Thursday, March 28th

Thursday, March 28, 2013

We really enjoyed our Camp Read S’more Day today in Second Grade! Our camping day was a fun conclusion to a month of many different reading activities for March. Thank you to everyone who sent in tents and contributions to our S’more Trail Mix snack!

Reader’s Workshop

This week in Workshop we took a further look into Non-Fiction features in texts and we introduced a new book, A Wood Frog’s Life. We noticed that this too fell into the Informational Fiction genre. We also spent time looking at new nonfiction books and began brainstorming a list of strategies to use when approaching an unfamiliar non-fiction text.

Writer’s Workshop

Birds, birds, birds… BIRDS!! We are spending time learning about the different types of bird books we will be using for our research on birds. We continue to gather questions and wonderings about birds as we look at field guides, bird type specific books and general bird books. Please remember, if you have any bird books at home, we’d love to take a look at them at school too!

During our Camp Read S’More event today, our Writer’s got to celebrate their published Small Moment stories with peers from all four second grade classrooms. The kids were split up and spread out amongst the rooms. It was fun to share our personal narratives with new students across the grade. Be sure to look for these up in the second grade hallway after Spring Break.

Math Workshop

This week in math we spent a great deal of time reviewing major concepts for our Math Benchmark. We took a look at fractions, at area and perimeter and at pictographs (where the symbol does not always represent one item, but most often, multiple items). I will be working to grade benchmarks over Spring Break and scores will come home with report card information after break. We also took a look this week at money amounts on the calculator in math. We noticed how coin values can be represented with decimals and how some numbers, like $3.50 appears on our calculator like 3.5. We will be spending a great deal of time with money after break, this would be a great time to review coin combinations and dollar amounts over break!

Social Studies

In Social Studies this week we were BUSY! Our Market Day was a huge success! We have some very creative producers and consumers in our class! The stores were jammed with items and consumers were eager to shop. We were able to write about our experiences after and incorporated in words like: goods, services, producers, consumers, opportunity cost and scarcity! We also spent time this week reviewing for our Economics Test that we took on Wednesday.

Science

Our scientists continued to have fun exploring with air this week.  First, we searched for moving air by blowing bubbles outside.  The bubbles helped us see the direction the air was moving and exactly how fast or slow the air was blowing.  The scientists were amazed to see how air moved in a doorway and around the corners of a building.  We ended our week by making our own parachutes!  We learned that a parachute falls slowly to the ground because the air pushes against the canopy.  Meteorologists also discovered that air resistance slowed the parachute down.

Important Upcoming Dates:

School Resumes: Monday, April 8, 2013

Sock Hop Basket Items DUE: Monday, April 8, 2013

Dublin Sock Hop: Thursday, April 11, 2013

Friday, March 22nd

Reader's Workshop: 

Non-fiction is still our focus in Reader’s Workshop.  We read aloud parts of Salamander Rain and noted on a chart the non-fiction text features that we noticed.  We discussed how to approach the text as a reader and what might good readers do as they come across these features.   We finished out the week by reading Wacky Plant Cycle, paying close attention to the voice of the narrator and character.  Students brainstormed a list of things they saw in the text.   Then we re-read the first part of Wacky Plant Cycle, the students had to “listen” to hear the different writing styles that were found in this story.  The students looked for non-fiction features and structures in their books and shared with other classmates.  During this time the readers wrote what non-fiction features they noticed in their reader’s notebook.

Writer’s Workshop:

Most students have finished with their small moment illustration and are getting excited to share their piece during our “Let’s Read S’More” celebration on Thursday, March 28^th.  This past week the writers had the opportunity to write about many topics.  One topic- “Being Lucky”, many students felt that having a family that loved them was very lucky, such sweet and loving kids!  Some kids wrote letters to Lucky the Leprechaun to thank him for the special treats we all received on St. Patty’s Day.  During this time, we are also talking about using the correct punctuation in their writing.

Calling all bird experts!! We are just beginning our Non-Fiction Unit of Study on Michigan Birds! If you have any field guides, books, magazines, etc. at home that have information about Michigan Birds please send them to school (with your child’s name visible on them). We will be spending the next few weeks sifting through field guides and bird books as well as listening to bird calls, watching for them outside and even learning about their nests and more! Next week students will begin learning about different types of books to use for research and create wonderings of their own about birds.

