Jan. 29th

Dear Families,

Today we had such a great time at our Sharpen the Saw day!  It was so nice to see the kids explore different activities and have a morning full of fun!  

Here is what is happening in the Second Grade Team:

Important Upcoming Dates:

Friday, February 5 - Jump Rope For Heart! 6:15 - 8 @ Deerfield

Thursday, February 11- Cabin Day—don’t forget to wear your shirt!

Friday, February 12 - Valentine's Day celebration (more to come!)

Monday, Feb. 15/Tuesday, Feb. 16 - No School (Feb. Break)

Language Arts

Reading Workshop: The second graders continued to work on book club. We've been studying the work of author Patricia Polacco. She often writes stories that are based on her childhood. One group read "Thank you Mr. Falker," and another group read "The Keeping Quilt." We followed the routine of book club, asking questions, monitoring and clarifying and summarizing. Have your child tell you about the book!

Word Work: Wordly Wise: Next week we will be working on Lesson 3.

www.WordlyWise3000.com

Be sure to go to the free activities at the bottom of the page and go to “student page.”

Writing: We are continuing to work on our Realistic Fiction stories. This past week we worked on writing our draft while including author's craft such as exploding the moment, show not tell, snapshots, dialogue and including leads and endings. Next week we'll finish these up by revising, editing and publishing! 

Math: This week we finished unit 5 with our unit review and test. The test will be coming home on Monday.  We will begin unit 6 next week, with pretest scores and an at home review coming home.  Unit six will focus primarily on solving and creating number stories.  Please see the attached Homelinks for more information that I sent in an email.  

Social Studies: We continued working on our next Social Studies unit on: Rights, Roles and Responsibilities in a Community.  Students began learning about diversity, branches of government, laws, and their roles as good citizens in the community.

Maker Space:  This week we worked on creating a shelter for Olaf the Snowman. Students had to work in a group to plan a free standing shelter, keep Olaf in the shade and keep him cool. We worked on compromising with our teammates, using words to agree and disagree while we were building and planning. We also worked on persevering even when things became difficult! 

Homework: 

*Please continue to work on some of the Unit 5 skills such as counting change.

*Use IXL and Xtra math websites for additional Practice

*Begin Unit 6 Homelinks

*Read!

*Wordly Wise

*Blog!

Have a wonderful weekend!

Jan. 22nd

Dear Families,

Here is what is happening in the Second Grade Team!

Important Upcoming Dates:

Friday, January 29 – last day to donate paper towels for community service project

Friday, January 29 - End of marking period, 1/2 Day and Sharpen the Saw Day, dismissal 12:30

Friday, February 5 - Jump Rope For Heart! 6:15 - 8 @ Deerfield

Friday, February 12 - Valentine's Day celebration (more to come!)

Monday, Feb. 15/Tuesday, Feb. 16 - No School (Feb. Break)

Language Arts

Reading Workshop: We started our week off with an informational text about Dr. Martin Luther King.  The second graders also continued to work on Book club! Students made plans for how much they wanted to read for each book club, then practiced book clubs by summarizing, asking questions, clarifying and predicting what was going to happen next.

Word Work: We are very excited about our new Wordly Wise Vocabulary Books to learn new vocabulary. Students worked on Lesson three out of the Workbooks this week.  Students are starting to notice multiple meanings of words and finding these in books they read.  Check out this website for games and extra practice with these vocabulary activities:

www.WordlyWise3000.com

Be sure to go to the free activities at the bottom of the page and go to “student page.”

Writing: We are continuing to work on our Realistic Fiction stories by going deep into developing the characters in our stories.  Ask your child about the story he/she is writing.  You can also inquire about the internal and external traits of the characters in his/her story.

Math: This week we got through lesson 5.9.  We will be having an in-class review on Wednesday and our test on unit 5 next Thursday, Jan 28th.  Please be sure your child has completed the at-home review that was sent home at the beginning of the unit.  This review outlines what your child will be tested on next week.

Social Studies: We started our next Social Studies Unit on Rights, Roles and Responsibilities in a Community. Students began learning about diversity, branches of government, laws, and their roles as good citizens in the community.

Homework:

*Math Homelinks  and review for Unit 5 test.

*IXL math, Everyday math and Xtra math websites. Remember to practice telling time, counting money and counting back change.

*Read!

*Wordly Wise Website

Please  look at my Science page to see what we’ve been up to in our Maker Space! 

Please continue to send in items listed on previous post for our Maker Space.

We have a fun project planned for next week involving Olaf! 

Have a great weekend!!!

Jan. 15th

Dear Families,

Here is what is happening in the Second Grade Team!

*Please read the note below about our new STEM activities the kids will be doing!

