Hello 204 Parents!
Welcome back from Spring Break! I hope you enjoyed the week off... The Weckstein's went to Florida and it was PERFECT!!! Sunshine, the beach, palm trees, warm air... and even someone's first tooth!!
April Reading Calendars - I have to apologize!! They have been here in the tub waiting to go home and are now rather late! Feel free to fill in what you recall if your child is reading daily (which they should be) and then go from today, April 14th on the calendar if you can't recall. I'm noticing that not many Reading Calendars are being returned. Please remember that these are mandatory and need to be done and returned. It is vital that your child is reading daily, I cannot emphasize enough just how important this is for their growth!
Word Study has kept our second graders on
their toes lately! We have been focusing
on recognizing vowel teams in words (like “oa” in “goat”), listening for
consonant clusters at the beginning of a word (like “st” in “stop”) and
listening for consonant clusters at the end of a word (like “mp” in
“jump”).
During Writer’s Workshop, students had a week
to finish publishing their personal narratives.
We focused on having a neatly written and illustrated final copy. We finished learning about personal narratives
by having a celebration! Second Grader’s
came to Camp Read S’more on Friday last week.
The students shared their personal narratives with children from other
classrooms. Children were also able to
set up their tents and have some reading time around the room during that
time. Thank you to the parents who sent
in supplies for our s’more trail mix snacks!
This past week
during Writer’s Workshop, children
have started to work on planning the characters, setting, problem and solution,
and repeating lines for their own fairytale story. We were able to use what we learned from our
study in Reader’s Workshop and apply the fairytale elements to our own
writing.
Our study
of fairytale and folktale elements in Reader’s
Workshop came to an end last week! We dove into different fairytale and folktale
stories to discover magic and repeating lines in books. We also learned about the different
tellings/perspectives that are found in different fairytale and folktale books.
This past week
in Reader’s Workshop, we started a
new unit on non-fiction books (books that tell us true facts or real
information). We started by talking
about what makes a non-fiction book different from a fiction book and then
sorting books in our classroom into fiction and non-fiction piles! The children were great at finding
non-fiction books and telling one another an example that makes it
non-fiction. We also focused on learning
a few text features that are found in non-fiction books (glossary, index, table
of contents, close-up, caption…).
Students also have had a chance to explore non-fiction books on their
own and practice reading a few at their just right reading level!
In Social
Studies, we have also been spending more time focusing on the history of our
community. We have found examples of
what Walled Lake was like many years ago by looking at different jobs that were
held, what schools were like, and what the community looked like! Thank you for supporting learning at home by
completing the Venn Diagram of how schools are the same and different now and
in the past!
Lately,
just at the mention of science, we
hear cheers! Children have loved exploring
air and weather this unit. Children also have been re-enforced with the
information on moon phases and different tools to collect rain (rain gauge),
tell the temperature (thermometer) and discover wind speed (anemometer and wind
vanes). Children loved exploring wind
with bubbles this week in science. We
talked about how wind can change direction and cause a flow of air movement
that the bubbles can travel along! The
children LOVED being outside to explore with bubbles! This would be an easy activity to do at home
too!
We had HUGE
amounts of learning in math last
week when teams of children measured to make GIANT body parts that we pieced
together to make a classroom giant.
After we measured how tall our classroom giant was, we compared them with
the other second grade classrooms! The
children continued to practice using measurement by measuring to the nearest
inch/centimeter and nearest half inch/centimeter. Children also learned about perimeter and
area this week by measuring different objects around our classroom. In addition, children explored capacity and
weight! We also had our benchmark and
Unit 9 math test where children were able to showcase their math knowledge!
Important Dates:
Tuesday, April 15: Artifacts Museum in Social Studies DUE
Friday, April 18: No School - Good Friday holiday