Word Study:

We recognized words that have the vowel combinations of- ai, ay, oa, ee, ea, ow.  These vowels that go together usually make the sound of the name of the first vowel.  The partners then sorted and wrote words with these vowel patterns.  The next lesson reinforced the same skill by playing Crazy Eights with their phonics group.  During this time they are learning new words and also how to cooperate with others.

Math Workshop:

Monday was an exciting day for the second graders as they all had to graph Lucky Charms.  The best part was eating the math treat.  The students then wrote true facts about their math graph.  Each graph looked very different from their other classmates.  Unit 9 Assessment test was given, they will be coming home this week.  We are just beginning unit 10 which is all about decimals and place value.  Students practiced ways to pay for a food item, then had the chance to play “Spinning for Money”.  We then sorted different ways to show a $1.00, $0.10, and penny.  The mathematicians are beginning to use a calculator to show money amounts, this is very tricky as $1.70 will show on the calculator display as 1.7.   Please make sure your child is preparing for our math benchmark, which will be on Tuesday, March 26th.

Social Studies:

This week in Social Studies we talked about different types of resources – human, natural and capital, as we created cheese and butter sandwiches! It was a sight to watch the kids use plastic knives to butter their bread – the bread could not have been softer and the butter, more hard! Then we talked about economic choices we make in our families, such as what we need to live compared to what things we might want. Students will be reviewing for their Economics test on Monday in class, and the test is on Wednesday, March 27. Study Guides will come home on Monday.

**Please also make sure to send in your child’s items for our Market Day on Monday**

Science:

The scientists explored the wind this week.  We made a class anemometer and the students made their own with paper.  An anemometer shows how fast the wind is blowing.  We also made a pinwheel, which is similar to an anemometer.  The scientists had fun exploring with the pinwheel, so many ways to make it work.   We talked about the moon phases and how the moon is always changing its shape, but it doesn’t.  The moon is always a big ball/sphere, but we only see the part of the moon that’s lit.  The sun shines on the moon and lights it up.

Don’t forget- Weather calendar is due on Monday, March 25^th.

Important Dates and Reminders:

Our Beach Day basket is looking a bit sparse, we are still in need of many items.  Thank you to the families who have already donated items for our Sock Hop basket!

·        Monday, March 25^th – Desktop Flea Market Sale

·        Tuesday, March 26^th- Math BA Test

·        Thursday, March 28^th – Read S’More Celebration

·        Thursday, March 28^th- End of 3^rd Marking Period

•         Thursday, April 11^th- Sock Hop

•         Monday, April 15^th- Grades posted

•         Wednesday, April 24^th – In-school field trip- Bird Expert comes to Dublin

Friday, March 15, 2013

March is Reading Month!

Did you know that the single-most important thing you can do for your children is to read to them (and with them) for twenty minutes, every day?

Consider just a few of the benefits, especially when you start reading with your children at an early age:

• Listening skills are built
• Children learn to sit still and stay focused
• Comprehension and understanding of events (cause and effect relationship) is enhanced
• Vocabulary is increased as children discover new words
• A child's ability to guess meanings of new words grows
• Children become more confident because they know they are cared and loved and because they can express their thoughts and needs
• Imagination and creativity is encouraged and fed
• Children are better-enabled to make friends and good relationships because their communication skills are increased
• Learning in all subjects become much easier because the brain is literally being wired to learn and take in new information
• Family bonds are strengthened and reinforced, creating an atmosphere of love, trust and communication in the home (for which you will be grateful when your kids are teenagers)

Adapted from PKE's PTA Press-March 2012

Reader's Workshop: 

We continued our Nonfiction Study this week in Reader's Workshop.  First, we decided that we had to do something about the "on the fence" books that we've been reading.  We thought that the name "on the fence" books would confuse other readers who may visit our room.  So, we brainstormed some possible names for the new "genre" that we discovered and felt that informational fiction would be the best name for books that teach us new facts (frogs are cold blooded amphibians), but are fictional in some of its content (frogs can't talk and draw a picture of the pond that they live near).  Students worked hard scouring our classroom library to find books that will fit into this genre.  Next, our readers took a closer look at the nonfiction text features that are found in books.  We discovered that:  the table of contents page, labels, maps, photographs, life-like illustrations, glossary page and close-ups are all examples of nonfiction text features.  Students went on their own scavenger hunt to find examples of different nonfiction text features in their "just right" books.

