Friday, February 9, 2024

 Reminders:

• ISO: tissues and cough drops! Cold weather means runny noses and sore throats. If you are able to, please consider donating a box of tissues or a bag of cough drops to our classroom.

•  In addition, please be sure to read and follow the health office’s guidelines regarding sickness and when to keep your child home. Thank you!

• No school Monday, February 26-Friday, March 1, 2024.

• Here is the Pease Mountain Volunteer Sign Up. Please join us if you are able to! (Remember, volunteers will need to complete the CVSD Procedure for Supervised Volunteers & Chaperones. This will include a background check and fingerprinting. Please refer to the CCS Family/Student Handbook 2023-2024 for more details on this procedure.) 

• Please use the Spring Family Conference Sign Up form to set up a time to meet. This document was shared via email on Thursday, February 8th and in our blog update email on February 9th.

Math: Our second grade mathematicians continue to focus on measurement. We have focused on measuring in inches, feet, and yards, as well as comparing objects. Students are working to understand that there are 12 inches in a foot and 3 feet in a yard. To help with this concept we heard another part of the “Jim and the Beanstalk” story that introduced a new character, the Footworm! The Footworm is no ordinary creature, it looks identical to its non-magical relative the inchworm, but is exactly one foot in length! We used both our inchworm ruler and our footworm cut out to measure various objects around the classroom. We discovered that while both tools were helpful in measuring whole feet, the inchworm came in handy when it came to measuring with precision. 

Word Study: In word study this week we wrapped up unit 7 by having an end of unit checkpoint. We closed our week by starting unit 8! Unit 8 will introduce r-controlled syllables as a spelling pattern for second graders. We were excited to be reintroduced to “bossy r” from our previous reading unit, Power Up!, which emphasized using decoding strategies in reading. We learned the keywords and sounds that go with ar and or. We reinforced the importance of hearing each part of a word when attempting to spell. We did some dictation practice to hear, decode, and encode (spell) the words that included ar and or. 

Writers’ Workshop: We wrapped up the second bend of our opinion writing unit. During this bend, our work  was to have students focus on giving evidence to support their reasons and include strong/precise language to convince their audience to agree with their opinion.  We worked to be more convincing!

Readers’ Workshop: We are working to learn about, and apply, reading strategies to support our reading of nonfiction. Students are focusing on strategies to tackle both the tricky word work and vocabulary development they need to navigate nonfiction reading. It’s been fun learning the vocabulary of different topics!

SEL/Theme/Kindness Month: February is Kindness Month in second grade. Each week we focus on a different aspect of kindness and connect it to our CCS expectations of taking care of ourselves, others, and this place as well as our second grade mantra: We are all the same. We are all different. We are all unique. Our first lesson introduced the comparison of kindness to light. We reflected on the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and then created a lightbulb art activity to spread our light into the world. Our second activity focused on how we take care of our own light; the idea of kindness to yourself as a precursor to being kind to others. We reflected on quotes by Amanda Gorman, Oprah Winfrey, and Sogyal Rinpoche and then brainstormed what it looks like, sounds like, and feels like when we are kind to ourselves. We then grew our self kindness by creating sunflowers focused on self kindness.

Science: In our Earth Science unit we set off to expand our understanding of geology. In this week’s investigation students observed and sorted rocks based on observable properties. Students were divided into groups and given a collection of dust covered rocks. They were then given five minutes to sort their collection based on one observable property. They then recorded their sort into their science journal. Afterwards, using water, they cleaned off their collections and took time to observe the rocks. Then as teams they created a new way to sort their river rocks based on a single property. Students also learned that there are three types of rock: igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic.