Parents,
Thank you SO incredibly much for your support over the course of the past week. It was so hard to go from the excitement in 204 on Tuesday over the announcement of a baby to losing the baby shortly after. While I was nervous to come back to school today, it was SO good to be back with the Weckies. They were filled with hugs, love and compassion. Thank you for taking the time to talk to your child, I am sure it wasn't easy. One of my biggest concerns on Wednesday when I learned of our unfortunate news was how the kids were going to handle this information. A special thank you to all who emailed, sent cards or came to school on Monday morning to help get me back in school-mode and smiling again! ~ Jen
Word Study
We started our week with learning about singular and
plural words. Students learned
that when a word ends with s, sh, ch, or x we need to add and es to make it
plural. Next we noticed
connections between similar words.
We found that many words end with the same spellings, but others look
just similar such as buses and boxes.
Our last lesson of the week worked with recognizing endings with
consonant clusters. Students
enjoyed a “go-fish” game to practice looking at these endings.
Reader’s Workshop
Our readers are continuing exploration and recognition
of dialogue in texts. This week we
introduced narration. Students are
learning to recognize whether a narration is 1st person or 3rd
person. Ask your child what words
we notice in a first person narration and who is then telling the story.
We also looked closely at how dialogue is written and
“how authors do dialogue differently”.
We looked at Frog and Toad books to view simple dialogue with the usual “said
_____.” We used Cynthia Rylant’s
Henry and Mudge series to show that dialogue can continue on with “said (or
alternative such as whispered) ____ in the middle of dialogue. We will continue this study and deepen
our understanding of it.
Writer’s Workshop
Our next unit, summary writing, will help students
synthesize comprehension of their reading to pull out the most important
details in a text. They will
practice using transition words to summarize the beginning, middle and end. This is also a skill that our second
graders are required to use to share their comprehension on our next reading
assessment. This week I modeled
this writing and students had one try.
We will continue this unit over the next few weeks.
Math
Students were challenged with new concepts this
week. We learned about the
differences between solving problems with estimates and exact amounts. We learned a chant to help us remember
the rules of rounding (estimating) numbers. This seemed difficult for many on the first day, but most
had a better grasp of it by the end of the week. Towards the end of the week we also included work on the introduction of regrouping by teaching partial sums using base 10 blocks. A review packet for Ballpark Estimation came home on Friday stating that we would have a Unit 4 test today. Instead, I spent time today making sure the kids were understanding this tricky concept and will give the test on Wednesday. It was hard for me to be out three days and then give an assessment today when I was not certain this was in our best interests!
Social Studies
Our geography unit was completed with practice and
review of skills taught over the past weeks including map features, absolute
and relative location findings on maps, problems and solutions in communities,
compass directions and more.
Updates
· - Thank
you for your support with our pajama drive. We hope they bring smiles to many families this holiday
season.
· -Our
newly formed 4-5th grade Glee Club will be performing with the Michigan
Philharmonic Orchestra on December 7th at 7:30 PM. This should be a great night
and concert.
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