 

Writer’s Workshop:

We have moved onto the illustration phase of our Small Moments. Our writers needed to zoom in on one important part of their writing piece and create a detailed sketch of that moment. They also needed to make sure that their illustrations matched the words in their stories. We will be celebrating our writing in the next few weeks.

Calling all bird experts!! We are just beginning our Non-Fiction Unit of Study on Michigan Birds! If you have any field guides, books, magazines, etc. at home that have information about Michigan Birds please send them to school (with your child’s name visible on them). We will be spending the next few weeks sifting through field guides and bird books as well as listening to bird calls, watching for them outside and even learning about their nests and more! Next week students will begin learning about different types of books to use for research and create wonderings of their own about birds.

 

Word Study:

This week we took a look at words that end in a "y" and how to make them plural.  This is a difficult task for second graders to do because they need to remember several different rules.  Who made the English language so tricky anyways?  We ended the week by taking a word and adding letters to it in order to create a new word.

 

Math Workshop:

Our mathematicians practiced finding the area and perimeter of objects. Ask your child our chant that we learned for area and perimeter. We also talked about capacity and what units are used to measure liquids. A practice packet for our benchmark assessment was sent home on Thursday. Please make sure your child is preparing for our math benchmark, which will be on Tuesday, March 26th.

Science:

What a crazy science week in science! We finished up some important journaling from last week and colored some wind catchers.  On Wednesday, we talked some more about air and the students participated in a balloon rocket race! Students learned that air can expand things (i.e. the balloon) and used their balloons to race one another on a rocket course. They also learned that the escaping air from the balloon propelled it across the rocket course.  We ended our week by learning about an instrument that meteorologists use to measure the wind speed...an anemometer!  Students learned about the different levels in the wind scale and we built a classroom anemometer and took it outside to test the wind speed (Friday was pretty windy).

 

Social Studies:

Opportunity Cost has been the topic of discussion this past week. We learned how in life we have to make choices and the opportunity cost is the item we give up when making a choice. For instance, if I had to choose between summer or winter, I'd choose summer and winter would be my opportunity cost. We also took a look at resources this week: human, natural and capital.

Important Dates and Reminders:

Our Beach Day basket is looking a bit sparse.  We have only received an inflatable float and a pair of goggles. If you can donate items to our basket, please send them in ASAP!

 

• Friday, March 22nd – Spring Pictures: Our class doesn't have a time yet.

 

 

Friday, March 8th

Another 4 day week, but still much was accomplished.

Hope you’re enjoying the reading activities on the March is reading month calendar!

Thank you to families for participating in our fundraiser this week to help a teacher in our community.

Reader’s Workshop:

We continue with our Non-Fiction book studies.  This week we enjoyed a book by Cynthia Rylant, one of our favorite authors, called The Whales. The first day we read it for enjoyment and discussed the genre of the book.  Students recognized almost immediately the poetry elements of the book.  Next, they brought up that it was also full of information about whales.  As we reread this book throughout this week we pulled out the non-fiction parts and then discussed the fictional elements the author included.  Finally, students were given a copy of the text used to highlight the fiction and non-fiction parts of the story.   Independently students continue to shop for  an assortment of books that are just-right for them as well as books that are non-fiction.  During independent reading time they examine these books for elements of fiction and non-fiction.  Many students are becoming very confident in identifying features of both.

Our making meaning  Read-Aloud this week was It Could Still Be a Worm by Allen Fowler.  With this non-fiction text we made connections to previous knowledge on worms, came up with wonderings about worms and read the text for new information.  We also identified how this text was divided into sections such as where they live, what they looked like etc.

Writer’s Workshop:

It has been exciting to see students finishing their personal narratives and some moving on to write more.  We have spent a great deal of time discussing and practicing revision and editing.  Our goal this week was to have each child finish at least one personal narrative having gone through each stage of the writing process.  We will be publishing these pieces over the next weeks.  If there is a parent who would like to volunteer to type any of these, I would love the help.  Next week students will begin learning to write non-fiction pieces.

