Newsletter 11-10-13

Hello Dragonfly Families! 

Wow what a whirlwind these last two weeks have been. We have been so busy, diving into new units and exploring new ways of reading! We have our field trip this week! On Wednesday at 9:00 we will be heading to Strawberry Banke to explore our community unit a little more! If your child needs a lunch from the cafeteria on Wednesday and you have not let me know, please email me by Monday, November 14th. We will be returning back to school for lunch, however this will be after our normal lunch time, so we will be eating in the classroom. 

Reading

We have been exploring non fiction books and discovering their features. We have realized just how much we can learn from non fiction books and that even if they aren't "just right" we can still learn a lot from them. The students have taken time to use the features of non fiction books and learning the lingo of different non fiction books. We are excited to keep learning new interesting facts and become an expert on one special topic that each dragonfly will choose themselves. It has been a fun reading unit where we can build upon our reading strategies but learn so much from these new types of books.

Writing

We have wrapped up our Authors as Mentors Unit and the students have so proudly shared their writing with their classmates. With each share the students are full of compliments that are specific and meaningful and direclty linked to our unit. The students are truly able to talk about their writing and the writing of the others. I have been so proud of their hard work during writing. We continue to work on handwriting and will be entering into our nonfiction writing unit this week! 

Math

We have been learning strategies for subtraction and the students have been working so hard! Some of these strategies are tricky and take time to practice! We have been learning when it is better to jump forward and backward on a number line to solve subtraction the quickest. We have also been working on the "What's My Rule" strategy where students notice the relationship between numbers. Students have also been working on their doubles strategies and looking at how those can help with subracting and especially with subtracting larger numbers. The math work in second grade continues to get wordy with multiple step directions so ofcourse we are still working on reading the directions and slowing down so we know how to solve the problems in their entirety. We are also working on explaining our thinking. 

Community Unit

The students have been so interested in Plimoth Plantation and the first settlement. The students are guiding the launch of our community unit and have looked at what they want to further research before we get into our community unit as it relates to Stratham. The students have been so interseted in what life was like in communities like Plimoth and what it would be like to be a kid in those times. We have taken virtual tours of a replica of the Mayflower and virtual tours of Plimoth Plantation. The students are exctited to go to Strawberry Banke on Wednesday!