Second Grader Class

How will my second grade class look like early in the morning?

I am still adopting the amazing routines of Mrs Lenehan, an American Grade 4 Homeroom teacher, who indirectly taught me so much about classroom management and teaching. A lot of incorrect Filipino style classroom management were replaced by her practices that are simple and yet effective styles.

Our day will start with a morning circle. The morning circle will start with a prayer, greeting, sharing, activities and news/ announcements.

There are lots of ways to do our morning greeting. It could be one of the following below and for sure there are more to come:
1. Simple greeting
2. Different language greeting
3. One inch greeting
4. Pacquiao-Mosley greeting
5. Handshake greeting
6. Thumbs up greeting

Sharing. I would love each child share a thing, experience, a word, or anything that they have learned or anything that they want to share. It could be something that they did oever the weekend or the day before. It could also be something happy that happened to them. This will encourage them to share their thoughts without hesitation.

Activities. This will help each child develop camaraderie with each other and improve their social skills. I have already tested this kind of approach to make a significant increase in confidence and trust to each other. It could be any of the games/activities below:

1. Pass the clip
2. 2 truth and 1 lie (a student will share 2 truths and 1 lie, each child will guess which one is the lie)
3. copy meow (a leader will start actions and everyone will copy him and one student will be the it. The it will guess who is the leader)
4. airplane competition (students will create their own airplane and the class will compete as to who will be able to make the airplane fly the longest)
5. alphabet game - The students should be able to come up with make sense sentences using the words. But each word should start with a to z or which ever will be assigned to them. They should think fast.
6.buzz- These entails the need for children to count and be familiar with the numbers. But each time a number reaches 7 the student should say buzz and not the number. The game goes on and on until someone makes a mistake. Any number with 7 shall have the same prompt word, buzz.
7. Dog and Cat/ Duck game -
8. This is IT/EAT - TWO objects shall be passed around and two students shall name them differently and their names shall be passed from one student to the other until their names reaches the first student who originally made them up.
9. Say it say all - each student shall think of an object that they will bring to a trip and before they say their they must be able to remember the other things that their classmates have mentioned. NO coaching unless they ask for it. Coaching should be acted out and not voiced out.
Finally, if there are news or announcements or anything important that should be shared it shall be on this time. Also, values integration and value of the month shall be emphasize in here.

Closing Circle

This is the way to end the day on a friday. There are ways on how we can do this:

1. pass the ball and say goodbye
2. pat on the back - mentioning the people/ classmates who were of big help for the week
3.
4.

Different affirmation

1. yes clap
2. mosquito clap
3. cool
4. wow
5. funTASTIC!
6. delicious!
7. Awesome clap - 2x lap, 2 hand claps then to seatmate