Fun at the Zoo

The students had fun learning about animals and their habitats! They learned a lot about animals and their habitats in our zoo class. The students took many pictures of animals and over the next few weeks, they will be using the pictures to make stories in StoryKit on the iPads. 

Mini-Writing Celebration!

Yesterday, we had a little writing celebration. The students have been working hard writing personal narratives. We've been looking at great writers like Jane Yolen and Donald Crews and trying some of their writing craft in our stories. The students are trying to zoom in on a small moment write all the details. Second graders are expected to write complete sentences with a capital letter at the beginning of each sentence and an end punctuation mark. The students should capitalize the names of people and edit for spelling using our Word Wall.  Here's a few pictures of our mini- writing celebration. 

Visualizing

The students have been learning a new comprehension strategy called "Visualizing".  Visualizing is the running picture or movie in your mind as you read. To practice this strategy, I've been reading aloud to the students so they can picture the poem in their mind.  Students have to be good at visualizing before moving to chapter books that have fewer pictures. 

Math Review

We've been reviewing all the addition and subtraction strategies. The Chapter 1 test is tomorrow, Tuesday, September 23rd.  Your child should have brought home the math review sheet so they can review some more tonight.

Puppet Pals

It was great hearing about all the fun the students had with their puppet pals last weekend. I'm looking forward to Monday morning when I get to hear about all the fun this weekend!

Congratulations Shaadi!

Shaadi has been working on Xtramath.org at home over the last several weeks.  I'm pleased to announce that she completed the first level of Addition Fact Fluency! She's now working on Subtraction. I'm so proud of her hard work! When I asked her how often she practiced to complete this level, she said "I practiced every day, but one".  Congratulations Shaadi!

Math News

We've been working learning about related facts and fact families.  Tomorrow and Thursday the students will be learning about two-step word problems.  We will review all the addition and subtraction strategies on Friday and Monday. Our chapter test will be on Tuesday, September 23rd. After the students finish their "On their Own" page, they go to their math stations.  The students enjoyed the new activities today.

Writing Fun

It was great to hear about all the fun the students had with their Puppet Pals. A few students wrote about their weekend and we shared those stories this morning during our writing time!  I'm pretty excited about our Kidblog too! I read several stories on the blog this weekend and a few students even added a photo. 

I took the students writing folders home this weekend so I could read more of their work. I wrote out some "Stars" - things that I noticed they were doing great and I wrote out some "Checks" - things they should check.  Most students need to check for capital letters and end marks in their sentences. Several students need to check their spelling. We have a Word Wall and those words should be spelled correctly every time they write those words. A few students need to check that their letters aren't backwards. The students have great ideas and I love that the kids love to write! 

Look at all the stories we have on the blog.  The website and log in information is in your child's Homework Folder. 

Social Studies Review

We reviewed for our Social Studies Test with our Activotes today. We talked about all the right answers and why they were right. 

Subtraction Strategies

Yesterday the students learned to use a number line to count back to subtract. Today the students practiced subtracting all or zero.  Tomorrow the students will learn another subtraction strategy before I check their subtraction progress on Thursday. 

Social Studies Test - Thursday

We reviewed Unit 1 in Social Studies today. Your child should have brought home his/her Social Studies book home today with vocabulary cards. Please review with your child and send the Social Studies back on Thursday. We will review in class again tomorrow. 

Urban and Rural

We've been learning about different communities. We learned about urban, suburban and rural areas.  We talked about ways the different areas are alike and different. The students made their own Venn diagrams that compared urban and rural communities. Check out a few:

Writer's Workshop

This week the students started writing down a list of writing ideas in their "tiny topic notebook". Today we practiced planning our writing across several pages. Then many students started writing their story! Here's a few pictures of the students sharing their stories yesterday.