A Grateful Teacher

Dear Families~
Words cannot express the gratitude I feel to have the amazing support of my students and their families. The music videos were hilarious and we laughed even harder while watching them again today...such great dance moves! I was deeply touched by everyone's generosity and will enjoy your gifts. The memories I've made so far with your wonderful children are embedded in my mind and heart and I feel so grateful to have the opportunity to help make a difference, thank you for sharing your most precious gifts with me.  So from the bottom of my heart thank you so very much.

I wish you all a joyous holiday and healthy New Year.

Mrs. Madden

Be sure to look below to see all the fun we shared and don't forget to take a peek at our children's awesome dance moves in each of the four videos.

Thank you for helping to make our classroom Book Swap such a great success.

MacLean and her dad are all smiles.

Click on the arrow to see our fabulous dance moves.

Who ever said a bathtub was for taking a bath?

Ciaran and Mom celebrating the holiday spirit.

Boy, do we have the holiday spirit.

Vincenzo and Dad sharing some yummy treats.

It's hard to believe they had just eaten lunch.

Sharing family time and Popsicles during our classroom celebration.

Take a peek at our fancy footwork.

Emma and Dad's smiles help light up the room.

Holiday Classroom Celebration

Dear Families,

I wanted to wish you all a joyous holiday season as the days wind down and a new year is about to begin. If you have completed your holiday shopping and wrapping.... feel free to stop by and join us during our classroom celebration tomorrow, Tuesday, December 22nd from 1:15-2:15 in our classroom.  

Thank you so much for sending your child's book swap book...they are all so beautifully wrapped, it is always a fun surprise to uncover each child's Secret Santa. I also want to thank my Room Mothers, Mrs. Phillips and Mrs. Shugrue for organizing our celebration. I'd also like to send out a very special thank you to all the families who have donated supplies, and delicious treats, as well as donating their precious time to make tomorrow's events fun for your children. As always thank you for your support from home.

Happy Holidays!

Lena Madden

Working Hard in Mrs. Madden's Second Grade Class

Learning to be Cartographers

We have just begun our geography unit and it is very exciting. As another way of learning, we have explored multiple YouTube videos to help us remember our continents and oceans. I have attached the links to two great videos below that we watched in class. They are informative and engaging to watch.

                        Click on the vocab terms to view all we've learned about geography and cartography.

December has been a very busy month so far, the children showed each element of GRIT during their Hour of Code recently. We were lucky enough to work with Mrs. Klipfel in our media center on learning how to write code. The children were given minimal directions and asked to work independently on their task of using code to move their Angry Bird. Hour of Code is a worldwide program and we are very grateful to have experienced it here at Steward. Thank you Mrs. Klipfel.

Please click the link below for your child to continue working on the level of Angry Birds they left off on:

https://code.org/

Mila is all smiles after completing level 5 of moving her Angry Bird.

We definitely have some future coders in our class.

"Computer science ROCKS!"

Today we welcomed a 3rd grade guest into our classroom, who just happens to be the sibling of our friend Madelyn. Her brother Dylan presented his inquiry circle project to our class. Dylan did an excellent job explaining that an inquiry circle requires a lot of work because it involves picking a topic of interest, choosing a "thick" question, and then researching that question to find the answer. He presented a wonderful model of our solar system by explaining a few facts about each planet. It was a very special treat and the class thoroughly enjoyed it. Great work Dylan.

Madelyn is so very PROUD of her brother Dylan.

FINALLY our Halloween stories are complete. The children worked very hard and so beautifully on their writing, that Mrs. Madden and Ms. Hagberg were happy to help publish them. Each child wrote and illustrated their own "personal narrative" with a twist. Although our stories were originally designed to be Halloween personal narratives, the children couldn't resist adding their own creativity. We focused on the elements of a personal narrative including; characters, setting, beginning, middle, endings, bold leads, exciting endings, show me- don't tell me, and similes. We are extremely proud of each child for showing resilience through this time consuming project. These books sure were worth the wait.

Showing off all of our hard work in our first published books of the year!

Nolan and Janey demonstrate pride in their finished Halloween stories.  

Holding them up high for everyone to see!

The Elf Store

The children have been planning and preparing for our recent visit to the Elf Store.  After designing their elves the children needed to budget their 60 cents carefully to fully dress and adorn their special creations.  Moms and dads volunteered their time and supported our students as they cut, snipped and glued fabric, lace and glitter to make their elves come alive. The energy in the classroom can be seen in the smiles of each student!

We shared ideas and at times had to rely on one another... what a team!

I can't help smiling whenever I see the creativity each student displayed.

