Friday, April 12, 2013
It was a
great to be back into our routines this week!
Can you believe we are ¾ of the way finished with 2nd grade? Thanks to EVERYONE who sent in donations for our "Beach Day" basket with Mrs. LaBlanc's class for the Sock Hop last night! Our basket brought in $105 for technology at Dublin! We had a fun time dancing the night away with everyone last night! :-)
If you have
not yet turned in the field trip money ($2) for our bird presentation, please
send it soon. Thank you!!
Word Study
We’re taking
a close look at spelling patterns.
Students studied cvvc (consonant vowel vowel consonant) patterns as well
as word families and played with word ladders.
Reader’s Workshop
This week in
Workshop we went deeper into our study of non-fiction comparing different
styles of non-fiction examining lay outs and more text features. We introduced a new book, My Favorite Tree.
Like other texts we noticed that this
book has a layout of a fictional story, but is actually in the Informational Fiction genre and set up like a
field guide. We also spent time
discussing how one prepares to read a non-fiction text. Students brainstormed questions they ask
themselves before beginning an unfamiliar non-fiction text such as “What do I
already know about this topic?” or “What text features should I be aware of
when reading this book?” We also talked
again about being able to “dip in” or “dip out” of the book dependent upon the
structure of the text. Finally we’re
beginning to learn about the strategies readers use when reading non-fiction.
Writer’s Workshop
We continue
to develop our ideas, structures, interest and strategies for writing about birds.
This week students practiced taking
information from texts and putting it into their own words. This is a difficult concept for many. Try practicing this at home. We are also examining what should be included
in a piece about birds…specifically, what makes a bird a bird. Finally, students are starting to look
closely at birds they are interested in reporting on.
Math Workshop
We’re off
and running with unit 10 working further with decimals and place value. We’re using our calculators to show numbers
with decimals to represent money amounts.
Students are learning proper notation for recording money. We find that they often will record correctly
with the decimal but forget the $ sign.
We’re revising double digit addition using money amounts as well. For this we’re using self-calculation and then
checking with a calculator again using decimal forms. Students are being reminded to first estimate
the answer with a ballpark estimate and then check to see if their answer is
close and makes sense. We’ve discussed
that the reason we’ve worked so much with ballpark estimates this year is
because it’s a useful skill that we need throughout our lives. Finally, we’re practicing making change
again. This is a tough skill for 2nd
graders. During workshop times students
had fun playing several money games keeping it upbeat and fun!
Social Studies
We are
introducing our 4th unit on the history of Walled Lake. Students will learn about the differences
between past and present. This week we
started by reading The Keeping Quilt, a story by Patricia Pollaco about
her family’s history.
Science
This week we
reviewed some important instruments that meteorologists use to study
weather. On Monday, we made pinwheels and realized that they could be
used as anemometers to measure the wind speed. We also talked about how
meteorologists use a rain gauge to measure how much rain or snow has
fallen. If you made an extra credit rain gauge, it’s probably collected A
LOT of rain throughout the week!
Important Upcoming Dates:
April 16th: Artifact for
Social Studies is DUE
April 24th: In school field trip with “bird lady” (she’ll
be visiting in the afternoon)
