Friday, December 13, 2013

Friday, December 13, 2013

All the second graders have been busy these last few weeks.  The weather is getting colder and children need to be prepared for school each day.  So please help your child have boots, snow pants, hats, mittens ready each day for outside recess.   Gifts of Reading books need to be sent to school this Tuesday, December 17th to open during our winter party.

Writer’s Workshop

Our Summary unit is going strong.  We have read many books and shared many good examples of summary writing and talked about what a good summary should look like.  We used three books from the series In The Days Of the Dinosaurs, two good examples were shared with the class.  The third book had the children take a poor example and make it better.  A summary should include the beginning, middle, end, and the characters names.  We talked about The Fab Five: who, wants what, what happens, what does the main character do, and then how does it end.  These help our writers write a written summary piece about a book or chapter they have read in complete detail. The students had the chance to try out their own summary.  Before they began we talked about what makes a great summary… not telling too much for each section.

                                           

 

Reader’s Workshop

These past few weeks in Reader’s Workshop we shifted our focus onto punctuation we see within text. We’ve taken a specific look at the: period, comma, quotation mark, exclamation mark, question mark, hyphen, elipses, and apostrophe.  Some readers even found other punctuation marks during Reader’s Workshop to share with others.  We spent time creating a huge anchor chart about: how the punctuation mark looks, what the job of the punctuation mark is and gave examples of the punctuation mark used within text.  Our 2nd Grade Readers each created their own smaller version of this anchor chart to keep in their Reader’s Response Logs. 

We’re also beginning to a take a closer look at dialogue and strategies that help us as readers.  When students pre-read a story, they benefit greatly, it gives the reader background knowledge of the story, which helps the reader make connections and predictions even before they read the text.  Pinky and Rex books were used to look closely at dialogue. Reading partnerships had to figure out who was talking by using the many clues given in the story.  Some clues could be the simple word of said or a more complex word of muttered.   We continued to use the terms simple dialogue, no-said dialogue, and continuation dialogue when we dug deeper to figure out who was talking and how did we know?

                                  

 

Math Workshop

Second graders have spent a great deal of time learning different strategies to solve addition problems, these strategies include using base ten blocks pictures, partial-sum algorithms, and ballpark estimation.  The mathematicians made two animal pictures with base ten blocks.  They had to write the two numbers for each animal and then solve the difference, some kids even added the numbers together.   The mathematicians are learning to add three or more numbers together.  Students can use the number chart, draw tally marks, mental math, number line, or parts-and-total diagram.  Students practiced this skill by playing Three Addends with their math partner.  We are moving on to multiplication, which goes nicely with addition.  Students are learning about multiples of equal groups- 5 triangles = how many sides? 5x3=15 or count by 3’s.  We are beginning to build math arrays with chips, pictures, and geo boards. Our mathematicians are starting to solve multiplication problems and write the number model too.

We have been working very hard this year on basic math facts, please help your child with math facts up to 20.

       

  

Word Study

Students made connections with words that had the same ending- these are just a few examples: boxes & buses, looking & making, and rain & plain.  This continued with the next lesson where the students played Go Fish with their phonics group and had to match up word endings.  We also learned that sometimes two consonants letters stand for the consonant sound in the middle of a word.  The students played Follow the Path to read and sound out new words.  Students noticed parts of a word, which makes it easier for them to break apart the word.  We used the word part – -ink and –ing to brainstorm words with these endings.  Then the students practiced these words when they played Lotto.

     

 

Social Studies

In Social Studies we are completing our unit on the geography of our community.  We are learning about good and bad changes a community faces.  We also are working on finding absolute and relative locations on a map.  This is a challenging, but fun concept for students.  In addition to winding down this unit, we are spending a short time each week looking at winter holidays that people from our community may be celebrating.

         

         

Science

The botanists continue to observe their grass, brassica, wheat, and the potato.  The scientists are always amazed at the growth our plants are making.  These young minds are always ready to learn.   The potato has many roots and continues to grow each day.   Next week students will be challenged to make a new plant from the stem cutting of a mature plant.  If you have any plant cuttings, please send in next week.  We’ll continue to observe these over time.

                                   

Special News & Reminders

·        Monday, December 16th-Social Studies Test- Room 202 & 205

·        Thursday, December 19th - Social Studies Test- Room 203

·        Friday, December 20th - Social Studies Test- Room 204

·        Friday, December 20th  – All school sing a-long at 2:30-3:00

·        Friday, December 20th – classroom parties

·        Winter Break- December 21st- January 5th

·        School starts- January 6th

·        Thursday, January 30th – 2nd  Grade field trip to the Walled Lake Outdoor Center- more details to follow