Madelyn and Ella worked together as they cut out patterns for their elves.

Thank you to all the parent volunteers who helped us create a bit of magic in a most creative way! We want to thank all of the families who had graciously donated supplies, there was an abundant supply of felt, lace, glitter, googly eyes. beads, feathers and pom-poms in every size you can imagine.  The children and I are so lucky to have your support and we are so very appreciative, thank you so very much!

Ms. Hagberg assisted some of the children in making good choices and staying within their budget of 60 cents.

Drew, Vincenzo and Ciaran worked together, shared resources and created a theme for their elves.  Be sure to take a peek at their creations below and see if you can locate the theme.

When we returned to our classroom we continued to practice our money skills by determining how much change each student needed... to total their original 60 cents. So we drew a bar model on the Smartboard and every student counted the amount of change they had left, and then they subtracted that amount from their original 60 cents.  Each student was told that their "ticket to lunch" was to determine the change or difference owed back to them to calculate their original 60 cents.  Boy they must have been hungry because in less than a minute every student had earned their ticket and were on their way to lunch!

We are ready to write our creative elf stories and the magical adventures ahead.

Kids on the Block

Middle school students from the Phoenix School in Salem presented a wonderful performance for our students, Kids on the Block is a puppet group that teaches children about disabilities. Each skit involved a child with a disability, meeting another child and discussing how they are the same and how they are different. After the skit, students asked the puppets interesting questions about making friends, what they wanted to do when they were grown up and which sports and activities they loved.

They helped us remember... anyone can do anything, just sometimes in a different way.

Although Mark has Cerebral Palsy he loves to play basketball and is a champion swimmer. He wears a helmet because he sometimes has seizures and his helmet protects him from getting hurt. Mark sometimes needs his friends to help him but he can do almost anything. Rinaldo has Down's Syndrome and told his friend that he needs extra time to learn information, but he loves hanging out with his friends.  He loves his pet snake, George and he wants to be a veterinarian one day.

GRIT

October and November so far have proven to be very busy and an exciting time in our classroom.
Please take a glimpse of how we show ...
                                          Guts     
                                          Resilience
                                          Innovation    
                                         Teamwork...  in our work!

Dr. O'Mara shared a passage from his book to help us understand how descriptive writing helps the reader "visualize" or see the action in a story.  We practiced using visualization in our own writing and we learned how important it is to add strong descriptions to make our writing easier to "see."

Kristina is exuberant as we practiced our song Never Give Up by Bruno Mars!

All second graders learned the words to Never Give Up by Bruno Mars and practiced, practiced and practiced until we knew the words by heart, that took RESILIENCE.  Once we felt comfortable with the lyrics we sang them in front of the whole school during an All-School Assembly to show we had GUTS and demonstrated TEAMWORK!  We were very proud of our INNOVATIVE idea to show we use GRIT at Steward School.

Great TEAMWORK boys and girls!

The children worked hard and enjoyed every moment of our recent Walk-a-thon.  We walked around the playground many times, and as you can see we felt proud for each stamp we received. Our school earned five extra minutes of recess and some new equipment for our playground.  A special thank you to the Playground Committee for supporting our school, your idea or INNOVATION helped us to raise money for the playground and we love the new soccer balls, buckets of chalk, kick balls and jump ropes that were graciously donated to Steward School.

We showed resilience to find every single error...we never gave up!

Working as a team to show our best thinking.

It takes resilience to find all the errors on these sentence strips, but working together as team makes it so much easier.  We focused on capitalization rules and using our most British voice stated..."It is PROPER to capitalize all PROPER NOUNS."

Using RAz Kids is an INNOVATIVE idea to practice using our comprehension strategies.

We love using RAZ Kids and the iPads are so much fun to use as we read both fiction and nonfiction texts.  Many students brought in their own headphones, it was so quiet you could hear a pin drop as they selected reading passages at their reading level, answered comprehension questions and even recorded their own voices as they read each book.

MacLean and Janey demonstrated persistence and RESILIENCE as they pounded their leaves.

We BLASTED all the chlorophyll from the chloroplast cells in the underside of our leaves, we demonstrated TEAMWORK and RESILIENCE, but are so proud of our hard work.  We shared our INNOVATIVE idea to prove that even though the autumn leaves had changed color, their food or chlorophyll was still green.

Timmy and Ben work to test their hypothesis.

Great TEAMWORK ladies, especially on a blustery fall day.

Great TEAMWORK and GUTS Vowel Super Heroes!

We have GRIT!

We have all earned our GRIT feathers...our headdresses are so colorful!

Halloween News

Happy Halloween!

