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

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

Nonfiction Writers Squeeze Their Brains

Dear Families,

It was wonderful to see all the smiling faces happy to be back at school this week!

Today we said goodbye to Miss McMorrow.  We are going to miss her and all the help she provided in the classroom.  Thank you for the generous donations for her book bag.  She was very touched by the thoughtfulness.

This week we began a new nonfiction unit in Writing Workshop.  Children chose a topic they know well, and began writing a book.  During our mini lessons we looked at mentor texts for craft moves that we could try out in our own writing; like a table of contents, diagrams with labels, bold words and definitions.  We also learned how nonfiction writers reread their writing and then think, "what else could I say?"

During math we continued our work with subtraction by playing dice games, completing equation worksheets and by "shopping" for books.  Each student was given '$100'  or '$50' to spend on books from a Scholastic book order.  The students loved being able to choose their own books, and couldn't believe this was math!!

We enjoyed our November, Fact or Fiction share.  Look for a new sharing topic letter and calendar for the month of December in your child's folder today!

Other Things to Ask Your Child About:
~The Ember Stone
~Watching Frosty for an all school celebration
~Get Close to Zero with Six Rolls
~The snowball greeting
~Fast changes vs. slow changes

Have a great weekend!
Katie