Weekly Update 12/21

This is going to be a quick week! Although the winter break is right around the corner, we will still have plenty to do in 2nd Grade.

We will spend a lot of our Daily Five/Reading blocks reading holiday stories and responding in writing to the stories. The students will have the opportunity to sequence events, answer questions, and follow-up with creative writing for some stories. We will also spend time during our reading groups doing readers theatre to practice our oral reading fluency and expression.

In math this week we will be doing exploration activities where the kids get to really work hands-on. The students will be exploring ways to measure long paths, working with arrays, and matching math facts with addition/subtraction strategies that work best.

We will have our class Winter Party on December 23rd! We will also have a school sing-along assembly this week!

Spirit Day- Wednesday, December 23rd

Crazy Winter Hat Day - Wear a favorite winter hat, headband or seasonal hat

Wednesday, December 23rd is an Early Release. Students will be dismissed at 12:20 pm.

I wish you all a fun, safe, and relaxing Winter Break! Merry Christmas to all those families who celebrate. School will resume January 4th. Happy New Year!

Weekly Update 12/14

Excitement is definitely in the air!  We will have lots of fun this week, while trying to stay focused on routine.  Here is a look at what’s ahead…

Math- Math will be very hands on over the next few days as we discuss and practice measurement.  We will look at feet, inches, and centimeters while we measure all around the classroom.   

Reading- We began discussing character traits in our reading groups last week.  After reading a book, the children chose a character and brainstormed a list of traits to describe that character.  The next step will be to discuss and write down evidence in the text to support those traits.  

Some groups have also been doing some readers theatre to work on their fluency and expression while reading.  We hope to “perform” some of those plays this week for the rest of the class! 

Library Research/Posters- Last week we had the opportunity to review Non-Fiction features by looking at books about various holidays around the world.  With the help of Mrs. Dierks and Mrs. Lavoie in the library, the children explored the following holidays:  Diwali, Ramadan, Christmas, Hanukkah, Chinese New Year, and Kwanzaa.  This week the students will work in groups to explore one of the above holidays in more depth.  They will then create a poster and teach their class about the holiday.

Writing- Last week we received a letter from Santa saying he was hiring some new elves.  The children have come up with character traits they feel would be important for an elf to have, and they have been working hard writing letters back to him trying to persuade Santa to hire them for the holiday season!!  This is a great introduction to our persuasive/opinion writing unit, which we will focus on after the winter break.

Upcoming Dates:

Winter Party- December 23^rd

Winter Break- December 24^th- January 3^rd

Weekly Update 12/7

 Happy Monday! It's hard to believe that we only have a little over two weeks until Winter Break! The excitement is high in the classroom :)

For homework this week, the students will be asked to write a personal narrative story about a holiday family tradition. If you don't celebrate a winter holiday, it can be a story about any holiday throughout the year. This assignment will take the place of the weekly Reading Log. The children will be encouraged to share their stories with the class. In addition to the writing assignment, your child will have a math worksheet 2 nights this week and their Spelling Tic-Tac-Toe. 

This week we will be focusing on making words plural during our phonics lessons. The students will learn the combinations that require you to add -es instead of just s.

We will also do a lesson on Character Traits which will lead us into a seasonal writing in which the kids will get to pretend that they are an elf and have the opportunity to use character traits to write a persuasive letter to Santa telling him why he should hire them.

During reading groups this week, we will continue talking about character traits by describing the traits of the main characters in our Guided Reading books.

Math this week will focus on using place-value and expanded form to compare 3-digit numbers. We will do a practice Open Response question where the children will make sense of a 3-digit number represented by base-10 blocks by making trades or counting. Then we will come together on the following day to analyze explanations and drawings and then the children will have the opportunity to revise their work.

We will be finishing up our unit on Matter this week by continuing to sort objects (solids, liquids, and gases) by their scientific properties (color, shape, size, odor, texture, and weight). The students will be taking their Matter Assessment on Thursday.

Reminders:

Tuesday, December 8th is School Store for Grade Two

Thursday, December 10th is an Early Release (Professional Development) 

I hope you have a great week!

Weekly Update 11/30

I hope you all enjoyed some relaxing family time.  I enjoyed meeting with you all for parent/teacher conferences last week.  

We are heading into new month of learning with a FULL week of school!  Here are a few things we will be doing…

In math we are beginning a new unit which focuses on measurement.  At the beginning of the week we’ll discuss telling time on an analog clock.  We’ll review clock vocabulary, as well as practice telling time to the nearest hour, half hour, and 5 minutes. 

For writing this week we will look more at editing strategies writer’s can use to make their writing sound better.  We’ll discuss how to use a variety of sentence beginnings, as well as how to write with a variety of sentence lengths.  We will do some practice with these skills as we fix up our own and others’ writing. 

Our guided reading groups continue to go well.  We will continue responding to reading in both words and writing.  The children will have ample opportunity to practice their independence during Daily 5 each day.  We will also get to try out some more “Read to Someone” during some of our Daily 5 rounds.

Our next few science lessons will be focused on gases.  We will learn that gases actually have weight and take up space.  We will also be reviewing all the states of matter, as well as practicing sorting matter using the properties we’ve been discussing.