Welcome to the first Monsters University Campus Connection blog of the 2014-2015 school year! Our Campus Connection blog is published about once a month for your reading enjoyment. Hope you have a scary good time reading!!
Mike, Sully, Ms. Hofmann and the rest of our faculty just cannot believe that the Fall Semester here at Monsters University has been in full swing for about a month already! Over the course of the past month, our little "monsters" here at MU have enrolled in a plethora of challenging classes, all of which serve to educate the "whole child." From community building exercises to Common Core lessons, Class 2H is maximizing our second grade learning experience! Here is just a small snapshot of some of our campus happenings. And as you peruse, don't forget the MU motto- "Every dream begins somewhere. Some are born into greatness and some find greatness on their own."
First day of school jitters? Not to worry! Nothing a great book and some "magic" Jitter Juice can't fix! Check us out as we sample some of the green bubbly concoction (Green Berry Rush Hawaiian Punch and a splash of ginger ale) which helped take away the butterflies.
After unlocking the secret to a successful year, Class 2H wanted to display our blue and white Monsters University pride. What better way to show off our school spirit than with an official MU pennant?! Our pennants are now hanging in the hallway to help showcase our "scary good work!" Here we are creating the pennants, with a little help from our friends. Then you can check out the final products as seen from the second grade wing!
Now that we have laid the foundation for Room 27 to be a "community of respect," we can dive into collaborative, engaging, project-based, hands-on learning! This style of teaching and learning is so motivational that we may even forget we are in school at all! This is our class making a hula hoop Venn diagram to compare and contrast Miss Nelson and Ms. Swamp from the classic book Miss Nelson Is Missing. We came up with wonderful character traits to assist Detective McSmogg in finding these missing teachers. Then we made Missing Persons Posters to aid him in the search. Have you found Miss Nelson or Ms. Swamp yet?? If so, please contact the children from Room 27 immediately!!
While we wait for Detective McSmogg to crack the Miss Nelson case, we decided to act as detectives ourselves...writing detectives that is! In an effort to make our MU undergrads more comfortable in sounding out words to practice spelling on their own, Miss Hofmann had the class investigate an old writing journal from 26 years ago!! These written pieces were FAR from perfect. The selections contained capitalization and punctuation errors, as well as a ton of misspellings. Additionally, many of the pieces lacked detail. In fact, the writing needed so much work that the kids in Room 27 thought the author was in kindergarten when the entries were written. After the big reveal, Class 2H discovered that the journals were actually written by Miss Hofmann herself when she was in SECOND GRADE!
After getting some great advice and editing tips from the class, Miss Hofmann impressed upon the students that in order to grow as authors, we all must try even if we make mistakes along the way. However, we will always have the assistance of peer partners to help us grow as writers. Our Writer's Notebooks are our own work, and we must TRY our best to spell and write on our own!
September might be coming to a close here on the MU campus, but the fall season is just beginning, as is our class journey! We can't wait to explore more over the rest of the semester. Stay tuned for the MU Campus Connection Vol. 2, coming to a computer near you next month. Happy learning!