Math Workshop:

We have begun our measurement unit and students are learning about the importance of standard measurements and why/how measuring should be exact.  For 2^nd grade that means though we have demonstrated how an inch is broken into 16ths, we try to measure to the nearest ½ inch.  This is still difficult for some and we will continue working on it.  Students are also learning when to use which unit, such as using inches vs. yards.  For example we won’t be using inches to measure a school bus.  We’ve also moved into measuring perimeter and will soon begin area.

Word Study:

This week our students learned about adding suffixes (endings such as es or ed) to words ending in y.  During this lesson students really had to think about the root words to know if they changed the y to ies or ied, as not all words ended in y.  I noticed too that some are forgetting our lesson about doubling the consonant when adding ed when the word ends with a vowel and consonant, such as hop to hopped.  We also revisited ed endings and how they can sound differently at the end.  For instance the ed in hunted sounds like id and the ed with jumped sounds like t.

Social Studies:

We continue our study of our local economy.  We’re still looking at jobs and discussing producers, consumers and how they offer goods and services. 

Important Dates/Reminders:

April 11^th: Sock Hop!  Mark the date down  - We still need donations for our "Beach Day" basket ASAP!

Friday, March 1st

It’s been another FANSTASTIC week in Second Grade… And we all decided that a Snow Day midweek was the perfect way to adjust back to school life after February Break!

Reader’s Workshop:

Our readers have continued their look into Non-Fiction books. Independently they are shopping for an assortment of books that are just-right for them as well as books that are non-fiction. Partners this week have been working on comparing books that are fiction and non-fiction on the same topic, such as alligators or frogs. We have spent time reading It’s a Frog’s Life by Steve Parker as a class and noticing how this story, while told by the frog, is filled with information about frogs and life in a pond. Partners have been using different graphic organizers including a t-chart and a Venn Diagram to compare different books. As a class we have been discussing the different features of texts that are fiction compared to Non-Fiction.

Similarly, in our Interactive Read-Alouds this week we have taken a look at a book called The Art Lesson by Tomie dePaola that depicts his own childhood as an artist and how he learned about art as a young child starting elementary school. This book also appears to be fiction until we learn that the story is true about Tomie’s childhood and the teachers he interacted with in school, helping to shape his artwork today in the stories he creates.

Writer’s Workshop:

Our writers have been deep in composing personal narratives this week. Our writers’ have been looking at adding more details to their written work to help their audience better understand their story. We have spent time talking about how as a writer on one hand you tell the events of the story and on the other hand you need to tell the feelings/emotions that you were feeling as the events of your story were playing out. Most of our writers’ are preparing to take one of their narratives to the revising and editing stages, a part of the writing process that we have begun to introduce at the end of this week. In conferences, I have been able to take time with each writer to focus on either their lead or the details of their written work. It has been awesome to see such growth in their writing across this unit of study.

Math Workshop:

Fractions! Fractions! Fractions, oh my! This week we have spent a great deal of time working with fractions. We have spent time talking about equivalent fractions as we learned to play games like “Equivalent Fractions” and “Fraction Top-It”. We have worked on fraction number stories and explored different ways to draw fractional amounts. This tends to be a tricky unit for many students! We took our Unit 8 Assessment this week and are now moving onto a unit on measurement! As students learn the Metric and US Systems of Measurement, look for a Study Sheet to come home with equivalencies they will need to know.

Word Study:

This week our students have taken a look at high-frequency words with the use of a word search game. Then we moved onto homophones, words that sound alike but have different spellings and meanings (ie. no and know). We practiced writing sentences about the homophones to review our understanding. We also played a word grid game to practice different homophones.

Social Studies:

This week in Social Studies we have been doing a couple of different things. We have spent time talking about producers and consumers. We have talked about times when we were producers and when we were consumers. Then we moved into a fun activity on jobs! We determined your child’s future! Well not quite, but each child selected a profession out of a bag of ”mystery” professions. Students worked in cooperative groups of three to talk about what they would like and what they would not like about their job selection. Please make note of the homework assignment, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” This needs to be colored and look neat for the hallway! J Remind your child to do their personal best!