Friday, November 4, 2022

 Reminders:

• Supply requests: soft tissues & cough drops

• If you are able and willing to donate requested supplies, please send them in with your child. Thank you!

• Please consider donating items to this year’s Thanksgiving Food Drive. You can sign up for an item (or two) here. 

• No school Monday, November 21 - Friday, November 25, 2022.

• Cold weather is coming! Please make sure your child comes to school every day with appropriate outdoor clothing/gear. 

• This year, snow pants and a pair of indoor shoes can stay in the classroom throughout the week. We will remind students to bring their snow pants home weekly to be washed.

• Cold and flu season is upon us. In an effort to take care of ourselves, others, and this place please make sure your family follows the current guidelines as stated on page 7 of our CCS Student/Family Handbook.

At Home Learning Options

If your child is at home and you would like for them to engage in learning, here is a list of opportunities and activities:

Online Tools (usernames & passwords were sent home & emailed to each family)

• Lexia (up to thirty minutes per day)

• Dream Box (up to thirty minutes per day)

• Typing Club (up to twenty minutes per day)

*All online tools may be found on the CCS website on the K-8 student links page

Writing

• Write a letter

• Write a teaching book

• Write a narrative

• Write a poem

• Write a recipe, list, comic strip, etc

*Make sure to revise & edit your work!

Reading

• Read, read, read! 

• Students have access to EBooks & Audiobooks through our library! Check out our library’s ‘how to’ section for more information. 

Math

• Write & solve story problems using addition & subtraction with one, two, or three digit numbers

• Play a math game! (Shut the Box, Trash, War, etc)

Math: Second grade mathematicians have been busy! We have begun our second unit which focuses on exploring base ten concepts and models within 1,000 while focusing on the first three place value units: ones, tens, hundreds. Students will develop strategies for counting, measuring, and double digit computation. Important concepts within the unit are decomposing (breaking apart) numbers into their component parts and developing early understanding of the open number line and base ten area pieces. This unit has a lot of fun built in, too! 

*In second grade, we do not teach the standard algorithm and ask that families not teach it to their children yet. Students will learn the standard algorithm! Research shows that it is important to understand mathematical concepts prior to applying procedures/step by step strategies to these concepts. Teaching the standard algorithm before solid conceptual understanding may hinder their mathematical understanding. Here are two resources explaining this in more detail:

Why not just teach the standard algorithm? (article)

What’s wrong with carry the one? (video)

Word Study: In work study this week students learned about basewords and suffixes. Our squad learned that there are two types of suffixes in the English language, vowel suffixes and consonant suffixes. For example, -es is a vowel suffix and -s is a consonant suffix. Both of these examples are used to change a baseword from a singular word into a plural word. -es and -s can also be used to add to action verbs. For example, when you add -s to the base word “run” it becomes “runs”. Lastly, students learned that both -s and -es can say either /s/ or /z/ depending on the word. 

Writing: We had a blast celebrating our small moment narrative writing! It was wonderful to share our work with the entire second grade squad and adults throughout the building. Your child’s narrative writing has been sent home. We hope you enjoy reading it! Before we jump into our next big writing unit, second graders are pausing to focus on one aspect of language conventions. This week, students worked hard to understand when to use a capital letter as a second grader. This includes working with nouns (person, place, or thing) and proper nouns (the specific name of a person, place, or thing).

Reading: Our second graders just entered a new reading unit called ‘Power Up! Next Level Word Solving Skills.’ In the first bend, students will learn the six syllable types. Being able to identify syllable types allows students to apply word study skills to solve longer words. So far, students have learned two of the six syllable types: closed syllables and v-e syllables. Students have also learned about closed & v-e syllable exceptions. 

Science: This week our second grade scientists began a new unit of study. In this unit they will learn about matter and the stages of matter. Through videos, questioning, and exploration students were able to define important terms such as materials, properties, as well as how to classify objects based on their properties. We are all looking forward to learning more about the properties of matter in the coming weeks.

SEL/Theme: During our Second Step lesson this week we continued to learn about skills for learning. After our last lesson that focused on the importance of focusing attention and listening we learned about and practiced using self-talk. Self-talk is another way for students to focus their attention as well as ignoring distractions so that they can make the most of their learning time. 

Our First Field Trip: Although the clouds greeted us on Tuesday morning our students were absolutely glowing with happiness as they ventured up Pease Mountain. While on their hike each group was challenged to collect 5 small objects from nature in the morning for a special group project that afternoon. When we gathered together we reviewed our second grade mantra and discovered and discussed what was the same, what was different, and what was unique about our collections. It was a wonderful day for all. 

CCS Fall Festival: On Friday we had a blast at the CCS Fall Festival!