Weekly Update 11/21

I hope you are enjoying these beautiful fall temperatures this weekend! I feel like the past two weeks have really flown by. Iím happy to share some of the things your child has been working on…

We took a break from reading groups so that I could meet individually with the students to assess their reading progress. All children are making great gains, and I look forward to talking to more about this during our conferences next week.

As I read individually with students I wanted to have meaningful, engaging activities for the rest of the class to be doing during Daily 5. One of those activities included a writing piece where they were convincing people to eat something other than turkey for Thanksgiving! These came out very cute and will be hung up for you to see during conferences. I also introduced “Read to Someone” as a choice during Daily 5. This allowed the students to read with a buddy during 1 round of Daily 5. We discussed what this might look and sound look, as well as how to pick a good learning partner. Although we are still fine-tuning this activity, “Read to Someone” has turned out to be a popular choice!

                                           

   

The past two weeks in math have been a continuation of Unit 3. In this unit, more fact strategies were developed, with a focus on strategies for solving subtraction facts. We learned a few games and routines to help support the development of fluency with addition and subtraction within 20. We were lucky to have some parents in on Friday to play some of these games with us! The plan is to finish up this unit before the Thanksgiving break so we are ready to start fresh on Unit 4 when we return on November 28th.

Our writing times have been spent continuing Personal Narrative writing. Most kids have two complete, edited stories. We also did a writing prompt where the children were asked to write a Personal Narrative story about a time they had fun. They worked on these stories independently so that we could use them to help assess where the children are in their understanding of all the components and processes involved in this type of writing.

We are in the process of beginning our next science unit, Materials and Their Uses. I hope the children will enjoy this unit as much as they enjoyed the Plant and Animal Survival Unit!

I look forward to speaking with you next week during our parent/teacher conferences. Below are some important upcoming dates…


November 21st: 2-Hour Delay- Parent Teacher Conferences
November 22nd: No School- Parent Teacher Conferences
November 23rd: Race for Education Fundraiser
November 23rd: Early Release (No PM Kindergarten)
November 24th-November 25th: Thanksgiving Break: No School 

Here's what some of the kids said about this week:

"This week I learned about Veteran's Day"

                           -Daniel

"My favorite part of the week was when I found carrots outside in the school garden."

                          -Ava

"My favorite part of the week was shopping at the book fair."

                          -Allison

"This week I learned how to bowl in Wellness."

                          -Griffen

Weekly Update 11/7

We had a very busy and fun week in the classroom! The week started out with an exciting Harvest Party, which was organized and run by our fabulous Room Mom, Debbie Porthouse! The kids had a great time making a skeleton craft, enjoying a yummy snack, and playing a mummy wrap game! The kids costumes were amazing as well! We are looking forward to our next classroom party, the Winter Party in December.
















This week our reading groups focused on reading fictional text and discussing literary elements including: character, setting, problem, and solution. Next week I will begin doing reading assessments in preparation for parent teacher conferences and the end of Term 1.


Math this week focused on subtraction strategies such as: counting back, counting up, and subtracting 0 and 1. The kids also enjoyed playing 2 new games called Salute and Subtraction Top-It. Ask them about these games, as they are great games to play at home to practice their math facts! You can find the directions by logging onto your child’s Everyday Math Account. Their login information is in their Take Home Folders inside one of the plastic sleeves. Once you login, click on the Everyday Math book image to enter the site.


During writing this week the children worked on revising and editing their personal narrative stories. The children learned about starting sentences in various ways and having a variety of sentence lengths in their stories to make the writing sound more interesting. They have also been editing their stories to check for capitals and punctuation, as well as correctly spelled high frequency words. The kids are really doing an excellent job with their personal narrative stories!


We wrapped up our Plant and Animal Survival unit in Science. The kids learned about the final habitat, which was the Ocean Habitat. We also spend some time reviewing all of the habitats for the assessment that will be given this coming week.


Overall, it was a great week in Second Grade! I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!


Upcoming Dates:
- Monday, November 7th at 3:30 Online Conference Sign-up begins
- No School November 8th for Professional Development
- No School November 11th for Veteran's Day
- Friday, November 18th- Mismatched Clothes Spirit Day
- Monday, November 21st is a Two Hour Delay for Parent Teacher Conferences
- No School Tuesday, November 22nd for Parent Teacher Conferences
- Wednesday, November 23rd Race for Education
- Wednesday, November 23rd Early Release for Thanksgiving Break
- No School November 24th and 25th for Thanksgiving


Here is what the kids had to say:

“My favorite part of the week was that I got to be Star of the Week.”
- Dylan


“My favorite part of the week was the Halloween Party because we made skeletons.”
- Troy


“This week I learned the Mummy Wrap game.”
- Yuvraj


“My favorite part of the week was that we got 3 new ipads for our classroom.”
- Raushan


“This week I learned that sea stars can live 150 feet under the water.”
- Josie