Kattre's Korner
Learning together. Growing together.
We've been doing a lot of fun things in February so far, including performing a Fable in the form of a reader's theater. The kids said they really liked it and want to do another sometime soon! They practiced a lot and did an incredible job with their performances! In connection to our Long Ago and Today unit in social studies, we had someone from the Mining and Rollo Jamison Museum, here in Platteville, come and visit our classrooms. She brought in a bunch of toys that were used long long ago. The kids got to pass around and look at the delicate toys, and play with a few that were a little stronger. On Wednesday, February 5th, Westview participated in Global Play day, where we used ZERO technology all day, and had absolutely no curriculum time. Instead the kids got to play in our room, the other 2nd grade rooms, as well as visit the 3rd grade rooms to play ALL DAY LONG! They seemed to really enjoy the freedom, as well as the break from curriculum! We even had some 3rd graders come in and present some plays that they had practiced throughout the day. Thursday, February 6th was the 100th day of school, so for a fun activity the kids had the option of disguising a 100 in their own secret way. Here's how those that participated decided to disguise their numbers. They were so creative!!! Today, we took all the food that we collected during our food drive to the Platteville Food Pantry located at the Lutheran Church of Peace. The kids learned about how/why the food pantry works, and what volunteering entails there. They got to take our donations and look for any food that was expired, as well as damaged/rusted cans. After sorting the food, they stocked the shelves to prepare for this week's pantry distribution. Thank you so much for all of your generous donations to this project! "We rise by lifting others." <3
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January has been filled with fun, including when our friend Zelda came back from China! She brought us each a bag of goodies to try from China, including cookies, noodle snack, jelly tubes, and gummy candies! As part of the student's Christmas gift from me, I gave them a book of coupons, including days to sit by a friend of their choice, a new pencil, eraser, and eraser, wearing socks or slippers, reading their favorite book to the class, and show and tell. Here are some pictures of the kids cashing in those coupons! As part of our fables unit we are having students practice and perform a reader's theater fable. They've been having to work on their accuracy in reading, as well as fluency and expression. It's been great to practice these pieces and I am looking forward to hearing their final performance! The last and latest thing we'd like to share is that sledding is BACK and in full swing. Our class gets to sled 3-4 times a week during recesses! They are loving it! Thanks for popping in and checking out what we've been up to! Here's a pretty picture of what Cora was working on during inside recess one day! Enjoy the rest of your week and weekend!
This past week we were working on a snow writing and craft. Part of the craft needed little snowflakes, so we had a step-by-step lesson on how to make them. Here are some of the kids with their first snowflake. We'll be learning more about snow throughout the month of January.
Friday was a chaotic, but fun-filled day! We made memories all day and would love to share pictures of the day and the activities we got to explore. The first station was exploring VR (virtual reality) goggles with Mrs. Utley. They got to see the view from a human's eye, and then from an animal's eye. The next station was working with cups and towers. The kids were to build towers with the cups the traditional way (with their hands), followed by using a rubber band and 4 strings. Each student held a string, but they had to work together to pull their strings to get them around the cup, then give a little so that the rubber band grabs the cup, and they can move/stack the cups. Many tried, and worked Incredibly well together, but only Alex, Vienna, Chase, and Reegan were able to do the challenge. The next activity was the water room. They kids got to participate in 3 different activities related to water. One had them making an estimate on how many drops of water fit on the various coins, followed by testing it out. The next had students making a prediction as to whether items would sink or float in water, then testing it out. And the last activity had the students building a boat out of aluminum foil, followed by putting it in water to see how many pennies it would take to make it sink. Reegan won the challenge with 80 pennies! The next activity was learning about animal tracks. We got to read about book on Raz Kids about animal tracks, explore in flour with various rubber tracks (followed by using a magnifying glasses to check out the tracks in detail, and finally read on iPads by scanning QR codes to a bunch of stories dealing with animals and their tracks. It was a very messy, but fun activity! Next, we went to learn about constellations, where we turned off the lights to search (with flashlights) for letters to solve a riddle. Then the kids got to build their own constellations with marshmallows and toothpicks. The last activity for the day was a lego center. We watched a video on how Legos are made, and then got to play with Legos and other S.T.E.M. centers within the classroom. Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures of this, but they were SUPER engaged and seem excited for the next time we get to pull these centers out!
