Busy Week in Second Grade!

Dear Families,

This week was full of fun and excitement!  Our second grade team joined together for movie day, a sing-along and afternoon of board games. 

On Wednesday the children were challenged to create the largest snowman they could using a six foot sheet of white paper.  The snowmen needed to have three separate paper circles, buttons, eyes, nose, arms and any extras using their wonderfully creative minds. 

To wrap up our high frequency word work, we practiced writing our words using shaving cream and paint bags.

On a sad note, today we said goodbye to Natalie-Elisabeth. We wish her family good luck with their move to South Carolina.  We will miss her very much!

Other Things to Ask Your Child About:
~The Dragon of Doom
~The Tens & Nines game
~Symmetry
~

Wishing you all a wonderful holiday season and a Happy New Year!  Thank you for sharing your wonderful children with me each day!

Katie

Looking Fancy!

Dear Families,

The children were amazing in Wednesday night's Music Program! It was so fun to see everyone dressed up and proud to share their hard work in music with all of you.  So glad so many of you could make it!

This week we began a new reading unit, 'Studying Characters and Their Stories.'  The first part of the unit will teach how readers study characters before, during and after reading.   Children will learn how to gather all the information they can about characters before they even open up a book.  Once children begin reading, they'll squeeze every bit of character information they can out of the text itself, and the pictures.

We wrapped up our unit on Earth's Changes by conducting four experiments to investigate fast and slow change: earthquake, water, wind and volcano.  Ask your child about it!

Other Things to Ask Your Child About:
~The Rows & Columns game
~Pinky and Rex
~Ways to 'hook' a reader
~Solving subtraction problems
~Alexander, Who Used to Be Rich Last Sunday

Have a great weekend!
Katie

Meet the Experts!

Dear Families,

It was another busy week in second grade!  Today our class participated in the PBIS assembly about Cooperation by presenting the Russian folk dance they will be presenting at Wednesday's  Winter Music Program.  Hope to see you all there!

This week we completed our Nonfiction reading unit.  Each child chose a topic that they wanted to be tour guides of.  They thought about the important parts they wanted to teach and marked them with post-its.  Then they shared their expertise with Mrs. Cooper's fifth grade.

Writing: We continue to write nonfiction information books. This week children worked on setting goals and helping readers picture information by adding description. 

Math: We continue to work on using the open number line to subtract.  This week we practiced subtracting two-digit numbers. 

Today we enjoyed a second presentation about Japan from Lizzie & Henry Clark's grandmother, Mrs. Sue Clark. Mrs. Hockenbury's joined us as we explored a map of Japan, listened to A Tree of Cranes, learned about Origami and made our own Samurai helmets.

Other Things to Ask Your Child About:
~Personal Space Camp
~Song Books
~Surveys
~Practicing high frequency words

Have a great weekend!
Katie