Reminders:

*January 18th- Martin Luther King Day/ No school for students

*January 29th- End of marking period, 1/2 Day and Sharpen the Saw Day.  Be sure to help your child sign up for something for each of the two sessions! Sign up opened on Friday!  Please see the Principal's email.

Language Arts

Reading Workshop: This week the second graders got started working in Book Clubs!  Students made plans for how much they wanted to read for each book club, then practiced book clubs by summarizing, asking questions, clarifying and predicting what was going to happen next. They did an awesome job!  We will continue reading our book club books and discussions next week!

Word Work: We are very excited about our new Wordly Wise Vocabulary Books to learn new vocabulary. Students worked on Lesson two out of the Workbooks this week.  Students are starting to notice multiple meanings of words and finding these in books they read.  Check out this website for games and extra practice with these vocabulary activities:

www.WordlyWise3000.com

Be sure to go to the free activities at the bottom of the page and go to “student page."

Writing: Students planned and started drafting their “Realistic Fiction” stories. We are attempting to try to include craft in our writing, like some of the authors we have been studying.  Students are working on "Exploding the Moment" to include lots of details. Next week we'll work on snapshots and Show not tell details.  

Math: This week we got through lesson 5.6.  We practiced a lot of counting coins and making change, as well as mentally adding and subtracting 10.   Please remember to practice using the Home links and math websites for extra learning at home, especially with counting change (pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters).

Social Studies:  Next week we are starting out next Social Studies unit: Rights, Roles and Responsibilities in a Community.  Students will be learning about diversity, branches of government, laws, and their roles as good citizens in the community.

**STEM:
Over the next few months, your child will be participating in STEM activities, STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. The goal of STEM is to provide students with real-world problem solving opportunities. STEM allows students to think outside the box with project-based learning. Your child will be working on many exciting STEM projects! Below is a list of household materials that we will be using to create our STEM projects. If you are willing to donate any of the items below then you can send them to the classroom with your child at any time. Thank you in advance for helping our class collect these items for STEM! Please let us know if you have any questions. Please see the other sheet that was sent home on Friday.

 Please save these items for STEM!

cereal boxes, paper towel tubes, tissue boxes, paper grocery sacks oatmeal boxes, colored tissue paper, shoe boxes with or without lids, scrap pieces of cloth
 

Homework:

*Math Home links and finish up any unfinished pages in the old math workbooks!

*IXL math, Everyday Math  and Xtra Math Websites: Practice any counting coin activities

*Read ( second graders should be able to read 10-20 minutes)

*Wordly Wise- Explore the website!

Have a great week!

Jan. 8th

Caine's Arcade 

Our Maker Space! 

Teams were challenged to recreate buildings with their own building materials!

January 8

 

Dear Families,

Happy New Year and welcome back!

Here is what is happening in the Second Grade Team!

Reminders:

*January 13th- Multicultural Night 6:00-8:00 p.m.

*January 18th- Martin Luther King Day/ No school for students

*January 29th- End of marking period, early dismissal for students- records day in the p.m.

Language Arts

Reading Workshop: This week the second graders reviewed reciprocal teaching using four basic thinking strategies to help with comprehension. These are predicting, questioning, summarizing or retelling  and monitoring and clarifying. Book Club protocol was also  discussed as we will begin our book clubs soon! This week we focused on reading Realistic Fiction books. and creating a “What we Notice” chart about the characteristics of  Realistic Fiction Books.

Word Work: We are very excited about our new Wordly Wise Vocabulary Books that we will be using to learn about vocabulary. Students learned the routine and format of using these workbooks and we will use them during our word work  or Win Time.. Check out this website for games and extra practice with these vocabulary activities:

www.WordlyWise3000.com

Be sure to go to the free activities at the bottom of the page and go to “student page.”

Writing: Our new writing unit this month is “Realistic Fiction.” We read many realistic fiction books in Reading Workshop which helped us to notice the characteristics that we will include in our own writing.   We are learning how to read like writers and have begun to notice craft while reading. We are attempting to try to include craft in our writing, like some of the authors we have been studying.  We created idea lists this week so that we will be ready to begin our own stories next week.

Math: This week we took our Unit 5 pretest and began learning unit 5 concepts. Please remember to practice using the Home links and math websites for extra learning at home. Practice counting change (pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters). We completed Lessons 5.1, 5.2 while spending a little extra time on counting back change.

Science: We finished up our Land forms studies by learning about the 3 states of matter and properties of water.

Homework:

*Math Homelinks and finish up any unfinished pages in the old math workbooks!

*IXL math, Everyday Math  and Xtra Math Websites: Practice any counting coin activities

*Read ( second graders should be able to read 10-20 minutes each night)

*Wordly Wise- Explore the website!

Have a great weekend!