Second Grade in Room 108: Friday, December 12, 2025

Reminders:

There will be no school on Wednesday, December 24 - Friday, January 2, 2026.
If you would like to volunteer to lead a Pease Mountain hike, please check out the Pease Mountain sign up. There are many slots for upcoming hikes available. We truly appreciate your time and support!

Math: Over the past two weeks, we wrapped up our addition strategies unit by helping Jack solve measurement and pricing problems about his giant beans using open number lines, skip-counting, and friendly-number strategies. Second graders also practiced measuring with their own ten-strips and played a new math game to build fluency with counting by 1s and 10s. This week, we began our new unit on arrays, where students explored dot patterns, counted by 2s, and created a class poster of things that come in pairs. Second graders have been busy exploring new ways of seeing numbers and building a foundation for understanding arrays.

Word Study: In Unit 5, students have the chance to flex their word study muscles by working comfortably with the closed syllable type and suffix endings. In addition, we are practicing combining syllables to form multisyllabic words. This unit focuses primarily on combining two closed syllables to make one longer word, which connects well to the work we’ve been doing in Readers’ Workshop. In addition to this work, students have been introduced to new suffix endings (-ful, -ment, -ish, -ness, -less, -able, and -en). Finally, we have learned two new vowel teams: au, as in August, and aw, as in saw.

Readers’ Workshop: In Readers’ Workshop, second graders have been strengthening their word-solving skills by learning how to break apart longer, trickier words. We revisited the idea that certain letter patterns stay together when we divide words (like digraphs, blends, vowel teams, and glued sounds). Students then learned several syllable-division patterns—VC/CV, V/CV, VC/V, VCCCV, and VCCCCV—and practiced using these patterns to decode multisyllabic words. Using pages from Mercy Watson Goes for a Ride, small groups searched for examples, applied the patterns, and read their pages aloud with growing confidence. Students are learning that when they encounter a long word, they can slow down, try a strategy, and flexibly problem-solve as readers.

Writers’ Workshop: In Writers’ Workshop, students have been learning how to find strong poem ideas by looking for small, meaningful moments connected to big feelings. They studied different poem structures and tried crafting poems in ways that best fit what they wanted to express. We also looked closely at mentor poems to notice craft moves like line breaks, personification, and point of view. Recently, students have been revising by replacing general feeling words with vivid “word pictures” and editing so their poems are clear for readers. Our poets are making thoughtful choices as they grow their voices and skills.

Science: This week in science, students explored how matter can change from one state to another when it is heated or cooled. We learned that all matter is made of tiny molecules, and about how those molecules move differently in solids, liquids, and gases. Students played a movement game to act out how molecules behave in each state and then learned about changes that can be reversed (like melting and freezing) and those that cannot (like cooking an egg). Instead of conducting a real egg investigation, we watched videos that showed how heating causes irreversible changes. Through videos, discussion, and hands-on movement, students are building a deeper understanding of how heating and cooling affect the world around us.

SEL/Theme: This week, students learned that people can have different preferences and that empathy helps us understand and respect those differences. Through a movement game and a shared story, we practiced noticing others’ feelings and point of view, and tried out kind ways to respond when someone prefers something different from us. We reinforced the idea that it’s okay to like different things—and that respecting those differences helps us work well together.

Project: Last week our squad made their own penguin glyphs. This was a great opportunity for us to notice the similarities and differences in our preferences.