Update 10/19

It is hard to believe it is almost the end of October and the cold weather is approaching. Please be sure your child comes to school with a jacket or sweatshirt to wear out to recess. We go outside everyday.

We have a lot to share about what's been happening in our classroom over the past two weeks...

In math, we are finishing up Unit 2, which focused on fact strategies. Near Doubles, Turn Around Facts, and the Making Ten strategy were some of the strategies we practiced. The children will continue to use these strategies while playing games during guided math and completing their math journal pages. The children will be taking the Unit 2 assessment next week. When the completed assessment comes home please be sure to sign and return it to school. In Unit 3, more fact strategies will be developed with a focus on solving subtraction facts.  Frequent practice of addition and subtraction facts will help second graders develop math confidence and fluency.

During writing, the children are working on their “Looking Back” stories. They are using the photos brought in from home and the brainstorming sheet to write the first draft of their stories. It has been so much fun seeing all the wonderful photos and the stories are off to a great start! Next week the children will create spooky monster stories where they get to design their own monsters. Be sure to ask your child all about it.

Daily 5 is up and running and the children are doing a wonderful job! We are currently focusing on retelling and identifying important story elements (characters, setting, problem, solution). The children will be using the “five finger” strategy in small reading groups to identify the elements and retell stories. These are skills that we will practice throughout the school year.

This week in science our class visited the rainforest! While in this habitat, the children learned about the animals and plants that live there and what they need to survive. Soon, we will be visiting the desert and the ocean habitats as well. We will then discuss how the plants and animals in these three habitats depend on each other to survive. The children have written a "blog" about their visit to the rainforest, will play trivia during their visit to the desert, and be scientific data collectors in the ocean habitat.

The second graders at Robinson will be participating in a school wide fall clean up. The second grade students will be raking leaves, weeding, and planting bulbs. It will be so exciting in the spring to see the beautiful flowers bloom from the bulbs WE planted! This is a great way for the second graders to give back to our school community.

Our first class celebration, the Harvest Party, will be on October 31st.  The children may bring their costumes in a bag marked with their name and will be allowed to put them on for the party. It is a Robinson rule that we don't allow weapons, face paint, or masks. If your child doesn't want to wear their costume, that's fine too! 

We are lucky to have Susan Sperry helping to organize the celebrations for us this year.  If you have any questions about parties, please contact her (her contact info is on the Friendship List).  Thank you for all the donations that have already come in to help support our classroom parties. If you have not yet sent in a $6 donation for the holiday parties there is still time. These donations will be used to pay for the crafts at each celebration.

Thanks for all you do and have a wonderful weekend!

Update 10/5

I hope your child is enjoying 2nd grade so far!  We have lots to share about what's been happening in our classroom over the past two weeks...

In math, we finished up Unit 1, which was a great review of skills the children learned in first grade. The children took their Unit 1 Assessment, which was sent home for you to review with your child. If you haven't sent it back signed, I would appreciate if you can do so. We also began Unit 2 which focuses on Fact Strategies. During our math sessions we have been talking about various addition strategies we can use when we don't know the answer to a fact automatically.  Some of the strategies we discussed were Near Doubles, Turn Around Facts, and the Making Ten strategy.  The idea is to use something we know (such as doubles) to help us solve an unknown fact.  The strategies are introduced quickly, so it's common for children to get a little mixed up at this point.  Over time we will go back to each of the strategies and practice them more in depth.  

During writing, the children are working on their first draft of their first personal narrative stories. We have spent time talking about ways to begin their stories. Some examples include: a detailed setting, quote, sound word, or a question. We also worked on writing the middle of their stories and making sure that they told the story in sequential order using transition words to help them move from one event to the next. Their stories are really coming out great! Next week we will talk about endings, revising and editing.  We also sent home a writing assignment for the children to work on at home next week.  This involves brainstorming a topic they can use in their next personal narrative story, which we will work on in the next few weeks.  Please look for this assignment in your child's folder.  It is due next Friday, October 12th.

We have really gotten into our Science Unit, which is called "Plant and Animal Survival".  We took a Nature Walk around Robinson School looking for living things.  We are also conducting some fun experiments in the classroom related to plant survival.  While we know that plants need water, sunlight, and air to survive, we wanted to come up with some new ideas to see how they affect plant survival.  The kids were super creative and came up with some great ideas!  We voted and chose two experiments to try in class- Will the plant survive if we water with milk, instead of water? Will the plant survive if we put sunscreen on the leaves. The children are curious if the plant will still get enough sunlight to make food in it's leaves?  The children have made some great predictions, and in a few weeks we will have some evidence to prove whether or not our predictions were correct.  So exciting!

We also had a wonderful trip to the Living Lab.  The children had a chance to visit the Reed Brook and observe the plants and animals that live in that habitat. Inside we learned about various living things and how they depend on one another for survival. Each child was either a plant or animal that lives in the brook and they got to physically see how many living things they each depend on.  Finally, the kids got to learn about frogs and how they adapt to their environment. We learned about the various types of feet they have (webbed, digging, sticky) and how they use camouflage to help them survive in their habitat. We look forward to going back to the Living Lab in the Spring!

In Reading we have been meeting with our groups on a consistent basis now that all of our Daily 5 routines are in place.  This week we focused on the skill of Making Connections.  This is a strategy readers use to help comprehend the actions and/or feelings of the characters in the story.  If we can connect something in our own lives to what's happening in the story, then it helps us know how the character might be feeling or reacting so that we can then better understand the story.  This is an important comprehension skill we will practice throughout the year.  Our strategy focus next week will be identifying story elements (characters, setting, problem, solution).

Finally, our class is participating in a fun program called The Global Read Aloud.  Thousands of classrooms around the world are all reading the same book and connecting in various ways to discuss what we are reading.  The book we will be reading is a chapter book called A Boy Named Bat.  We are looking forward to making our first connection with a class outside of Massachusetts next week.  I look forward to connecting with many more classes in the coming weeks.  

Our first class celebration, the Harvest Party, will be on October 31st.  We are lucky to have Susan Sperry helping to organize the celebrations for us this year.  If you have any questions about parties, please contact her (her contact info is on the Friendship List).  Thank you for all the donations that have already come in to help support our classroom parties. A friendly reminder that we are asking for a $6 donation to help cover the cost of the parties.

Thanks for all you do and have a wonderful long weekend!