addition and subtraction to 18. We learned strategies to help us figure out these problems as they get harder and more complicated. We used strategies such as number lines, fact families, counting on, counting back, creating 10 and then adding on, learning doubles facts. All of these things will help us solve harder problems even faster!

We also did some logical thinking with a pumpkin logic poster. We looked at four pumpkins with different attributes, and listened to different clues as we tried to figure out which pumpkin the clues led to. Even more fun was making our own pumpkin logic poster! We each drew four different pumpkins, and then created clues for our friends to read and figure out the answers. Lots of mathematical problem solving going on in 1H!
We were extremely fortunate this month to have Jacob's mom, and Isabelle's mom come in to talk with us about Environmental Awareness! We were totally excited when they set up a fish tank in our classroom, with animals they got right from our very own Fairfield beaches! We are studying them carefully, and remembering to take turns feeding our new friends every day. Special thanks to both of these moms for the hard work that went into setting up this tank for us. We love it!

Of course it wouldn't be October without stopping to talk about Christopher Colombus. This year we decided to become explorers oursevles! We made Colombus hats out of newspaper and feathers. We had a blast making and wearing our explorer hats, and we looked great!
We finished out our month with a totally fun Halloween celebration! We wrote awesome stories about trick-or-treating, and made spooky crayon-resist paintings to go with them! Thanks to our parent volunteers, we had a ghoolishly fun Halloween party, too! We had colorful, yummy treats, and made a totally cool Halloween pop-up card for our families. We are lucky to have such fabulous parents!

October was a SPOOK-TACULAR month in 1H!!
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