Week Ending 5/3/19

I can't believe it's May already!  We've got just 31 days of school left!  We have a lot to do between now and then and I can't wait to see how all their hard work comes together to end the year.

Important information:

• CAP forms went home this past week so please sign the permission slip and return to school if you haven't already.
• Be sure you've saved the date for Friday, June 7th.  We'll be having our Art Integration and End of Year morning.  

3 measuring activities we worked on this week were...measuring with yard sticks, inches, and centimeters.  We've been working on measuring the same items, (yarn that represents how far each student jumped) but with different measuring tools.  We've been talking a lot about good strategies for measuring.  *Ask your child 2 efficient ways to measures.

2 pourqoui read aloud we listened to were Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People's Ears and How Zebras Got Their Stripes.  We used them to focus on the elements of a pourquoi talking about how the stories not only teach us a lesson but also these stories tell us why something is the way it is.  *Ask your child why mosquitoes buzz in people's ears.

1 writing activity we've been working on is writing why 2nd grade is awesome!  The students have brainstormed ideas, we gathered all the ideas, then in their groups they chose their top ideas.  We've been working to write a whole class opinion piece on this topic.  We're working slowly and really paying attention to stating our opinion, giving our three reasons, and then adding details directly related to our reasons.  When we have a finished piece, we'll be sure to share with you all.  *Ask your child one reason 2nd grade is awesome.

Week Ending 4/12

Happy Friday!  Everyone is pretty excited about vacation!  I hope you all have a wonderful vacation.  Whether you're heading away on a trip, getting in some playground time, or having sleep overs, I hope you enjoy some nice weather, family time, and relaxation!  We spent time Thursday talking about activities they could do over break that did not include technology.  The ideas were endless!  From painting, to practice sports, to having sleep overs, and crafts...the students have lots of ideas on what to do.

Important information:

• China projects are due Monday, April 29th.  Please keep in mind that this is a project for your child to complete.  You can certainly help with brainstorming ideas and collecting materials, however, your child should be completing the presentation and writing on their own.

3 fables we discussed this week were...
The Boy Who Cried Wolf, The Ant and the Grasshopper, and the Fox and the Crow.  We've been talking about how fables are passed down from family to family, have animal characters, the animals often talk, and how they may change a bit from version to version but their lesson is always the same.  *Ask your child the lesson in The Boy Who Cried Wolf.

2 social studies ideas discussed this week were...

We've talked about our China projects.  They are due in class on Monday, April 29th.  This is a project that your child should be planning to work on a little bit at a time.  Please do not save it to the last weekend.  You child can choose their topic and plan what they would like to make.  If your child makes a PowerPoint, please be sure to send it to me.  

If you need the information again, you can find it here: 

China Project Directions

We also talked about Chinese inventions and worked in groups to read, take notes, and choose our favorite inventions from China.   To tie this lesson to our kids today, we talked about inventions made by kids and we were surprised how many different ones we found!
*Did you know that the popsicle and trampoline were invented by kids?  Ask your child to name a few more!

1 activity we have been working on to discuss and encourage empathy was...
We've been working on sharing our ideas with different empathy scenarios.  After the scenario is read, students share with their partner their ideas on how they could best help the student in the scenario.  After sharing, students shared with the group what their partner said.  This activity helps students identify how the student in the scenario is feeling, how to help them on their own, as well as focusing on listening carefully to their partner and speaking clearly and loudly to the group.  A scenario this week included a girl is in a wheelchair and can't play on the playground structure, how can you include her during recess?  Students had some wonderful ideas including passing the ball back and forth, telling knock knock jokes to each other, telling stories, and playing 4 square.
We often share what our partners say, rather than our own ideas, and it's amazing to see how well they have done with this as the year has gone on!

Week ending 3/29/19

We're almost to 50 days left of school!  Can you believe how many days we've done already?

Important information:

• April vacation is the week of April 14th.  If you will be leaving before then or returning after break is over, please let us know.  
• If you have extra any boxes of tissues around, we'd love to have them!  Allergies have hit the room already!

3, 2, 1, things happening in room 250...

