Friday, March 23, 2018

Update 3/23

Thank you all for meeting with me over the past few days to discuss the progress your child has made this term.  It's always great to have this time to share work and classroom observations with parents.  As always, thank you for all you do at home to support your child's learning!

Here is a look at what we have been up to over the past two weeks in room 7...

On our "trip" around the world, we visited one of my favorite destinations- Australia!  There are many interesting things to learn and see on this continent.  We looked at the continent in general, including its location, landscapes, climate, and people. The children also created their own colorful boomerangs, as well as beautiful scrapbook pages including an acrostic poem about Australia.

After all the days off for snow and professional days, we finally got back to some regular reading groups this past week.  It was great to get back into our routines and enjoy some good books together.  I continue to be impressed with how many minutes of reading the students are doing at home for our Star Reader program!!

Math this week looked at collecting data (Arm Spans and How Far We Can Jump) and representing that data on a line plot.  We also used the data to answer various questions, and explored more with Shape Attributes, Graphs, and Measurement.  We are getting really good at making estimates about length and measuring accurately using both centimeters and inches.

The children are doing great with the poetry unit.  They have already written a cinquain poem, a few couplet poems, as well as 2 form poems ("I Like" and "I Meant To").  They are doing rough drafts and final copies of each to be included in their Poetry Notebooks that will come home at the end of the unit.

We have been spending extra time at school practicing for the upcoming second grade musical, Artists Around The World.  Please note the date of the performance for parents, as it has changed since I originally communicated to you about it in February.  The new dates are below:

Wednesday, April 4th- School Performance
Friday, April 6th- Parent Performance at 1:45

One last reminder- there will be a half day this coming Friday, March 30th for the Easter Holiday.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Friday, March 2, 2018

Update 3/2

I hope you had a wonderful February Vacation and that you had time to relax and enjoy the beautiful weather that we had!

The week before vacation, we had our Spring visit to the Living Lab at Norman E.Day School. The kids participated in an experiment on beach erosion and were able to test out their engineering skills by creating a plan to help stop beach erosion. After coming up with their plan, they were able to test it. Everyone's plan was a success!! We also enjoyed our 100th Day of School and our Valentine Parties.

This week, we have had a great time celebrating Dr. Seuss's birthday! The children's spirit has been wonderful! Thank you to everyone who helped to make this a fun week.

We have welcomed a new student to our class, his name is Myan! We are very excited that he has joined us. The children have done a wonderful job making him feel included and welcome.

We have spent the past two weeks on the continent of Asia. The children have learned about the Asian culture and that Asia is the biggest continent that has the Himalaya Mountains, the biggest mountain in the world- Mount Everest, and that the biggest river is the Yangtze or Chang River.  We also learned about the country of Japan. The children enjoyed making carp kites which are a symbol of Children's Day in Japan. Next week, we will be traveling to the beautiful continent of Australia!

Our writing times have been spent working on our Term 2 Writing Prompt. The children wrote a review of a place that they have visited. They did a wonderful job and I look forward to sharing them with you at Parent Teacher Conferences. Next week, we will begin our Poetry Unit, which is always so much fun!

In Math, we have finished Unit 6 by taking our Unit Assessment and a Cumulative Assessment. We are now working on Unit 7. The focus of this unit is on Whole Number Operations and Measurement and Data. This week we completed lessons 1 and 2. The children practiced finding differences between 2-digit numbers and multiples of 10. The children also solved a practice open response problem by applying place-value concepts and addition properties.

Due to the 2nd term ending soon, I have spent time this week doing reading check-ins with each child. The information that I gathered will be shared with you at Parent Teacher Conferences. It's always wonderful to see the growth that the children are making in terms of their oral reading and comprehension.

We have begun our rehearsals for our upcoming Second Grade Performance, Artists Around the World! Please mark your calendars for April 6th, as our performance will be at 1:45 that day. The children are very excited and working hard on learning the songs and are eager to find out their special parts in the play.

Finally, coming home with your child on Monday will be a Study Guide for our upcoming Continent and Ocean Assessment. Your child should cut out the names of the continents and oceans and practice their location by lay them on the provided map nightly.  Then they can check with the answer key to see if they did it correctly. I would suggest not having them glue them down so that they can practice nightly throughout the week.  The assessment will be on Friday, March 9th.

Upcoming Dates:
March 9th- Term 2 Ends
March 15th- Early Release for Professional Development
March 22nd- No School for Parent Teacher Conferences
March 23rd- 2 Hour Delay for Parent Teacher Conferences