10.16.2020

 Reminders:

• Chromebooks will be sent home from school every day. Please have them fully charged and packed with your student’s mouse and Clever badge each morning.
• Please ensure your child has weather appropriate clothing, including footwear, daily. It is also a good idea to check your child’s extra clothing to make sure it is updated for size and season.
• Our four day in person week starts Monday!
• Home School Folders will now come home on Tuesdays. Please return them on Thursdays.

Second graders were busy this week! As mathematicians, they explored odd and even numbers using doubles facts. They also learned a new game called Count & Compare 2s! 

As writers, students worked with the core idea: Writers write with lots of detail so their readers see the moment as the writer sees it. Second grade writers focused on zooming in to write with lots of details. Students practiced zooming in on details by describing rocks to their writing partner. Trying out different ideas orally and then writing is very important for second grade writers.

During word study, we continued to work with the bonus letter spelling pattern. We also learned this week’s snap words: shall, pull, full. Snap words are words that we need to be able to read and write in a snap. These words often follow spelling patterns that we have not learned, YET!

On Monday, Vermont celebrated Indigenous Peoples’ Day. As a second grade community, we learned that this day was created by the United Nations in 1994 and honors indigenous people and cultures around the world. In the United States, many Americans celebrate this day instead of, or along with, Columbus Day. Our community also discussed the importance of not celebrating any one group of people on one particular day. Special days, like Indigenous Peoples’ Day, are used as reminders to see our world, and its past, present and future, through more than one set of eyes. 

Check out this video from PBS!

Check out one of our read alouds from this week, Fry Bread by Kevin Maillard.

Read alouds are a wonderful way to share and explore the world and the different people within it. This week, two of our read alouds shared stories of how food can be a ‘cycle of heritage’ as author Kevin Maillard writes. Food is one way we pass our stories to one another. It can bring people together. It can also show the divide between people. As a community, we talked about some of our family’s food ‘heritage.’ The food, or meals, that we cherish. Whether it is pizza, knishes, dumplings, a special salad dressing, or a shared bag of Doritos...food tells a story. 

As always...second graders are having FUN together!