Dear Families,

Even though it was a short week, it seemed very busy!

Special thanks to Mrs. Baer and Mrs. Clark for teaching us all about how animals adapt in the winter! Below see how the children worked to help their animal "adapt" to the cold winter air.

In this month's Farm to School lesson with Ms. Meg, we learned about spaghetti squash and made a delicious spaghetti squash saute.  Check out the recipe on our school website. 

This week we completed our Nonfiction writing unit.  To celebrate, we shared our nonfiction books with Mrs. Mahl's class.  It was fun to see how many different topics the second graders wrote about! Look for your child's writing to come home in the next few weeks.  Next week, we will begin a  Persuasive writing unit. 

Other Things to Ask Your Child About:
~Using the splitting strategy to add two-digit numbers.
~Habitat stations in science workshop.
~:Learning about character change from Lily's Purple Plastic Purse and Oliver Button is a Sissy

Have a great weekend!
Katie

Changing Perspectives

Dear Families,

This week we were very fortunate to be a part of two inspirational presentations focused on peace and celebrating differences.

On Thursday, members of the SBHS Diversity Union joined our school for a celebration of MLK Jr. Day.  They taught us this important message from Dr Martin Luther King Jr. "PEACE is more precious than diamonds or silver or gold."

Today, we listened to a speaker named Sam Drazin.  Sam is an educator born with Treacher Collins Syndrome (similar to the character Auggie,  from the book/movie 'Wonder'). Sam works for Changing Perspectives, Inc. a not for profit organization, whose goal is to help everyone recognize their own challenges and to help promote understanding, respect and acceptance of all people.  Sam visited with the first and second grade classrooms to talk about empathy, kindness and what it means to be different.  Ask your child about it!

Your child might have mentioned working with a new Word Study teacher or having new Word Study words.  Before the holiday break, I reassessed all children using our Words Their Way spelling assessment.  Based on that assessment, your child may be working on new spelling patterns because they mastered the previous or continuing with the same spelling patterns because they need more practice with the pattern.  Let me know if you have any questions!

In math we wrapped up our subtraction unit.   To practice for our subtraction assessment, the children worked in groups solving various subtractions problems and puzzles, in order to escape from Emoji Island.  Check out the escape artists below!

Other Things to Ask Your Child About:
~Draw, Add & Compare in Number Corner
~Cross country skiing in P.E.
~Gooseberry Park
~Putting yourself in your character's shoes
~Publishing a nonfiction writing book

Enjoy the long weekend!
Katie

Be Kind in Your Mind and In All That You Do...

Dear Families,

We hope you are enjoying the kindness calendar at home, as much as we are in school!  I have seen lots of acts of kindness in our classroom this week!  This week we learned a poem about kindness and made kindness cards. 

In Math we wrapped up our unit on subtraction by focusing on distinguishing between take-away and comparing problems. Students continued using the open number line to solve these problems.  Next week we will complete an end of unit assessment.  In Number Corner we continue our work with rectangular arrays.  Today students wrote array riddles using rows and columns for a partner to solve.  Check out the pictures below!

 

On Monday we began a new guidance unit, "Changing Perspectives."  Our school has chosen the theme of “Changing Perspectives” to help our students gain better understanding of differences and disabilities. We are collaborating with Sam Drazin, Executive Director of Changing Perspectives { www.cpne.org} and former teacher. He will be presenting to all our students in grade level meetings on Friday 1/18. Each week, Mrs. Wheeler and her intern Ms. Bedell will be incorporating their curriculum into their weekly class time with us. They will read a book with our class and discuss the importance of the uniqueness and value of each member of our school community. While we will be learning about various disabilities, our focus will be on recognizing each person’s strengths. To celebrate our learning, we will be organizing a disability awareness hands-on workshop. We will set up stations to simulate various disabilities and invite students to experience daily actives without being able to see, walk, hear, or use their fingers. In first and second grades, each student will create a booklet to demonstrate their learning.

Other Things to Ask Your Child About:
~~Our probability container - what fraction of the tiles will be red? More than half?  Less than half?
~Not Your Typical Dragon
~New Word Study groups
~Character traits

Have a great weekend!
Katie

Kindness Counts!

Dear Families,

Happy New Year! Today your child should have brought home the sharing letter for the month of January.  Today we took time to write 'happy notes' to share with others. 

Next week we begin the winter creative arts schedule.  Hopefully we will get more snow!  The children will be going outside on Wednesdays for an hour of cross country skiing.  Please make sure they have winter gear every Wednesday.

Reading:
This week we continued to get to know the characters in our books.  We learned how to notice not only what a character says, but how they say it.  We also started to collect words to describe character traits.

Writing:
As we move into the second part of our nonfiction writing unit, the children explored two new structures of nonfiction writing:  question & answer, and how-to books.  They chose one of these types and began writing a new nonfiction book using this structure.

Math:
This week the children practiced using the open number line to solve comparing problems.  They learned that they can jump forward or backward on the number line to solve these kinds of problems.

In our first Engineering task of the new year, the children were given marshmallows and toothpicks and work cooperatively to design an igloo! 

Other Things to Ask Your Child About:
~The Fact Strategy Game
~New Year's Resolution song
~The Weeping Werewolf

Have a great weekend!

Katie