April 6, 2018

Thank you for attending our 2nd Grade Performance, Artists Around the World! The kids worked very hard to prepare and were eager to share it with you. I was so impressed with their commitment and enthusiasm. Thanks to Mrs. Oliver for doing a wonderful job putting it all together.

In addition to being busy preparing for the performance, we have been busy in the classroom too.

The kids are doing such a great job with poetry. They have enjoyed writing some "template" poems where some of the words and structure were provided, but they had the opportunity to put their own creative spin on it. The children also wrote Shape Poems! It was amazing to see the different ideas the children came up with. Finally, we created a "Table of Contents" for our Poetry Books. Be on the lookout for these amazing books to be coming home soon!

During math, we finished up Unit 7 and have started Unit 8 which focuses on Geometry and Arrays. In this first couple of lessons, the children explored 2-and 3-dimensional shapes and their attributes. They enjoyed playing a game called "Shape Capture" where they used shape attributes to "capture" shapes. We also enjoyed building various polygons with straws and pipe-cleaners and comparing their attributes. Children learned many new vocabulary words to describe the shapes: vertices, angles, parallel sides, sides, faces, edges, and bases.

The children are continuing to enjoy our Around the World unit. We finished up our study on Europe  by learning about the famous places. The children enjoyed learning about Italy, the Colosseum, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and the infamous gondola rides. Now we are onto Africa!

A friendly reminder that the Ancestor Research sheet that was sent home this week is due back by Wednesday, April 11th. We will do our best to accommodate first choices, but sometimes a lack of age-appropriate materials may make that difficult. The children will use their research information to do our last type of writing, which is "Informational." Thank you for helping your child with this assignment!

Your child's Distance Learning Activities will be coming home April 13th. The children have 2 weeks to complete the assignment and it should take a total of 60-90 minutes but can be broken into segments. If you have any questions, please let me know.

Upcoming Dates

April 14-22nd April Vacation

April 27th- Due Date for Distance Learning Activities

March 23, 2018

Thank you all for meeting with me over the past few days to discuss the progress your child has made this term.  It's always great to have this time to share work and classroom observations with parents.   As always, thank you for all you do at home to support your child's learning!

Here is a look at what we have been up to over the past two weeks in room 7...

On our "trip" around the world, we visited one of my favorite destinations- Australia!  There are many interesting things to learn and see on this continent.  We looked at the continent in general, including its location, landscapes, climate, and people. The children also created their own colorful boomerangs, as well as beautiful scrapbook pages all about the Great Barrier Reef.

After all the days off for snow and professional days, we finally got back to some regular reading groups this past week.  It was great to get back into our routines and enjoy some good books together.  I continue to be impressed with how many minutes of reading the students are doing at home for our Star Reader program!!

Math this week looked at collecting data (Arm Spans and How Far We Can Jump) and representing that data on a line plot.  We also used the data to answer various questions, and explored more with Shape Attributes, Graphs, and Measurement.  We are getting really good at making estimates about length and measuring accurately using both centimeters and inches. 

The children are doing great with the poetry unit.  They have already written a cinquain poem, a few couplet poems, as well as 2 form poems ("I Like" and "I Meant To").  They are doing rough drafts and final copies of each to be included in their Poetry Notebooks that will come home at the end of the unit.

We have been spending extra time at school practicing for the upcoming second grade musical, Artists Around The World.  Please note the date of the performance for parents, as it has changed since I originally communicated to you about it in Februrary.  The new dates are below:

Wednesday, April 4th- School Performance
Friday, April 6th- Parent Performance at 1:45

One last reminder- there will be a half day this coming Friday, March 30th for the Easter Holiday.

Have a wonderful weekend!

March 4, 2018

I hope you had a wonderful February Vacation and that you had time to relax and enjoy the beautiful weather that we had!

The week before vacation, we had our Spring visit to the Living Lab at Norman E.Day School. The kids participated in an experiment on beach erosion and were able to test out their engineering skills by creating a plan to help stop beach erosion. After coming up with their plan, they were able to test it. Everyone's plan was a success!! We also enjoyed our 100th Day of School and our Valentine Parties.

