October 28th

It was nice to finally see the sun back out yesterday! I hope you have some fun plans for today, as the weather looks great! 

We have been having a blast in Second Grade the past two weeks! During our writing blocks, we have been working on a couple different types of writing. The students have begun their second personal narrative story which is the story that they brainstormed for at home. Thanks for your help! The students have written their beginnings and are currently working on the middle of their stories. I love watching their stories come to life! With Halloween around the corner, we have also spent some time doing a creative imaginary writing where the students got to create a friendly monster! I am sure they will be excited to share them with you at home.

During math, we finished up Unit 2 and have begun Unit 3. Unit 3 focuses on Fact Strategies. The children wrote subtraction number stories and generated related addition and subtraction facts. We also discussed the "Think Addition" strategy when solving subtraction facts. The children have learned that they can turn subtraction into addition by starting at the smaller number and counting up to the bigger number. This is a strategy that many second graders find helpful as subtraction tends to be more difficult for many students. We also spent some time discussing "fact families" and generating related number models for the families.

Fact Triangles were sent home with your child. It is important for the children to be practicing their addition and subtraction facts to 20. If they practice for a few minutes each day, it really helps their automaticity with these facts. Thanks for your support!

We are about half way through our Science unit on Plants and Animal Survival. The students learned why plants and animals live in some places and not in others. We visited three habitats- Polar, Desert, and Rainforest. We described each habitat and identified plants and animals that belong and do not belong in each place. Then after getting an overview of each of the habitats, we spent some time visiting the rainforest on a pretend rainforest trek. The students watched short clips along their journey and worked in pairs to write their own "blog" about their trip!

Our Language Arts blocks are continuing to go very well. The children are enjoying all of the components of Daily Five and are very independent at this point. This allows me to meet with students in their small reading groups. The past two weeks, we have been focusing on the skill of retelling a story. This is often done through a 5-Finger Retell which consists of telling about the characters, setting, problem, important events, and solution to the problem.

Upcoming Events:

October 31st- Harvest Party

The students are welcome to wear their Halloween costumes during the party. We ask that you send them to school in a bag labeled with their name. Due to the large amount of students, it would be helpful if your child could just put their costume over their clothes rather than changing in the bathroom. Also, there is no face paint or weapons allowed at Robinson School.

November 8th- Field trip permission slips due 

November 10th- Author Renata Bowers visits Robinson

November 11th- No School for Veterans Day

November 16th- Field Trip to the Concord Youth Theatre to see Beauty and the Beast 

October 13th, 2017

I hope you all enjoyed the long weekend with your families.   Every Monday (or in this case Wednesday!) the children write their "Weekend News" in their journals.  I love hearing them talk and write about all the fun activities they do on the weekends.  It was nice to hear that many of you got away for the weekend or enjoyed some fall fun around Westford.  It's always nice to have an extra day or two to re-charge!

Here is an update on what we've been doing in the classroom over the past two weeks:

We have really gotten into our Science Unit, which is called "Plant and Animal Survival".  We are conducting an experiment in the classroom to see if Marigold plants can survive without either water or sunlight.  The children have made some great predictions, and in a few weeks we will have some evidence to prove what this type of plant actually needs to survive.  Another fun lesson we did in this unit allowed the students to become engineers!  We pretended that bees did not exist, so we had to create a tool that could do a bee's job of moving pollen from one plant to another.  The kids worked in small groups and were given a bunch of materials with which to build their "pollinators".  All groups were able to successfully engineer a tool.  Here are a few examples:

In Reading we have been meeting with our groups on a consistent basis now that all of our Daily 5 routines are in place.  Last week we focused on the skill of Making Connections.  This is a strategy readers use to help comprehend the actions and/or feelings of the characters in the story.  If we can connect something in our own lives to what's happening in the story, then it helps us know how the character might be feeling or reacting so that we can then better understand the story.  This is an important comprehension skill we will practice throughout the year.  Our strategy focus this past week was identifying story elements (characters, setting, problem, solution).

During our math sessions we have been talking about various addition strategies we can use when we don't know the answer to a fact automatically.  Some of the strategies we discussed were Near Doubles, Turn Around Facts, and the Making Ten strategy.  The idea is to use something we know (such as doubles) to help us solve an unknown fact.  The strategies are introduced quickly, so it's common for children to get a little mixed up at this point.  Over time we will go back to each of the strategies and practice them more in depth.  Other lessons we completed in Unit 2 looked at Even and Odd Sums and Name Collection Boxes.

Thank you for helping your child complete the homework assignment this week, which was to bring in a photo of something your child has done recently.  We will be using the photos and the details provided to write our next Personal Narrative story in class.  Spelling Tic Tac Toe, Reading Logs, and Math homework will continue as normal next week. 

I'm looking forward to our first class celebration, our Harvest Party, which will be on October 31st.  We are lucky to have 3 parents helping to organize the celebrations for us this year.  If you have any questions about parties, please contact Parker's mom, Finley's mom, or Brianna's mom (all of the contact info is on the Friendship List sent home at the beginning of the year).

Thanks for all you do and have a wonderful weekend!