Valentine's Day Celebration

Happy Monday! 

It was so nice to be back on this chilly Monday. Information about our Valentine's Day celebration was sent home today in your child's blue folder. I am also posting it here so you can easily access it, as it approaches. This is just a small event for the class and we only need a few snacks. If you are interested in donating a snack, please email me, otherwise I will provide something small for the students! A class list was sent home today but as always, please email me if you have any questions about the event!

Our class will be having a small Valentine’s Celebration at 1:30 on Tuesday, February 14th.

Students are encouraged to exchange valentines with their peers. Homemade ones are best! Please be mindful of our school policy for bringing in snacks (store bought and approved by nurse Lilly) and remind your child that if they are bringing in valentines, they must bring one for every member of our class.

      We have a class of 18!

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

 Thanks & Happy Valentine’s Day!

        

Newsletter 1/27/17

Hello 2D Families! 

It has been a wonderful two weeks of learning in our classroom. We went back to basics and chose new reading spots for Reader's Workshop and talked a lot about kindness and personal body space. The students were such hard workers for the last two weeks and I'm always so proud! Here are some highlights from our learning fun!

Reading

We've been social detectives and analyzing relationships between characters and what they tell us. The coolest part of this work has been seeing them recognize qualities of growth mindset in their characters. We had visitors during reading from all over our school district and they were blown away by the students' growth  mindset vocabulary. We have been doing a lot of talking around our "read aloud character" Clementine and have found that she is very empathetic and we are now able to back up that statement with evidence. 

Writing

We are cruising along with our fictional stories and the students are excited to add illustrations and title pages. We have taken the time to edit and add in detail and our own craft. The students are truly able to read their own writing and begin the editing process on their own. It is so exciting. The students love sharing their writing. 

Math

This week we worked on diagrams to help us with our addition and subtraction word problem strategies. We did subtraction and addition with "start,change,end" and "part, part, total" boxes. We also learned how to jump on a numberline by 100s, 20s, 10s, 5s and 1s to help us solve word problems. Please work with your students using coins at home, this will keep it fresh in their minds until we get back to money! 

Science

 We have begun experimenting and our main question was: Can a solid change shape? Many students said "NO!" They were especially amazed to realize that solids CAN change shape. How did we discover this? We used something as simple as a starburst! The students each held an unwrapped starburst in their hands and then after five minutes started combining them with the person next to them. We ended up with one big starburst ball. The students were so blown away that solids can change shape, and some- like a starburst, so easily. So then it came to our big discovery! We had to ask ourselves how exactly did the starburst change shape? The students decided it was through our force and our body temperature. We began talking about the different parts of a science experiment and recorded each one to prepare for our new lab report unit that is coming up soon! The students recorded their essential question, hypothesis, materials, procedure, results and conclusion. Prior to this experiment we played with Oobleck and the students had to decide if it was a solid or a liquid and have evidence for why!

Questions to ask you Dragonfly for school/home talk:

What is your favorite word sort choice?

Where is your new reading spot?

What was your hypothesis for the starburst experiment?

Which math diagram do you prefer? "Part, Part, Total" or "Start, Change, End"?

What is the first thing you should do when you look at a math word problem?

Annual Father & Daughter Dance

Greetings 2D Families! Here is a little information on the Annual Father-Daughter Dance here at SMS. A notice will be sent home today- please RSVP as soon as possible!

You won't want to miss this Hollywood themed party at SMS! VIP tickets are 5$ per person or 20$ max per family. Details & ticket order form at in the Father/Daughter Dance flier. ATTN 1st Grade parents: the 1st grade is supporting the Father-Daughter Dance. Find ways to get involved by reaching out to the Cantrece Forest (cantreceforest@gmail.com) or sign up here to volunteer> http://bit.ly/2jw8Zu5

Mother & Son- Minute to Win it!

Happy Monday Dragonfly Families! The PTO has asked that I send out this link for Friday's Minute to Win It event! 

http://www.signupgenius.com/go/20f0c4baba92ba2fc1-motherson

Have a great week!

Newsletter 1/13/17

I can't believe another week has come and gone! We got through so much this week and had a lot of fun doing it. With Martin Luther King Jr. Day this Monday, we took time to really focus on equality and peace. The students had so many kind thoughts and ideas about these topics so we got them down in writing. The students loved learning about Ruby Bridges and we even talked about her like we do our reading characters- identifying her character traits and how we can exhibit them in our day to day life. 

Reading

This week was  all about putting what we have learned about our characters to work. We used what we know to predict what we think the character will do next. We worked on stopping ourselves in our reading (which is very hard) when we see our character facing a problem. We then predicted how our character would handle the problem on sticky notes and then read on to find out if we were right! The students loved this work because they wanted to be right every time. We had teachers visit from another school to observe our Reader's Workshop and they were full of compliments for the students. They couldn't believe this was only 2nd grade! The students love to show off their focus and reading stamina to visitors!

Writing

This week we took time to write what "peace" means to us. This writing was beautiful and I got to see the students' loving personalities shine through. Each dragonfly has such a deep understanding of kindness and the sense of community. The writing and beautiful water color craft look beautiful hanging in our hallway. We also came up with our setting, main character traits and problem for our newest fictional stories. 

Math

This week finished our Mid-Year Assessment and the students displayed all that they have learned this year in second grade. I am always blown away by their focus and hard work during math time. We continued to work on coin recognition and combinations this week. We also kept tackling coin puzzles and then moved into problems that involved making change from a dollar or more. The students went "shopping" and had to give change to each other and also played a vending machine game where they could pay in exact change when "exact change light" was on and only with dollars when the "exact change light" was off. The students have worked so hard at this and we are making great progress! This concept is very tricky, as it entails counting in tens, fives, ones and then also subtracting or counting up all in the same problem! Please take time to review coins and giving back change with your child. The more the students practice this, the more confident in the skill they will become!

Science

We continue to investigate the states of matter. This week we talked about how atoms make up all matter. We talked about how atoms are too tiny to see but they make up everything around us each day. To visually represent this we used cheerios to to show how atoms work in the different stages of matter. The students showed that the atoms are close together in solids, spread apart in liquids, and few and spread out for gasses. We also did a sorting activity to demonstrate that we know the difference between solids, liquids and gasses that are around us. The students are ready to experiment and understand states of matter even more! 

Life Skills

Mrs. Griffith will be coming into our classroom on Thursdays to talk about social skills and join us in our work with growth mindset. We will talk about social situations at school and feelings that we all have when we are faced with them. This week we did a "magic mirror" activity where we wrote down things we love about our self and what we are good at.

Don't Forget!
There is no school on Monday January, 16th because of Martin Luther King Jr. Day! Enjoy your three day weekend!