This week, we have had a great time celebrating Dr. Seuss's birthday! The children's spirit has been wonderful! Thank you to everyone who helped to make this a fun week.

We have spent the past two weeks on the continent of Asia. The children have learned about the Asian culture and that Asia is the biggest continent.  We also learned that the Himalayan Mountains are there, which includes the biggest mountain in the world- Mount Everest, and that the biggest river is the Yangtze or Chang River.  We focused on the country of Japan during our visit to Asia. The children enjoyed making carp kites which are a symbol of Children's Day in Japan. Next week, we will be traveling to the beautiful continent of Australia!

Our writing times have been spent working on our Term 2 Writing Prompt. The children wrote a review of a place that they have visited. They did a wonderful job and I look forward to sharing them with you at Parent Teacher Conferences. Next week, we will begin our Poetry Unit, which is always so much fun!

In Math, we have finished Unit 6 by taking our Unit Assessment and a Cumulative Assessment. We are now working on Unit 7. The focus of this unit is on Whole Number Operations and Measurement and Data. This week we completed lessons 1 and 2. The children practiced finding differences between 2-digit numbers and multiples of 10. The children also solved a practice open response problem by applying place-value concepts and addition properties.

Due to the 2nd term ending soon, I spent time last week doing reading check-ins with each child. The information that I gathered will be shared with you at Parent Teacher Conferences. It's always wonderful to see the growth that the children are making in terms of their oral reading and comprehension.

We have begun our rehearsals for our upcoming Second Grade Performance, Artists Around the World! Please mark your calendars for April 6th, as our performance will be at 1:45 that day. The children are very excited and are working hard on learning the songs.  We are eager to find out the special parts that each child will have in the play during the upcoming week.

Finally, coming home with your child on Monday will be a Study Guide for our upcoming Continent and Ocean Assessment. Your child should cut out the names of the continents and oceans and practice their location by laying them on the provided map nightly.  Then they can check with the answer key to see if they did it correctly. I would suggest not having them glue them down so that they can practice nightly throughout the week.  The assessment will be on Friday, March 9th. 

Thank you and have a great week.

Upcoming Dates:

March 9th- Term 2 Ends

March 15th- Early Release for Professional Development

March 22nd- No School for Parent Teacher Conferences

March 23rd- 2 Hour Delay for Parent Teacher Conferences

February 16, 2018

The kids had a great time celebrating our 100th Day of School and Pajama Day on February 13h!!  Wednesday was also our class Valentine's Party.  It was fun to see the kids giving and receiving Valentine's cards.  We are very grateful to Lynn Lamburn, Monique Boucher, and Nicole Breslin for all of their work coordinating our classroom parties this year!  

We have been enjoying our time in Asia and learning about the geography of the biggest continent of the World. We also spent time reading about Japan and learning about their culture. After vacation we look forward to teaching the children about Children's Day and how the people in Japan fly carp kites to celebrate. We are even going to make our own carp kites! We will also spend some time writing Haiku poems, which is a type of poem that originated in Japan.

The students ability to write opinion pieces is continuing to strengthen. After putting the final touches on our restaurant reviews, the children are now writing other reviews.  This time they got to pick the topic they would like to write an opinion piece about. Some children have chosen to review a game, toy, place, famous person, pet, or sport. We also reviewed how to use a revision checklist.  Many of their revised pieces will be included in their Writing Portfolios that they will be bringing home to share with you at the end of the year.

In math, the children have been introduced to various diagrams to help them organize their mathematical thinking in order to solve addition and subtraction problems. The diagrams we discussed were: Total and Part Diagrams, Change Diagrams, and Comparison Diagrams. The children used their knowledge to decide what diagram worked best for various word problems. We also spent some time discussing Ballpark Estimates and Strategies for Adding 2 and 3-Digit Numbers (including Partial Sums).  It is a lot of information at once, but our hope is that at least 1 or 2 of the strategies will stick with the children as they move forward.  Today was our Unit 6 Assessment.

