October 19, 2018

It is hard to believe it is almost the end of October and the cold weather is approaching. Please be sure your child comes to school with a jacket or sweatshirt to wear out to recess. We go outside every day it's not raining.

We have a lot to share about what's been happening in our classroom over the past two weeks...

In math, we are finishing up Unit 2, which focused on fact strategies. Near Doubles, Turn Around Facts, and the Making Ten strategy were some of the strategies we practiced. The children will continue to use these strategies while playing games during guided math and completing their math journal pages. The children will be taking the Unit 2 assessment next week. When the completed assessment comes home please be sure to sign and return it to school. In Unit 3, more fact strategies will be developed with a focus on solving subtraction facts.  Frequent practice of addition and subtraction facts will help second graders develop math confidence and fluency.  We are working towards automaticity of math facts up to 20 by the end of the year.  

 During our writing times, the children are working on their “Looking Back” stories. They are using the photos brought in from home and the brainstorming sheet to write the first draft of their stories. It has been so much fun seeing all the wonderful photos, and the stories are off to a great start! The children are also enjoying writing spooky or silly monster stories where they get to design their own monsters. Be sure to ask your child all about it.

Daily 5 is up and running and the children are doing a wonderful job! We are currently focusing on retelling and identifying important story elements (characters, setting, problem, solution). The children will be using the “five finger” strategy in small reading groups to identify the elements and retell stories. These are skills that we will practice throughout the school year.

This week in science our class "visited" the desert, the rainforest and the arctic! Next week we will delve deeper into each habitat to learn about the animals and plants that live in each habitat and what they need to survive. We will also discuss how the plants and animals in these three habitats depend on each other to survive. The children will write a blog about their visit to the rainforest, play trivia during their visit to the desert, and be scientific data collectors in the ocean habitat!

The second graders at Robinson will be participating in a school wide fall clean up. The second grade students will be cleaning up the Robifulli Trail, raking leaves, weeding, and planting bulbs. It will be so exciting in the spring to see the beautiful flowers bloom from the bulbs WE planted! This is a great way for the second graders to give back to our school community.

 Our first class celebration, the Harvest Party, will be on October 31st.  We are lucky to have Jessica Paxton helping to organize the celebrations for us this year.  If you have any questions about parties, please contact her (her contact info is on the Friendship List).  Thank you for all the donations that have already come in to help support our classroom parties. If you have not yet sent in a donation for the holiday parties there is still time. These donations will be used to pay for the crafts at each celebration.

 Thanks for all you do and have a wonderful weekend!