3 math games we played this week were Close to 100, Plus and Minus 10 and 100, and Guess My Number.  All of these help us focus and practice place value skills and adding and subtracting within 1,000.  Ask your child which game they liked the most, why, and who they played with.

2 read aloud we worked on today was Who Am I? poems and Things by Eloise Greenfield.  All of the poems this week, we focused on making inferences on what's happening in the poem using the context clues and our own scheme (or background knowledge).  

1 art in reading activity we completed this morning was writing Who Am I? poems, sharing with a partner for them to infer what the animal or occupation is, and then adding their drawing with pencils, markers, and oil pastels.   Ask your child to read to their poem to you so you can guess too!

Here's some examples of our art this morning as well as a few of us planting seeds, getting ready for our Fast Plants to grow.  

 

 

Week Ending 3/15/19

It's beginning to feel a little bit more like Spring!  I know next week will be cooler, but hopefully we've turned a corner!  What is your favorite family Spring activity?  We love to hike with the dog and enjoy the fresh air.

Important information:

• Field trip Monday, March 18th.  Please be sure to send your child in with lunch in a brown bag or large Zip-Loc.  We will not be bringing our lunch boxes with us, though they can leave a snack in them and leave them in their lockers for our return.  
• Conference begin next week so please remember that this is a time for you and your child to attend.  The students have been practicing how to present their work to you to show what they've been working on.  
• Thursday is an early release day with dismissal at 12:30.
• Save the date for Friday, June 7th, at 8:45 for about an hour, for our Integrating the Arts morning and end of the year share.

3, 2, 1 things you should know about our week in room 250...

3 new math games we learned were Make a Dollar (focusing on combinations to $1.00), Capture 5 (using strategy to add or subtract tens and ones to capture squares), and Plus or Minus 9 Bingo (focusing on the +9, -9 strategy).  *Ask your child which game they enjoyed the most, why, and who they played with.

2 reading workshop read alouds we heard were Tornado and No Bones About It.  With both texts, we focused on reading with a question in our mind to give us a purpose for reading and working with questions that were answered or not answered.  We are understanding that it's ok that not questions will be answered with the text and that's ok! 

1 game we played with iPads and the Epson projector was Kahoot!  We used the game to finish up our Mexico unit.  The students have been writing their own Mexico information books on geography, food, holidays, or animals and they gave me their most interesting fact and I used that to create their questions.  This is always a hit!

Week Ending 3/8/19

We had our first snow day!  I hope you all got out and had a chance to play in the snow or take the time to curl up with a good book or bake some yummy treats!  While I enjoyed the snow day, I'm ready for Spring to come!

Important information:

• Be sure to send in snow pants, boots, etc for recess time.
• If you have yet to sign up for conferences with your child, please do.  If you can't come in person, we can certainly do a phone conference.  

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

3 read alouds we heard this week were Officer Buckle and Gloria, Time for Kids - Spiders, and Recess at 20 Below.  We used these to begin thinking about questioning.  This skill is so important because to be a good questioner, they must be thinking about the story the whole time they are reading so their question is relevant to where they are in the text.  

The class found it so funny in Recess 20 Below that the kids' eye lashes would freeze and become frosty! Be sure to ask your child about what it's like to have recess there in Alaska.  

2 math activities we worked on were collecting date from the 4th grade classes regarding how many teeth each child in 4th grade lost and then using that date to create a representation to share with others.  We also worked on using data from different classes to make a line plot and then switching our data with a peer.  When we switched, we had to look closely at that data and determine which class the data matched.  They were great detectives!  

1 activity we worked on the morning was Team Building Friday!  We are doing this one Friday a month to target working on the school values of cooperation, assertion, responsibility, empathy, and self-control.  The activities are fun, but they also only work when they are able to work on these values at the same time as enjoying the activities.  Today we did Body Parts, All Aboard, and Human Alphabet!  Ask your child which activity they liked the most!  

Here's a few pic of All Aboard:

Week ending 2/15

Can you believe we've made it to break?  It's been a busy two weeks in our room!  We've celebrated the 100th day of school, Valentine's day, met with buddies, and much more!

Important information:

• Conferences will be scheduled the last two weeks of March.  Be on the lookout after break for a conference sign up.  
• Be sure to send in extra clothes, snow pants, boots, etc for snowy days for outdoor recess.  

