Tuesday, December 22, 2020

 Reminders:

• No school Wednesday, December 23 - Friday January 1

• Please remember to follow the expectations outlined by the VT DOH at all times. We want your children to be able to continue to be together, in person. This will take each and everyone of us to make this happen. 

• Please remember that we try to go outside everyday. Support your children to have weather appropriate clothing and footwear. 

We have been working hard in second grade! 

Math: Second graders have continued to work with place value, measurement, telling time and determining elapsed time. These are all major focuses of the second grade curriculum. There are many ways to incorporate this work into daily life. Please support your child to read clocks, determine how much time until the next activity, play the math games we send home, play card games, help cook, think about numbers throughout their day.

Writing: Poetry is in the air! We are working to view the world using our poet’s eyes. Poet’s see the world with their hearts and minds; viewing ordinary objects in unusual ways. We have begun to view dice as ‘ice cubes with frozen snow’ or ‘aquariums with dots.’ We are learning how poet’s think about line breaks, specific words, use comparisons, and the importance of using everything we know about spelling to ensure our readers can read our work. 

Reading: We have begun our new reading unit… Power Up! Next Level Word Solving Skills. The first bend of this unit focuses on the six syllable types. We are learning to tackle tricky words by looking at the first vowel and asking, ‘What pattern do I know here?’ In this way, we are learning to apply decoding strategies based on syllable knowledge. Ask your child about the following syllable types: closed, v-e, r-controlled, d syllables (vowel teams) and open syllables. We will get to the sixth syllable type when we are back from vacation!

Word Study: We have begun working with multisyllabic words! Students are working on procedures for segmenting words into syllables and then applying their spelling patterns syllable by syllable. We are also beginning to review how to divide words into syllables. 

SEL/Theme: We have wrapped up the first unit in Second Step, Skills for Learning. This unit focused on helping students gain skills to help themselves learn, including how to focus their attention, listen carefully, use self-talk to stay on task, and be assertive when asking for help with schoolwork. We are moving on to the second unit, Empathy. In this unit, students learn to identify and understand their own and other’s feelings. Students also learn how to take another’s perspective and how to show compassion. This year, we are adding ways to identify the feelings of others when faces are behind masks. Students are learning how to focus on people’s eyes, the situation, and tone of voice to help determine how someone else is feeling.

Students enjoyed The Water Horse, pajama day, and writing recipes to share!

Friday, December 11, 2020

Reminders:

• Snow has been falling and so has the temperature! Please make sure that you send your child to school every day with appropriate winter gear. Due to the current Covid guidance we will be sending gear back home every day. We are encouraging families to use a reusable shopping bag to transport gear, as students’ backpacks are already very full. Please make sure your child comes to school with the following items.
• Snow pants
• Snow boots
• Shoes to wear in the classroom
• Winter coat/jacket
• Hat
• Gloves/mittens 
• Extra clothes (especially socks!)
• Please make sure that your child packs their water bottle every day.
• Our Early Winter Break will go from Wednesday, December 23rd through Sunday, January 3rd. 
• Please remember to follow the expectations outlined by the VT DOH at all times. We want your children to be able to continue to be together, in person. This will take each and everyone of us to make this happen. 

Math: Students have been having fun and working hard in math! We are working with place value concepts including:

• Model 2 and 3 digit numbers using manipulatives and arrays

• Decompose numbers by place value

• Add numbers by regrouping sets of tens and ones

• Identify numbers based on their component parts

• Write numbers in standard and expanded notation

Students have also begun to measure using unifix cubes and thinking about perimeter as the distance around a shape. We hope you are having fun playing math games with your children! Please continue to support your child with telling time and thinking about elapsed time. 

Reader’s Workshop: Second grade readers are growing like beanstalks! We have been working hard to tackle tricky words using all we know. Students have worked to think about their reading as writers. Second graders are working with the core ideas:

• Readers notice the ways authors make them react. They stop, reread and think, ‘Why did the author do that?’ and ‘How did the author do it?’

• When readers notice an author’s craft move they love, they take action by trying it in their own writing.

• When readers get to the end of a story, they reread and ask,’How does the author make the whole story click together?’

• Readers think, ‘What does the author want to teach me?’

Writer’s Workshop: We wrapped up our narrative writing unit! We celebrated our writing as an entire second grade. Students used google meet and the new breakout room feature to virtually meet in small groups to share their writing. We are excited for our next unit of study… poetry!

Word Study: Our students finished unit 4 of Word Study this week! Together they practiced recognizing and using suffixes and vowel teams in their writing and reading. They also started Unit 5 on Thursday. This new unit will focus on multi-syllable words. 

Theme/Science: Our second grade community continues to revisit our mantra of “We are all the same. We are all different. We are all unique.” This week, we created penguin glyphs and explored some of the ways we are the same, different, and unique!