Just a Friendly Reminder... 

our Halloween Party is scheduled for 

Friday, October 30th from 2:00-3:00. 

Please send your child's costume with their name on all pieces 

to avoid any lost items. 

 Please save all props for Trick-or-Treating on Saturday.

Parents are welcome to join us during our classroom celebration.

A very special thank you to our Room Mothers and all the families that donated delicious goodies as well as their time to support our children.

Happy Halloween,

Mrs. Madden

The Important Thing about Mrs. Costa

 How Do Writers Use Funneling?

Recently the children completed a class book entitled The Important Thing about Mrs. Costa based on Margaret Wise Brown's classic, The Important Book. The children were taught the skill of "funneling" an idea and writing about that specific topic. They added details to support their topic and each student completed a page in our classroom book. We recently presented our work to Mrs. Costa and the children were so excited when she read it aloud, every writer was beaming with pride.  Thank you Mrs. Costa for working so hard to make Steward School a safe and fun place to learn!

Vincenzo and Janey proudly present our work to Mrs. Costa

Here are some important facts we uncovered...

The important thing about Mrs. Costa is that she is the principal of Steward School.

She drives a black car,

she keeps us safe at school,

she always wears a walkie-talkie,

she always says hi in the hallway,

she always smiles,

she stays calm at unexpected fire drills,

she has a daughter who's in 2nd grade,

she makes assemblies fun,

she's very tall, but not as tall as Mr. Costa,

she's thoughtful and kind,

she buys supplies for our school,

she has G.R.I.T.,

But the important thing about Mrs. Costa is that she is the principal of Steward School.

The children were mesmerized while Mrs. Costa shared our classroom book.

Thank You Parents

Dear Parents,

Thank you so much for visiting your child's classroom during our recent Parent Seminar. Although the evening was warm I hope you learned more about the year ahead for your child. It was a pleasure to meet each of you and I am so thankful for those who volunteered their time to help support our classroom events and initiatives. If you were unable to sign up as a Mystery Reader and would still enjoy that opportunity, feel free to send me a message and I'll be happy to respond with available dates. Our Mystery Readers visit most Fridays from 2:30-3:00. I look forward to a year of collaboration and learning.
Thank you for your support,
Lena Madden

Welcome to Our Classroom

Please click on the arrow below to see how hard we've been working for just the first nine days of school.  We are off to an amazing start and I look forward to a fantabulous year together.

First Days of Second Grade

                              Happy First Day of School
We're off to a great start as we begin our exciting journey of learning in second grade. We've worked hard to set up classroom procedures and expectations, have read many picture books to help us predict and visualize the author's words, have written poems, completed math problems, and even shared Random Acts of Kindness as we work together as a team.

 Miss Ella couldn't wait to show her unique manicure, and her teacher was so touched to be thought of in such a special way.  Each fingernail displayed a letter spelling out my name, M-R-S. M-A-D-D-E-N.

We are ready to work hard and do our best work, we've made a second grade promise to always try our hardest and to persevere through our work, even when it's challenging.  We know that when Mrs. Madden says "N-B-D" we'll take a deep breath and remember "it's No Big Deal" and we'll work through any difficulties together. We also know that it's okay to make mistakes, because we always learn from those mistakes.

Introducing Mrs. Madden's Marvelous Second Graders

                                                                                                                                                                                              We shared our Portfolio Bags to help us learn more about one another and the connections we have in common.  Ben proudly displays a photograph of his dog, Daphne and it's obvious she is certainly an important part of his family.  Many children shared that same love for their pets and we soon realized as a class how much we love those special members of our family.

 
Belle is proud to be a B-I-G sister and was tickled pink to share a photograph of her three younger sisters, the newest just arriving a few months ago. What a beautiful family! Mrs. Madden connected with her as our family welcomed our granddaughter just a few weeks ago.
 

Summer Memories

Dear Second Graders, I hope you've been enjoying your summer and are looking forward to a new year of fun and learning. Summer is a wonderful opportunity to spend time with family and friends, and I've enjoyed every moment of my summer vacation doing just that. I've spent much of my vacation reading books, watching breathtaking sunsets and relaxing at the beach, but one of my favorite memories so far has been teaching my three grandchildren how to swim in Lake Winnipesaukee.  Please post a comment below and tell me about your favorite summer adventure.  Be sure to tell me all the exciting details and remember to write your first name only. I can't wait to see you on the first day of school and hear more about your adventures.  Love,

STEM Marble Rolls

Integrating

Science

Technology

Engineering

Math

the children planned, designed, created, measured and tested their marble rolls.  Take a peek at their hard work!