Quick Note 9/27/16

Hello 2D Families!

Don't forget: Tomorrow Wednesday the 28th is an early release day! The students will be dismissed at 12:50. 

Homework

Since we started the week off with Johnny Appleseed Day, the students are bringing home their new weekly word sort today. Please encourage your child to sort their words tonight to practice their rules. Each dragonfly had a lesson for their words today- so we are ready to practice! Your child's words have also been uploaded to Spelling City if your child would like to practice that way. Just have them click the light blue bar that says "My Assignments" and their words and activities to complete will match their sort they brought home. If the words do not match, you are not in "My Assignments." Login information was sent home on curriculum night but if you have any problems or questions about logging in or navigating the website please feel free to contact me. 

https://www.spellingcity.com/

*There is also an app!*

Newsletter 9/25/16

Happy Weekend!

Our week in 2D was full of laughs and challenges. The students worked hard on new challenges and did so well! Please remember that tomorrow, Monday the 26th is Johnny Appleseed Day. Please have your child bring one or two apples with them to school for our fun filled day. It is also an early release day on Wednesday the 28th. The students will be dismissed at 12:50. 

Reading

This week in reading we talked about strategies to help us keep going and meeting our reading stamina goal. We also focused a lot on stop and jots. This is basically note taking but the students did so well training themselves to stop, think and jot. We talked about the different reasons why you would stop and jot and came up with many. Here are a few we used- when we have a connection, we have an idea, when we have a wonder, when we find something interesting and when we picture something in our mind. The students did so well with this and were asking for MORE sticky notes!

Writing

This week we focused on our small moments and I was blown away. The students focused on adding details to their moments and really took their time on this one piece of writing. We looked at a small moment by comparing it to a watermelon seed. If the whole watermelon is your entire summer vacation and a slice of watermelon is one day of your summer vacation, we want to zoom in on one tiny seed from that day. Along with details, we talked about adding a hook (an engaging first sentence) to draw the reader in. We then took time to slow down and talk about spacing between letters and words. We also talked about punctuation and capitalizing  the appropriate letters in a sentence. 

Word Work

This week we practiced more challenging words in our word centers. The students did very well on their Friday word test and they were so excited to be tested on their weekly second grade sight words! Thank you for working on those at home, it is definitely evident! 

Math

In math this week we talked about making the same number with different number sentences. We also talked a lot about even and odd numbers. The students learned a fun trick to tell if a number is even or odd. We began working with place value and figuring out if numbers are greater than, less than or equal to other numbers.

Science 

We are currently investigating magnets and magnetism. We started our investigation in our room and found many objects that were magnetic and then we found many objects that we thought would be magnetic but weren't. The students have objects they want to test next and then we will be looking into the other questions we came up with, such as can magnets work with another object in between? The students are so excited to do some testing.

Dragonfly News

Monday September 26th- Johnny Appleseed Day

Wednesday September 28th- Early Release Day 12:50pm

I will see you today at the parade!

Have your dragonfly tell you if this number is even or odd:

898,772,355,902,429

Johnny Appleseed Day!

Greetings!

On Monday (9/26) we are having Johnny Appleseed Day. We have a fun day planned where students will travel to each of the second grade classrooms for a fun apple activity. The students will work on math activities, apple investigations, taste tests using adjectives, interactive drawings and crafts. We are so excited for the students to experience this day. It is always a hit! 

What you need to know:

1.Please have your child bring in one or two apples (for measuring & investigating)

Have a great night!

Quick Note 9-19-16

Quick Note

Happy Monday everyone! Today your child is bringing home their homework folder with their word sort to practice at home, five second grade sight words to study and a reading log to begin logging their reading. Please have your child return the reading log at the end of the month with your initials. We have decided that homework folders will stay in your child's backpack to keep their reading log safe! 

In addition to this, if you haven't already, please have your child bring in their photo from the summer or recently for tomorrow. You can absolutely email them to me and I will print them! Thanks for your help with this.  

Have a great night!

Newsletter 9-17-16

A Happy Week

When I think of this week, one word comes to mind- happy! This week was full of laughter and learning. The students seem to be really enjoying learning more about each other and digging deeper into the academics. I am blown away with how much we are accomplishing in these first weeks of school. Thank you so much for attending Curriculum Night! I am no public speaker but I truly love sharing with you the magic that goes on in 2D and I hope you enjoyed your time in our classroom and seeing your child's work. Please let me know if you have any questions from the information given at Curriculum night!

Reading

This week was all about reading strategies and stamina. As 2nd graders we are growing as readers and amping up our reading power. The students made it to 45 minutes of independent reading this week- which was absolutely amazing and the best part was- they set the bar for themselves and met the goal! We are working on using reading strategies such as "flippy dolphin" where you switch the vowel sounds to see which one sounds right, "chunky monkey" where you sound out chunks of the word that you know and "stretchy snake" where you stretch the word from start to finish. We aren't letting tricky words stop us when it comes to reading stamina, we are using our strategies first. It is a learned skill to use strategies when reading and we are doing SO well.  Ofcourse we are still working on rereading!

Writing

This week we have taken some time to look at handwriting and constructing sentences. We did this through writing prompts, letter writing, and beginning our work on small moments! If you have't already, please help your child find a photo of them doing any activity (preferably over the summer so it is a fresh memory), you can email me the picture and I can print it if that is easier!

Math

This week we worked with ten frames to help strengthen our math fact fluency. We also solved number grid puzzles by counting forward and backward by 1's and 10's. The students also began explaining their math thinking through writing. This is something that we will be working on all year in 2nd grade. Lastly, we were able to work on calculator skills and we learned a fun new math game called broken calculator! 

Word Work

Although we are still working on our review of vowels (short and long), we completed our first full week of sorting. This week we looked at words ending in "in, un, and an" The students learned many of the different word work activities that they will do weekly with their different sorts. We even did the whip and the nae nae! We are ready to take off with our word teams this coming week. The students did so well with our first week of words!

Dragonfly News

This week we talked about about kindness and what mean words and actions can do to our hearts. We did an activity where we crumpled paper hearts by thinking about something that hurt our heart. We then tried to flatten out the hearts and noticed that the wrinkles did not go away. This taught us to be careful with our words because we know they stay on hearts forever. The students had a great conversation about this. We also celebrated our individual talents and differences with International Dot Day!

September 26th- Johnny Appleseed Day

September 28th- Early Release Day

I hope you had a fun and safe weekend!

More Photos to come :)