Students are reading different versions of traditional tales in LMC. We are identifying the problems in the story and will work together to come up with a way to help solve that problem next week! I just loved these pictures of them working so well together!
The students did a great job honoring our local Veterans during our assembly on Friday. We heard a guest speaker, sang the national anthem and gave our thank you letters to the Veterans. It was a very touching event. As a class, we were also able to talk about members of our own families who were veterans or who very currently serving. Jillian, Maggie, Brooke and Anna were able to share about their family members. Jillian's grandfather even stopped in our classroom after the assembly!
We began a new Science unit this week on solids, liquids and gases. In our first lesson, we observed and manipulated different objects to help us to learn about "properties." We learned that properties as words that describe an item and help to show how it is different from another object. Properties are also something that could be tested. In our second lesson we learned about the properties of different materials and how this affects what things are made of. Each child picked an object in the room to explore. They listed the materials that the object was made of and thought about why the inventor chose to use those materials. The second graders were doing some great thinking and enjoyed the "hands on" aspect of these lessons!
The second graders loved hearing from author Henry Cole! His silly personality immediately captivated them. They loved hearing about the first "book" that he wrote in first grade, a special birthday present he received from his parents and how his books were made.
We have been exploring strategies to use when reading fiction. We have learned about three main types of fiction: fantasy, realistic fiction, and traditional literature. Our focus these past two weeks has been on traditional literature in which we have explored folktales and fairy tales. We talked about how these texts include cultural language, characters that come in 3's, trickery and often an author's message. We read the Three Billy Goats Gruff and talked about the author's message. Some other traditional tales that we have read include The Tortoise and the Hare and Little Red Riding Hood.
We have completed our autobiography project and learned about reflection and feedback. Each student thought about the positive things they did as a writer, and found one area they would like to grow in. They then worked to offer specific feedback to a peer. This is a skill we will practice all year. Next week we will revisit letter writing as we write thank you letters to the veterans that will be visiting Patton School. With conferences being so close, your child's autobiography will be kept at school. They will be available for you to see during conferences. We have also continued to work on writing words in the past tense. Students sorted past tense words based on sound. The students learned that the -ed suffix can make a /d/, /t/ or /id/ sound. Next week we will learn how looking at syllables can help us read new words. Lastly, we worked on reading with a partner this week. We talked about practicing our fluency, reading at a good pace and with good expression. We are working on changing our voices to match the characters. We read some bat and spider texts and had a partner time us! We are continuing to introduce and review math fixers each day. This week we learned that we can use our fixer knowledge to solve basic subtraction facts. We continued to work hard to understand subtraction with regrouping in the ones and tens place. We have used base-10 blocks to build numbers and regroup, and then moved on to written problems. Next week, we will be doing a lot of practice with these types of problems and will also add regrouping in the thousands and across zeros. We played "Scoot" again on Friday to practice our subtraction with regrouping. The kids love this game and it gets them up and moving!
Please keep practicing addition and subtraction facts each night! Daily fact practice is essential to building strong skills. Most mistakes that we are seeing are incorrect answers from not knowing facts. Your child will bring home an Xtra Math flyer today. This is a website that helps kids to practice their basic facts in a timed format. Some kids do not like the timing, but this is a key component to fact fluency. |
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September 2019
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