During Guided Reading, we have read a variety of fictional texts. After reading the stories, we focused on 2 essential questions. The first being "What do you think was the most important event in the story? And Why? The second being "What do you think the author was trying to tell you in this story? These questions require the children to interpret and reflect on their reading. Next week I plan to begin checking in with each child and doing a DRA (Developmental Reading Assessment) in order to get ready for the end of Term 2 and to adjust reading groups as necessary. I can't wait to share your child's reading growth with you at our next conference in March.

Upcoming Events:

February Vacation- February 17th-25th 

I hope you have a fun and relaxing February Vacation! 

February 3, 2018

Wow, what a crazy few weeks with all of our snow days and holidays! It's been nice to be back in full swing these past two weeks and having 5 days of school each week! The kids have been working really hard in second grade. 

During math time, the students finished up Unit 5 and worked on completing the Unit 5 Assessment, along with the Mid-Year Assessment. We have also begun Unit 6. The focus of this unit is on Whole Number Operations and Number Stories.  In the first lesson, we collected pocket data and learned how to organize into a tally chart. The students then created both a picture and bar graph of the data. In the second lesson, the children will solve comparison number stories about the lengths of fish. 

The kids are doing a fabulous job with the Opinion Writing Unit! We have discussed the types of things that people have opinions on: restaurants, toys, places, movies, books, games, etc... The children have completed a couple opinion pieces. The first being a restaurant review. The children shared their thoughts on the food, appearance, service, and price. During Daily Five, the children have had the opportunity to practice more opinion pieces by writing about what they believe is the best superpower to have or what would be the best class pet. The children are encouraged to start by stating their opinion, then to have at least 3 supporting reasons with details for each, and a concluding sentence. We will continue with opinion writing throughout the month of February. 

We have begun our trip Around the World! The students enjoyed a pretend airplane ride with all of the second grade students to our first destination. We flew from Boston to Mexico! The students have been working with maps and have learned how to use a compass rose and key when reading a map. Next week we will be learning the names of the 7 continents and the 5 main oceans of the world. We ended the week reading and discussing North America. Next week we will focus our attention on the culture in Mexico. 

During our literacy blocks, that children learned a new non-fiction comprehension skill which is to "have questions in their mind while reading." This allows for the children to not only read informational texts with a purpose, but to also monitor their reading comprehension. We discussed that all of your questions might not be answered in a single book and that there are times that you need to do more research or read another book about the topic. 

A friendly reminder about Valentines Day- Your child is not required to bring in Valentines. However, if they choose to do valentines, they need to do one for every child in the class. Also, it is a Robinson School policy that the valentines can't contain any food products. A pencil, sticker, tattoos, etc... are acceptable if students want to include something with their valentines. 

Upcoming Dates:

February 6th- School Store for 2nd Grade

February 7th- Early Release for Professional Development

February 12th- Living Lab visit 

I hope you have a wonderful weekend! Go Patriots!!

December 15, 2017

I hope you had a fantastic week. It's hard to believe we only have one week left until winter break. Below are some of the things happening in our classroom...


As I prepare my home and celebrate the season with my family, I really enjoyed reading all the wonderful Holiday Tradition stories the children worked on at home with you!! It’s neat to hear how different families celebrate.  During one of our writing blocks this week we had a chance to type the stories into a Word document.  You should have received the original story back, and the typed version is on display in our classroom for all to read!

We are also spending some of our writing time reading various holiday stories and responding in writing.  Some of the books we've shared together are The Night Tree, The Chanukah Guest, Arthur's Christmas Cookies, and The Wild Christmas Reindeer.  After each book we do a follow-up writing activity such as sequencing the events of the story, answering comprehension questions, writing about what we would have done if we were in the story, and using a Venn diagram to compare characters.  This has been a nice way to include some fun, beautiful stories into our reading and writing curriculum.

During our reading blocks, the kids enjoyed reading non-fiction texts. We continued to discuss the non-fiction text features (glossary, index, captions, labels, diagrams, heading, etc.). The kids also had the opportunity to begin thinking about main idea and supporting details. This is a concept that is ongoing for second graders and will be discussed several times throughout the year during reading groups with both fiction and non-fiction texts.


