On Friday, Mrs. Egli's class celebrated the end of the "Arthur" series with a publishing party. They had hot chocolate and cookies and took turns reading their stories...how wonderful! As an interpreter...it is so fun to get to celebrate right along with the students...they are so proud of their hard work. In this picture you can see some of the students finished work! WOW!!!

THE FIRST REAL SNOW

Our first real day of snow...the students were so excited about going outside to get their picture taken as a memory of "The First REAL Snow". Mrs. Egli's class is making scrap books of their second grade year...What a great memory the students will have! It started this Monday off with great expectation of what is coming up...Thanksgiving and Christmas!!! We can hardly wait!

On special Fridays we have Mystery Guest readers come to the class and read one of their favorite stories, from when they were a child, or read a story that their family loves. This is a fun way of practicing interpretation for the hearing interpreter...you have no idea WHAT is going to be read and it's just off the top, as soon as it is read... you interpret! Sometimes the students enjoy watching some of the expressions and excitement and interpreter adds to the reading. This is a really great way of practicing for the up and coming EIPA! WOW...the stories are really great, it is fun to see who our MYSTERY GUEST is and what they are going to read!
WHAT IS NEXT???

Math is fun to interpret at this level, you can use visuals and manipulatives along with signs. This was a very fun project with counting money...you were allowed $3.50 to by an ice cream sundae. As you can see we used quarters to represent the $3.50 and then we crossed off each quarter as we spent it. This is a great way of spending money and learning to count quarters, nickels, dimes, and pennies. The students built their sundaes to their liking and the only problem we had, the students didn't want to stop when their money ran out...of course Math is before lunch and so we were hoping to have ice cream sundaes for dessert!! This project was a success!

Mrs. Egli's class is enjoying yet another "special", Library. This class LOVES to read! Curious George, Junie B. Jones and Arthur are amoung their favorite books to choose from. As an interpreter with a younger student or students I go with that student to all special. I interpret all insturction. I am also there to help with communication between the students and teacher etc. These times are less structered and allows some freedom for the student. During this down time I catch up on notes to the family (of theses students), a diary of what the students did that day. This is a great way of logging what I have done that day as well. Keeping a daily log is great because if any question accure about a certain day... you have your diary to help. (Great tool to have! I encourage any para professional, aide, interpreter ect. to have something like this.) At library the students get to pick two book to take home and read. Then they have some free time to read and listen to a story or watch a video of one of their favorite books!! Library is alway so fun!

What a great Friday!! We had a "BAT DAY" and learned many new facts about our scary friends...first of all they are not as scary as we thought they were. We learned that some Bats can eat up to 1000 mosquito in an hour, and most bats have one or two babies that are called pups (this makes them mamals). They use echo location to see in the night. There are bats as small as a bumble bee and bats that have a wing span as large as 6 feet. Wow and if that wasn't enough to learn...we had "Bat Math," read a story about bats and saw an educational video, on the many bats around the world. We topped off our fun and educational day with our bat hats!!! HOW CUTE!! This day was fun packed and for an HI very intense!!! You are always on!! The student or students are very stimulated with all the visuals and are full of questions and want to engage in conversation through the whole learning process; days like these are very challenging but, so rewarding!!!

Our class it starting a great project with the PBS Arthur series. (Parents, check it out on my link.) We are creating a story and modeling Marc Browns writing techniques. We are using the characters in the Arthur books and coming up with our own stories. This is an "Arthur Study". In this study, the students will come up with a problem and a solution. This encourages the student to become independent at solving his or her own small problems. We are very excited to work with this program and the students love it. My job as an HI is to help the student understand each story we read in class. Then, help the student pick out the characters in the story, set up a rough draft with sequence, pictures and small captions that will get the story started. Then the student signs what he/she want the story to say and... the learning begins!!!


What a wonderful project! Second Grade is so fun!!!