Week Ending 10/16/19

I hope you've all had a chance to enjoy these nice fall days while we've been off!  I love this weather because sweatshirts are so cozy and it makes for a great time to get outside and enjoy family time!

Important information:

• Wednesday, October 30th, is an early release day for conferences so please plan pick accordingly.  There are no ASCA classes that day.

3, 2, 1, things you should know for this week...

3 math skills we've been focusing on are determining if we have enough for the class, solving addition and subtraction word problems, and showing our work.  We do a great deal of work around explaining and showing our thinking.  Simply knowing the fact and writing a number sentence is not enough.  Some students are finding this difficult as they are very quick with their facts, but showing a way they arrived at that answer pushes them out of their comfort zone.  We also are asking them to show their work in two different ways.  This is also pushing them to think past the straightforward drawing of cubes and a number sentence.  We will do this big mathematical thinking all year!

*Ask your child two ways they can show their work with either an addition or subtraction problem.  

2 read alouds we read during reading work were Secret Place and Tuesday.  We focused on connections between the text and our own world using Secret Place.  As a class, we shared how nature is being cut down to make room for buildings and highways.  Using Tuesday, we focused on making prediction while reading.  When we make predictions as we're reading, we are thinking very carefully about the text and our understanding increases.

One question I've had is about spelling and wanted to be sure I touched base with you all.  Spelling skills grow a large amount in second grade!  Right now we've been working on blends (dr-, st-, etc), digraphs (sh, ch, etc), glued sounds such as -ank, -ing, and vowel teams of ey, ee, and ea.
When reading and writing there are many things happening!  Students need to think about what they're working on, create the topic, develop the ideas, and also spell accurately.  If you are reading or writing with your child, you can call their attention to words that are easily decodable.  If they struggle, you can help them.  If there are trick words (words you can not sound out), they may not know them yet but that will come as they continue to read and write.  If it is a word like a state such as Massachusetts or California or a magical place in a story, go ahead and tell them.   You can assist with spelling a bit as needed but encourage the excitement and love of reading and writing before focusing to much on the spelling!  Reading and writing at home should be enjoyable!

I wanted to share a pic of our Friday Team Time!  Each Friday, we work on an activity to help us with our cooperation, assertion, respect, empathy, and self control skills.  These activities are whole class, small group, or partner activities that require them to work together to accomplish.  This week we worked with hula hoops and the students had specific directions about how they could lift the hula hoop off the ground and their goal was to lift it as high as they could.  This meant they had to listen to each other really carefully to know when to lift, how fast, and how high.  It was challenging for many at a first!  After a few tries though, they surprised themselves and their sense of accomplishment was huge!

Week Ending 10/4/19

Just four days this week but we accomplished a lot!

Important information:

• Conferences are for you AND your child.  This is a time to chat about what we've been working on, how things are going, and goals for your child this year.  Please schedule a time that you and your child can attend.  You can sign up directly here: Conference Sign Up

• On the first Thursday of every month, we'd like to invite 3 families in to visit us for Morning Meeting (in October, it will be next week, the 10th).  Please sign up for one time to visit us.  It's about 20 minutes and you'll see how we start our day.  You can sign up directly here: Morning Meeting Sign Up
• Next Wednesday, 10/9/19, there is no school. 

3, 2, 1 things you should know about our week...

3 literacy activities we worked on this week were using our scheme to help us understand the book Stellaluna (the more we know about bats and birds before reading, the better understanding we have while reading), making connections to the character's feelings with the book The Art Lesson (the more we connect to their feelings, the better we can understand the story events and character feelings), and we worked as a whole class on our poetry routine with the poem, This Tooth.  This is a routine students will work on once a week on a rotating basis.  We focus on what the poem was telling us and highlighted Fundations rules that we've worked on (digraphs, bonus letter, and blends).  

2 writing activities we worked on were narrowing down our small moment ideas and working to tell the story to a partner starting with the beginning and working towards the end.  This helps us plan our story before we begin writing to know if we have too much information or not enough.  We also worked on our weekly letter.  Each Friday, we write about our week in school focusing on one thing we did.  As the year goes on, it's amazing to see how their writing changes and improves.  By the end of the year, you'll have a whole collection of what happened in 2nd grade!

1 math activity we began was Enough for the Class.  This activity helps us think about whether we have enough cubes for the class, too many or not enough, and then how many we have left over or how many we need.  It's this beginning activity that really focuses on explaining our math thinking and not just writing the number fact or equation.  We also share our ideas with a partner giving the partners a chance to ask clarifying questions about how work was solved.  This year we focus a lot on how we got the answer and can we explain our work to others, not simply is the answer correct.