3, 2, 1 things we've done in room 250? 

• We've been working on graphing and bar graphs in math.  3 things we've looked at as a class was  who was wearing long sleeves, sweatshirts, or sweaters, who was wearing boots versus no boots, and who had short sleeves versus long sleeves.  You'd be amazed at what we've learned about each other!  We also did some sorting with Yekttis! *Ask your child about Yekktis and possible ways to sort them.

•  2 writing projects we started working on were reading through books and marking important sections with post-it notes on various topics regarding Mexico and then beginning the note taking process using those books. 
• 1 read aloud we began this week is Ivy and Bean.  It's a funny book about Ivy and Bean who develop the most unlikely friendship.  We'll use this book to delve deeper into character traits and comparing the text characters' friendships to our our own friendships.  

Week ending 2/8/19

Today is our 100th day of school!  Everyone is super excited!  It's wonderful to reflect on where we've come these last 100 days and to think about the 80 left ahead for this school year!  We really enjoyed guessing what each student brought in for their 100 items!

Important information:

• Please check your child's folder for Valentine's day information and field trip information.  Thanks!
• If you have any cleaning wipes or paper towels you'd like to donate to the class, we'll happily take them!
• If you haven't signed up to visit a morning meeting before, please do.  You can check out the sign up here: Morning Meeting Sign Up
• Morning meeting is a great time to see how we start our day.  We do a greeting to allow everyone to be welcomed in the morning, a share to hear about what's happening in our lives or over the upcoming weekend, an activity or game for some movement, cooperative work, and fun, and we read the morning message together.  

• This coming week we are in school as usual.  Coming home today is a list of names of each student in our class.  This list is to help you if your child is planning on bringing valentines on Thursday.  You certainly do not have to bring in valentines but if you choose to, please be sure there is one for everyone in the class.  Please check the sheet for valentine ideas and things not to bring in. 

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

3 team building activities we worked on this morning were Don't Wake the Dragon, Finger Tip Hula Hoop, and Human Knot.  Ask your child which activity they liked the best and why.  We're focusing a lot on more group work, team building, and perspective taking activities.  Our whole school work around empathy, cooperation, and assertion falls in these activities. Our class is very focused on competition, who is right, and fairness.  Although competition definitely has a place in our world, it has taken a different turn in our room and we are working as a whole class to be more respectful, focus on ourselves, be a good friend, encourage and support those who may have lost the game or weren't chosen for something, and share our successes graciously.
*Check out the bottom for a few pics of activities.

2 read aloud books we read and discussed during read workshop were Amelia and Eleanor Go for a Ride and Something About Hensley's.  This literacy unit is focused a lot on understanding a character's actions and their feelings as well as understanding  character's point of view.   Ask your child which book they read during their independent reading time when they focused on their character's actions and feelings.  

1 new math unit we started is Pockets, Teeth, and Guess My Rule.  I'm really excited about this new Investigations unit.  There is a lot on data collection, understanding, interpreting, and sharing of data, as well as taking a great deal of data on their own or with a partner.

Week ending 1/18/19

Happy Friday!

We had a busy week!  Don't forget that Monday there is no school.  Remember that next week, with snow on the ground, students must have snow pants, jackets, hats, gloves, etc to play on the field and structure.   Also, if you'd like to donate some regular paper towels or cleaning wipes, we would greatly appreciate it!

Below are two of our favorite and new activities we participated in.  

The first was Kahoot!  It was so fun!  I created a "quiz" for the kids made up of some general questions, some funny, and some curriculum review questions.  The class was broken into teams and each team used an iPad to answer the questions.  They did amazing and it was a learning curve for all of us but now that we've got it, I look forward to doing it again!  Also, I'm so grateful to our PTO who has helped us get 5 iPads in the room (which we've started using for the Raz-Kids programs as well as some information writing research, and today's game) and the wall mounted projector!  

As you know, Martin Luther King Jr day is on Monday.  We took time today for an exercise that was very different from our usual routine.  Today, students experienced moments where they were segregated by others, were excluded, expected to do things others were not, and more. For example, some could sit together for snack and others couldn't.  It's a great exercise to help the students gain a little bit of a sense of what segregation and unfair rules was like. Just the tip of the iceberg of course!