In math we worked with place value and expanded form to compare 3-digit numbers. The children also had the opportunity to do another practice Open Response where they had to make sense of a 3-digit number represented by base-10 blocks by making trades or counting. Then as a class we analyzed explanations and drawing, and children revised their work.  We began discussing measurement as well.  We discovered the importance of standard measures by reading a fun story titled "How Big is a Foot?".  We also had lots of practice measuring in class using feet, inches, and centimeters.

Our Science unit "Materials and their Uses" is going very well! The kids are really starting to ask scientific questions and conduct investigations to "solve" their questions. One lesson explored liquids.  Groups were given various containers and they were asked to predict and then test which container could hold the most water. They did a great job working together to determine how much each could hold. We had some really rich conversations of how to be sure we were measuring accurately and the importance of repeating tasks to ensure accuracy.  Our next lesson focused on the Materials and their Purposes.  The children are in the process of designing bridges that are both strong and waterproof using various materials. The children did a "strength" test and a "waterproof" test and then they will create their bridges based upon what they learned during the testing lessons. Some bridges are still in process, but all groups will have an opportunity to share their designs next week in front of the class.

I am looking forward to our winter party, which will be on Thursday afternoon at 2:15.  The room parents have sent out an email with names of volunteers and who has offered to bring in food/paper product donations for the party.  Thanks again for your willingness to help out with these special events- it means a lot to me and to the children.

I hope you have a wonderful weekend!

Upcoming Dates:

December 15th- Report Cards Available for Viewing at 4:00pm
December 21st- Winter Holiday Party
December 25-January 2nd:  Winter Break

I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving and are gearing up for the holidays! It was a pleasure to meet with each of you last week at Parent Teacher Conferences. It's always nice to discuss the progress your child is making. I am proud of each and every student and amazed at the gains they have each made in such a short time. Progress reports will be available on the parent portal on December 15th at 4:00 pm.

In terms of academics and what has been happening in the classroom over the past couple of weeks, we have been busy as usual. We have begun Unit 4 for math which focuses on place value and measurement. The first few lessons were on telling time. This tends to be a difficult concept for many second grade students. The standard for second grade is that the children are able to read to the nearest 5 minute interval. The more you can support us at home with this concept the better. I know many homes have digital clocks, but anytime you are out and about or if you have an analog clock at home, it's helpful to practice reading the clock as much as possible. We also discussed the difference between am and pm and students identified activities that they participate in during each part of the day. 

As part of our work with Personal Narrative writing, this week we discussed the need to starting your sentences in different ways and varying your sentence lengths in order to make your writing sound more interesting. The students enjoyed editing a pre-written paragraph to practice this important skill. We will be doing some more skill practice next week.  Hopefully we will see some carry-over to their next personal narrative story.

During our Guided Reading blocks, we have spent time reading non-fiction. The children are really invested in this genre and have enjoyed reading to learn! We reviewed nonfiction text features and the children looked for these features as they were reading books at their individual levels during reading groups. The features we have discussed are: headings, table of contents, diagrams, labels, photographs, captions, index and glossary. We will continue with nonfiction next week as well.

In science we ended our Plant and Animal Survival unit by doing a library research project. The children had the opportunity to research one of the habitats that we discussed during our unit and then share what they learned with a small group. The students also took their assessment and we have begun our next science unit which is called "Materials and their Uses." In the first lesson the children learned about the various materials that objects are made of - wood, glass, plastic, etc... We also talked about properties of these materials. Some of the properties we discovered were: hard, soft, smooth, sticky, thick, bends, clear, long, etc... Finally, the children sorted some objects depending upon the properties that the object had.

We had a wonderful time at the Turkey Trot! It was a beautiful day and so nice to see all of the children excited and getting some good exercise! Thank you to all of the families who made donations to Robinson! We appreciate your support!

Upcoming Dates

December 1st- Grades Close for Term 1

December 5th- School Store for Grade 2

December 7th- Early Release for Professional Development

December 15th- Progress Reports available on Parent Portal