Open House

These are a few things that I had on display for Open House!

The backpacks were a lesson that we started on the first day of school about what a second grader needs to be successful (created by Babbling Abby at The Inspired Apple).  I had a backpack full of items such as an apple, money, pencil, books, etc. which led to a discussion about being prepared, eating a healthy breakfast, and reading everyday.  It was a great activity to teach them what kind of expectations I had for them as Second Graders.

I also displayed Acrostic Poems that were taught during our writing block.  The children loved looking at their western pictures and reading facts about each other!

"Our Promise" was developed over a few days as we added various promises that were important to keep throughout the year.  I introduced this topic by reading "The Monster that Came to School" (found on Christina Bainbridge's website).  It is a silly story about a monster that comes to school and creates chaos as it breaks all of the rules.  To make the story even sillier I used my troll puppet to act out the events.  There were tons of giggles, screams, and silly sound effects as I made a complete fool out of myself to tell this story...but hey...that's what teachers do!  Afterwards, each student added a rule to the anchor chart and we talked about how our monster could remain in the classroom if they taught him the rules that we all need to follow.

In the hallway, I made a bulletin board to correlate with our western classroom theme (found also at www.bainbridgeclass.com).  Each student had a "Wanted" poster with their picture on display.  But watch out because they may be armed with knowledge!