Thank you for checking in! Happy Monday, and have a great rest of your week!! It's safe to say that this school year as been my worst as far as posting goes. I'm really sorry that I haven't been posting more frequently. Anyways, let's cut to the point. Since we last posted, we have had Halloween, which brought the cutest costumes! ... we got to have our first 'Kattre Cafe', (which is lunch in the classroom which a Wild Kratts episode). ... went to see Peter and the Wolf at the Mineral Point Opera House. ... had a p.j. day to celebrate winning at the Bucketfilling Assembly. ... started our UNICEF journey, with exercises and bracelets. (It's great to see them work cooperatively to get their bracelets on every morning! We also watched the Westview News, which is created by Mrs. Utley and a group of students. November news crew was Alex, Zelda, and Addy. The next exciting thing to happen was our Christmas concert. The kids did such a great job, especially our readers!! Thank you to everyone who made it to watch our talented 2nd graders! As part of learning about different holiday traditions, including Christmas in France, we welcomed the high school French class in, to learn about some new French words, read a book, and 'make' a Buche de Noel. They had such a great time learning from the high schoolers and we even listened to them sing us Jingle Bells in french! At our Bucketfilling Assembly we won again! We will be having p.j. and stuffy day at some point in the near future. Chase also got to play a rock/paper/scissors, hula-hoop game. He did AMAZING! Some other fun things we did right before break was a candy cane experiment, where we put a candy cane in warm water, cold water, and oil to see what happened to each one, and how it changed differently. We also got to write a random holiday story, and those that wanted to go to read theirs in front of the class. Alex, Ally, Cora, Linli, and Reegan all were brave enough to share! Nice work girls! I hope you all had an AMAZINGLY restful break with family and friends! Can't wait to see all of the kids in the morning!
I'm not quite sure how, but it's been almost a month since I've posted. This can also be followed with how blown away I am that these are the last few days of FIRST QUARTER!! Please enjoy some snapshots of our last month of school I promise to try harder to post pictures more frequently next quarter! Here we have Ally and Sam, who were our banner holders for the homecoming parade. It was a bummer that we got rained out, but we still had a pep rally in the gym, where they got to carry the banner into. After reading Arthur's Reading Race during our reading time, Sam, Cora, Nikolai, and Alex got to perform a readers theater for the class. Each of them took a part - Arthur, DW, Narrator 1, and Narrator 2. They showed the rest of the class what a readers theater should sound like. ->Read with fluency and expression. We've started talking about geography and using maps. The 2nd graders had to work as a team to follow directions and create a map. Everyone had to help and contribute in some way. Here are our final maps. They did an AMAZING job!! Both in their teamwork, as well as their direction following and map making skills. On October 14, the class took a beautiful walk to the Platteville Public Library. We literally could not have asked for better walking weather. While we were there, the librarian read us books, showed us how they organize books in the library, and let us check out some books, too! Just a heads up, these books are due back to the library by November 4th. The wonderfully thoughtful, talented, and kind Mrs. Utley came to our class with a CART ATTACK. After having heard that we were reading books like Henry and Mudge, Arthur's Reading Race (with Arthur and DW), as well as Frog and Toad, she came to us with books with DYNAMIC DUOS. These character combinations make for fun and exciting stories that she shared with us. We <3 Mrs. Utley! We have been exploring the states of matter in science. We talked about solids, liquids, and more recently solids as particles. I told the kids we were making soup with these particles (lima beans, pinto beans, mung beans, rice, and corn meal), had them mix them all together, then pretended like adding the rice was a mistake. We had to brainstorm ways to get the particles separated and back into their containers to start over. We had to work together as a team with everyone helping to contribute in the process. They did AMAZING and were very surprised to find out the Mrs. Kattre was fibbing them the whole time! :) Between you guys and me... this is my favorite science lesson that I teach. :) Thanks for hanging in there through all of these pictures. Again, I'm sorry that it took so long to get it done. I swear I started and stopped 5 or 6 times. Thank you for all of your support and patience this year so far! You (and your children) are a great bunch to work with! BRING ON NOVEMBER!
