Friday, November 18, 2021

 Reminders:

• No school Monday, November 22 - Friday, November 26, 2021. See you on Monday, November 29, 2021!

Math: Second grade mathematicians have been working hard! Students have continued to measure using unifix cubes. We have begun to shift our thinking from the concrete manipulative (unfix cubes) to creating our own strips of paper to represent length; essentially creating our own unifix cube rulers. These strips of paper also help us shift our thinking from adding discrete groups of 10s and 1s to making jumps of 10s and 1s along a number line. 

Reading: We have begun the second bend in our ‘Power Up! Next Level Word Solving Skills’ reading unit. The core idea for this bend is: Readers decode long words by breaking the word into syllables. We have worked on some reminders and three different syllable division patterns!

Word Study: In Unit 4, second graders are reviewing the suffixes, -s, -es, -ed and -ing. Your child will learn that -ed might sound like /ĕd/ (or /ǐd/) as in rented, d/d/ as in banged, or /t/ as in fished. They are also working on the new suffix endings of -er and -est. As a class we discussed the comparison endings long, longer, and longest. It is important that second graders remember to underline the base word and circle the suffix.

Lastly, we will introduce additional new sounds. First we will learn the keywords for these and later in the year we will study them for reading and spelling in greater detail.

Writing: Second grade poets have been discovering meaningful moments and have been jotting down so many ideas in their “Tiny Topic Notepads”. We have learned that you can take these small moments, details, or items that hold strong feelings and turn them into beautiful poems. 

While working on our poems we remembered that poets choose their words very carefully and that every mark they make matters. When choosing the perfect word, we realised that some of those words were unique and could be spelled in tricky ways. Students learned to ask themselves, “Does this look right? Does this look wrong?”, and then used what they knew about patterns in words to try different spellings to edit their writing.

Science: We did it! Second grade scientists have worked so hard to discover the mystery mixtures! Through close observation of our substances (salt, corn starch, sand, and baking soda) and carefully conducted investigations, we were able to identify which materials were used in each mystery mixture. The four tests we performed on our substances gave us much needed information about the properties of each material. This information allowed us to compare what we already knew about each substance with the materials that were in Mixture A and Mixture B. Be sure to check out our Science Journals which show the data for all of the experiments we investigated!

SEL/Theme:

This week during our Second Step lesson we expanded our understanding of emotions. It is important to be able to accurately interpret others emotions. This helps us to realize that sometimes we feel the same and other times we feel different in similar situations. We also discussed that our feelings can change. This helped our second graders develop empathy and perspective taking, which are essential stepping stones for compassion, conflict avoidance, and success with friends.

On Mondays,  second graders focus on mindfulness. Each week, we participate in a Cosmic Kids' Yoga adventure. We followed our instructor, Jaime, as she leads us on a magical and mindful adventure. If you are curious about adding yoga to your home routine, check out Cosmic Kids youtube channel! The physical, mental, and emotional benefits of practicing yoga and mindfulness at a young age lead to long term success and wellness.

https://cosmickids.com/about/

https://www.youtube.com/c/CosmicKidsYoga

Friday, November 5, 2021

 Reminders:

• No school Monday, November 22 - Friday, November 26, 2021. 

• There are many reasons students are absent. We appreciate you following the schoolwide expectations for when to keep your children home in order to support the health and wellbeing of our community! If your child is home, and you would like work for them, please have them:

• Lexia

• Dreambox

• Draw a picture & write about it!

• Play a card game such as Make the Sum or Trash. 

• Count a container of coins. 

Math: This week, second grade mathematicians began measuring using unifix cubes. Students are helping Jack from Jack and the Beanstalk measure! At this point in second grade, we focus on measuring in nonstandard units to practice how to measure. It is important for students to be precise when they measure! Later in the year, we will transition to standard units of measure. In this way, students practice measuring before they apply this to understanding the concept of standard measurements such as inches, feet and yards. 

Reading: Our second graders certainly are powering up as they learn next level word solving skills! This week, we continued to work with syllable types. Second graders have now learned all five syllable types: closed, vowel-consonant-e, r-controlled, ‘D’ Syllable (vowel teams), and open. 

Word Study: Our seconders finished unit 2 of word study earlier this week and have begun our third unit. This week they learned about the closed syllable exceptions -ild, -ind, -old, -ost, olt. These glued sounds look like closed syllables but they often do not follow the pattern.  Rather than making short vowel sounds these closed syllable exceptions make a long vowel sound. Students practiced building, writing, marking, and reading words that contained closed syllable exceptions. 

Writing: This week our second grade writers focused on writing conventions including capitalization, punctuation, and quotation marks. We worked on capital letters at the beginning of a sentence, proper nouns, the word I, and titles of books, movies, and tv shows. With this knowledge, we searched to correct sentences that needed capitals or had capitals in incorrect places. Our second graders also practiced using the punctuation heros (periods, question marks, exclamation points and commas) properly in various sentences. “Guess what?” said the second grade squad, “We also started working on when and how to use quotation marks to show dialogue in our writing!” Keep an eye out for these amazing skills!

Science: During science this week second grade scientists were able to complete their observations of the household substances that their teacher used to make the mystery mixtures. Students used data collection sheets to record their observations and describe the properties of each substance. Our young scientists even began using what they discovered to make predictions about what could have been used to make “Mixture A” and “Mixture B”. Stay tuned for what we will discover about the mystery mixtures next week!

SEL/Theme: This week second graders began a new unit in the Second Step program. This unit focuses on empathy. The first lesson focused on identifying feelings. Students practiced focusing their attention and learned specific ways to be good listeners. We watched a short video and practiced noticing the characters' facial expressions, their body language, and the situation to determine what they were feeling. Focusing-attention and listening skills help students get along with one another and in their learning.

Project: On Friday we enjoyed a morning "crafternoon" as a class. Each second grader made their own colorful fall pumpkin to display in our hallway. Their previous fall tree project will be sent home in their take-home folder.

Fall Festival: On Friday after, we had fun at ‘Fall Festival’! We enjoyed an outdoor concert by the Jazz Band and Concert Choir and then a special activity. Students chose between Books to Boogie with Mrs. Huestis, Estimation Challenge with Ms. Cook and Ms. Hansen, and an art project with Ms. B.