We talked a lot today about how they felt and how the day went on, but we also have a lot of work to do with recognizing empathy, understanding how our actions impact others, and identifying others' feelings.  

Here's some of our take aways from today...

• Today was a day of empathy by thinking about those who are not doing what you're doing. 
• Our actions might affect someone's feelings. 
• People cooperated in the book to make changes. 
• I felt sad when I couldn't do something. 
• We were happy when we could do something. 
• I felt unhappy when the people that couldn't do somethings, like when they couldn't talk.
• We weren't treated equally.
• I felt sad when other people couldn't do the same things as other people. 
• I felt kinda bad and kinda happy because I got to do something but at the same time I watched the other people not get to do it. 
• I felt sad when I watched other people not do what I was doing. 

Week Ending 1/11/19

Happy Friday!
Our first week back has been great!  We're back in the groove of things after a nice and relaxing vacation.

Important information:

• Weather - Please remember that students go out for lunch almost every recess.  If there is snow, they must have hats, gloves, boots, and snow pants to play in the snow and be on the field.  Also, with the chilly temperatures, please be sure your child has a hat and gloves or mittens.
• If you would like to donate some cray-pas to the class, we'd love it! I hope to use them next week during our Art in Morning reading on Friday.
• Be sure to check out the email sent to you earlier this week regarding Kaleidoscope bag.  Each week one student will take the bag home Friday-Wednesday.  It's a great opportunity to read or do activities with your child!
• Going home today, your child may have a list of sight words with some highlighted.  These are words that should be practiced regularly throughout the week.  These are words we have covered in Fundations but they still need some practice.  Some of the errors may be spelling errors or some may be rushing and not paying careful attention, so practicing daily will be helpful to encourage consistency in accurate spelling.

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

3 math activities we worked on were playing Get to 100 and then proving our math was correct by using addition strategies to add up to 100, adding up to $1.00 while playing the Collect $1.00 game, and showing our work while problem solving (reading carefully to determine if you need to add or subtract and showing work in two ways in the most efficient way possible).

2 literacy strategies we worked on were determining what's most important versus what's interesting in our non-fiction books and putting important information in our own words.  Both of these strategies are important to reading because they focus on reading carefully and showing our understanding of the text.  We read a Time for Kids about Helen Keller and also learned few important Mexico facts during our lessons this week.  

*Ask your child which non-fiction book they used to create their water color picture this morning.

1 social studies activity we completed was flying to Mexico!  We gathered with the other second grades to take off, watch an in flight movie, and then land in Mexico.  Before we could leave the library we had to go through customs!  They loved it!

Here's some pics of our Art in Reading activities today...

Week ending 12/7

Hello families!  
We've had a great first week of December and accomplished quite bit!    We only have 2 more full breaks until the first Winter break.  

Important information:

• We are still collecting coats for the coat drive so I encourage you to browse through your closets and donate!
• If your child will be away at all between now and break or right after break, please let us know. 
• Our art morning is going great!  We've done it two times now and I'd love to begin giving students more options with materials.  We will do water color and paint, but I'm also interested in trying oil pastels.  If you would like to donate a box to the class to be used this year,  we would greatly appreciate it (6 sets is ideal)!  Here's a link to an example: 
• Oil Pastels

3, 2, 1 things you need to know about this week:

This was Inclusion Week and we spent lots of time talking and sharing ideas about how to help our friends who struggle in different learning areas, how to be a good friend and be kind, how we could welcome a new student if they joined our class, and also taking time to recognize how we are each unique and special and sharing with others to learn how we are the same and different.  Here are 3 book titles we read this week: The Invisible Boy, Tom's Special Talent, and A Walk with Vanessa.  *Ask your child which book this week they really enjoyed and why.

2 math activities we worked on were identifying fractions and naming them through numbers and words by creating fraction flags of our own color and denominator choice.  

1 literacy activity we worked on was Art in Reading.  This week, we focused creating a project that showed examples of friendship from the books that we read independently.  * Ask your child which book they picked and how it showed an example of friendship or being kind.  

Here's our work today...