The week has flown by and we've already accomplished so much. Hopefully when you ask your SUPER 2nd grader what they've done all week, they can tell you that we've worked on classroom/school rules, met/made new friends, and read stories. But in between all that learning, we got to do a lot of brain breaks and dancing! Here are some pictures of our SUPER 2nd graders from either back-to-school night or on the first day. To end the week we focused on what it looks like during read to self (silent reading) and how to avoid distracting others from being 'lost' in a book. We practiced this and will work on increasing our stamina (length of time) for our read to self time in the day. I've come to realize that I've got the sweetest group of the hardest-working 2nd graders! I'm am thoroughly looking forward to an amazing year! Thanks for visiting our blog and stay tuned for more!
I'll keep this short since I'm uploading a TON of pictures. On Wednesday of last week, as a reward for good behaviors and hard work on all the end-of-year assessments, we got to dunk Mr. Temperly in the dunk tank and have an extra recess. As of Thursday morning, after syncing our UNICEF bands, we had 898 RUTF packets - just 2 shy of our 900 packet goal. We decided to do a few of our UNICEF brain breaks to earn one of the packets, and then take our recess to get as many steps as possible. After syncing again (following recess) we had 902 food packets and officially earned our PIZZA PARTY!!! They were pretty excited that their hard work had paid off, not only for themselves... but for children/families in need!! After all was said and done, the class was able to donate to the local community by using their power points/coins to donate 482 meals for local families, plant 50 trees in the community, and provide medical supplies for 12 mobile doctors visits. Here are some snapshots of the fun the kids had at our Field Day on Thursday, and the Bucketfilling Assembly. I just wanted to take a moment to get you up to pace on my grad program. If you remember back to March, I sent home a permission form allowing me to use the data on your child in my masters program. Well, I'm happy to announce that I have officially graduated and will be able to enjoy my summer HOMEWORK FREE!! :)
We've been out and about, exploring all the things, so I'm sorry this post is VERY long overdue. I hope you enjoy all these great pictures!! :) May 15th, we took a trip to Folklore Village to learn about heritage and traditions. Here are some pictures from the trip. We went to an old school house to play games, learned about different instruments from around the world in an old church, danced around a maypole, and rolled our own felt balls after learning about wool. Thank you so much Sultana and Deb for joining us on our trip!! The kids have also been working on practicing their cursive! Watch out! They'll be signing their name in no time! On May 28th, we took a trip to Nobland, the Noble Farm, where we got to feed calves, hold baby animals, eat a nutritious dairy snack, climb on farm equipment, and see dairy cattle up close and personal. The kids had a lot of great questions and seemed to really enjoy their up-close-and-personal experience on the farm!! After our butterflies (painted lady moths) came out of their cocoons, we decided to let them go. It was so fun to watch the kid's faces as we let them go. Our butterflies must have loved their home, because it took some gentle coaxing to get them out. On Thursday, we were blessed with a beautiful day, so we decided to have a picnic lunch (school lunch outside). The kids enjoyed the time outside and were very excited for the change of scenery. On Friday we started presenting our animal research papers to the class. The kids became 'experts' on their animals, we they read their paper, followed by question/answer session and sharing what they learned from the expert. Despite the gnats, we decided to have an afternoon of reading outside as well as taking a walk to earn extra steps towards our UNICEF bracelets. Another fun daily activity was to go outside to draw pictures on the sidewalk with chalk. We had a lot of inspirational and uplifting pictures and messages. This class is going to be an amazing addition to their community one day!
As you all know, out class, along with Mrs. Temperly's and Mrs. Droessler's 2nd grade classes have been collecting food for the Platteville Food Pantry located at the Lutheran Church of Peace. Between the three rooms we collected over 400 items to donate!! In addition to the sense of pride our students should feel for bringing in an donating these items, they also were able to go to the food pantry to volunteer on Friday, April 25. While there, we looked for expiration dates, sorted donated items, and stocked the shelves of the pantry. Ms. Terrie Hoffman did an incredible job of showing us all that it takes to run such a beneficial program that impacts so many lives. Here are some pictures of the visit! Stay tuned for an article in the Platteville Journal about our Food Drive/Community Project! :) A few weeks ago, Chesney Snow, a Platteville High School alumni, came to visit us and held an assembly to show us the power of sound and to answer questions about his life. Keyonte, Aaliyah, Annelise, and Carter all got to go up in front of the group and help Mr. Snow put on a show. They did a great job!!
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Mrs. KattreI'm a 7th year teacher, with a family of three. Join me on this journey as we learn together and grow together. Archives
October 2019
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