I hope everyone had a wonderful Memorial Day weekend!
This week in the Wonders program we will study the question, “How do we use energy?” We will focus on the spelling pattern or silent e, and will review prefixes and suffixes. As well, we will review an author’s purpose when writing. During Math this week we will begin our final unit. This unit lays the foundation for division and fractions, as we divide groups into equal shares. Students will use their knowledge of arrays to assist in this learning. We will wrap up our research on an important American symbol, person, or place and the student groups will begin to plan how they would like to present their learning. The students are excited about their learning and look forward to the presentation piece. A few important dates to remember: Our community meeting will be this Thursday, June 2nd at 8:30. Our class is presenting with our buddy class. Field day is on Tuesday June 7th in the morning, with our end of the year celebration from 1:20-2:00. Look for an email from signup genius to come out this week.
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A huge thank you to the many wonderful parent chaperones who attended our field trip on Friday. It was a perfect way to tie together our learning about animals, habitats, and erosion. The best part of the field trip was that it was geared for kids to be able to be kids; lots of wide open spaces, fun learning activities, and fresh air! I will work to email out pictures this week.
This week in the Wonders Program we will explore the question, “What do myths help us understand about plants?” We will review how to find the theme of the story, focus on compound words and adjectives, and spell words with open and closed syllables (an open syllable is when a word is divided after a vowel-ra/dio or ta/ble and the vowel makes the long vowel spelling, a closed syllable is when a word is divided after a consonant closing the vowel in-pres/ent forcing the vowels to make the short vowel sound). We will be dividing lots of words this week and sorting them into open and closed syllable parts! In Math this week our focus is on arrays. We are learning basic multiplication facts through repeated addition, and finding ways to split a group of numbers into equal parts (12 = 3 x 4 or 12 = 2 X 6). We will work more with this concept at the beginning of the week and then take our end of unit assessment at the end of the week. We will write our last personal narrative story this week. This piece of writing will be independent and will serve as a way to measure growth from the beginning of the year until now. I am excited to see the progress the students have made, and to share with them the difference in their writing! The remainder of our year will focus on non-fiction writing, as we end our year with research. A few reminders of important dates coming up: Memorial Day is next Monday- school will be closed. Our Memorial Day ceremony will be on May 27th at 9:00 in the gym. Veterans are invited to attend. Our class is presenting at the community meeting on June 2nd. The meeting begins at 8:30. Field Day is June 7th in the morning, with a school BBQ following for lunch. Our end of the year class party will be in the afternoon following field day, on June 7th from 1:20-2:10. I hope you had a chance to get out and explore the beautiful weather on Saturday! This week we will explore the concept of Rights and Rules. We will work to answer the question, “Why are rules important?” We will continue to develop our ability to make, confirm, and revise our predictions as we read. In second grade, the students are expected to use the title of the story, the introduction, and the illustrations (fiction) or headings, charts, and diagrams (non-fiction) to make predictions about the book. This is a great strategy to practice with your child as you read aloud together. We will also work on pronoun-verb agreement, and study the spelling pattern of short vowel digraphs (words that don’t seems to play fair) such as short e spelled ea, short u spelled ou, and short I spelled y.
In Math we continue our work with partitioning objects. Overall, the students did well with this. It takes time and a lot of practice for students to eyeball where the halfway mark is on an object. They can practice by cutting a pan of brownies into equal parts, cutting their sandwich in half before it goes in their lunchbox, or using a rule to divide shapes. This naturally leads us into our study of introducing fractions! The kiddos are quite proud of their writing work. Many have submitted their writing for the community meeting in June, and all students will put in a piece for the Young Author’s Award. We will wrap up our year working on a personal narrative that gives the kiddos a chance to reflect on the year, and apply their new writing skills. It is wonderful for them to end the year with the same style of writing we began with, as it gives them a good comparison of how far they have come. This week in the Wonders reading program we are focusing on the question, “How can we protect the Earth?” The students are learning more about being responsible citizens and how small efforts can make a big impact. We will review homophones, practice revising our predictions, and review contractions. As well, we continue to build our fluency (rate and cadence) when reading. Please have your child read aloud to you at least twice a week to help them pause at punctuation and change their inflection to carry meaning when reading. Model this expressive reading for your child, and listen to ensure they continue to develop this skill!
In math this week we continue our exploration of polygons. The students are tasked with a challenge to design a garden that is a quadrilateral. Once with four right angles, and once with two right angles. As well, we will explore 3D shapes. At the end of the week we will begin to partition 2D shapes. This means that we will use lines to divide a shape into equal parts-laying the foundation for fractions. In writing, we are polishing our writing pieces to enter into both the Young Author’s Award (a NBCS yearly writing competition) and four the final edition of Joe English’s Grange school newspaper. There is a lot of creativity buzzing around the room! Finally, ask your child about the pinhole telescope we used to look at the sun today. We discussed that Mercury was passing in front of our view of the sun today and went outside to use our homemade telescope to observe. A huge heartfelt thank you once again for your thoughtfulness and generosity last week. It was truly amazing! As a reminder: Our fieldtrip is on May 20th. Look for details to come home to chaperones in the next week. |
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