January 31, 2020

This past Monday marked our halfway point in second grade- how exciting!  We've been working hard in school and have been learning many new things.  Unfortunately our school has been hit hard by the flu and other viruses.  We are doing our best to keep the classrooms clean and germ-free.  Thank you for keeping your child home if they are sick.  

Here is a look at what has been happening over the past two weeks...

We continue to use our content blocks to teach both science and social studies.  The students are really enjoying learning about the 7 continents in social studies.  So far we have visited 6 out of the 7 continents.  After reading about each continent the students have been answering some questions related to that continent.  We are keeping the questions in an Around The World folder which will come home when it is complete.  We have also had the opportunity to watch videos and/or slideshows to further our learning. Ask your child to tell you something they learned about each of the continents- I bet they will be excited to share their learning with you!

In science we are continuing our work with Earth's Surfaces.  After completing our landform models we did several experiments to show how wind and water change the shape of the land.  We learned that land surface is made of rock, sand, and soil, and these surfaces are constantly changing.  While some changes are fast (a landslide, a flood), some changes take 100s of years (such as waves crashing against rock to create a seaside cliff).  This week we had the opportunity to become engineers.  The students worked in groups to create something to prevent a landslide from reaching a road.  They used materials given to them to both prevent and stop the rocks, sand, and soil from falling.  They tested their models and discussed how they could improve their designs.  They were very invested and it was a lot of fun to hear their rich discussions.  

For writing time we are continuing our restaurant reviews.  We have discussed how to turn our graphic organizers into a complete and persuasive review.  The children were taught how to best start, as well as end, an opinion piece of writing.  We also learned about transition words and organizing the review in an understandable sequence.   Many students finished their restaurant piece this week and will be moving on to reviewing other things such as movies, books, video games, or toys.  

We finished up unit 5 this week in math and completed the Unit Assessment.  I will be sending it home early next week for you to review.  

I hope your child enjoyed the Great Kindness Challenge week at school.  I was very proud of the kind acts I saw happening throughout the week in the classroom.  At the end of each day I spoke individually with each child to hear about something kind they did either at school or at home.  Great job, second graders!

Upcoming Dates:

Wednesday, February 5th- 1/2 day for Professional Development  (dismissal at 12:20)

Friday, February 14th- Valentine's Day and Classroom Party

February 17-21st- No School for February Vacation

January 17th, 2020

It has been nice to get back into a regular classroom routine after the holidays. I love that we have a solid 6 weeks of learning between the Winter Break and February Vacation! 

Over the past couple of weeks in math, we have spent some time wrapping up Unit 4 and doing our Mid-Year Assessment. We have also started Unit 5 which focuses on addition and subtraction strategies and using money to buy things at "pretend" stores. The next few lessons students will be using various diagrams to help them organize and solve number stories. 

Our reading groups have been reading fictional texts and working on visualizing and making inferences while reading to help them with their comprehension. We continue to practice retelling and summarizing stories. We are currently using a summarizing strategy that asks the kids to answer the following: "Somebody, Wanted, But, So, Then." This helps them organize their thinking when summarizing longer texts. 

The children have been very excited about our new "Opinion" writing unit! Together we created a list of things we have opinions on and discussed supportive vs. not supportive reasons. The students have also completed a graphic organizer for their first opinion piece which is a restaurant review. This is being modeled by creating a class review of the Robinson Cafeteria. Over the next month or so, the children will have the opportunity to write several different reviews. They may choose to review a movie, book, toy, place, game, etc. 

Our content blocks have been a combination of both science and social studies. We have begun to learn about the 7 continents of the World. The students will be exposed to one continent per week for the next several weeks. We are currently on our 3rd continent. The hope is that this will give them a general overview of the world and the various cultures and geography. 

Our science unit is called "Earth's Surface." The children have learned that the world is covered by 70% water and 30% land. We have also discussed some of the landforms found on earth's surface such as: mountains, valleys, rivers, ponds, streams, oceans, islands, etc. The children enjoyed creating these landforms out of clay and will be bringing home their 3-D models soon! In the next couple of lessons, the children will investigate how earth's surface changes with wind and water. 

The Second Grade compassion project is well underway! The Robinson community has collected over 550 books so far! We will continue to collect books until January 31st. Our goal is to get to 1,000. I know we can do it! 

Upcoming Dates:

January 20th- No School 

Week of January 27th-31st- Great Kindness Challenge Week 

February 5th- Early Release for Professional Development