December Upcoming Events!

Hello Everyone! Mark your calendars! Here are some important details about our upcoming events this December in 2D!

Second Grade Food Drive

Throughout December second graders will be participating in a number of community service projects this holiday season to support our Community Unit. To get into the spirit of giving, we need your help with one of our projects! Our second grade classes will be holding a food drive, so we are asking students to bring in non-perishable canned goods to their classrooms that we will donate to local food pantries. 

      Before donating the food, second graders will sort, count, and solve math problems that involve the amount of cans we receive. Our data will be used to solve multi-digit addition and subtraction problems. We have been working so hard to learn strategies for solving these types of math problems and it will be a wonderful opportunity for them to put those skills into practice. Having real-world purpose applied to our math and social studies units will make for an exciting and rewarding wrap-up to these units of study! 

Cans will be accepted until Tuesday December, 19th. Thank you so much for helping us with this great cause and real world learning experience! 

2D's Got Talent

The Dragonfly Class will be having it's own charity event! Join us for 2D's Got Talent on December 15th at 2:00 for a show displaying the many talents of our class! We are using our talents to host a show and we ask that you help us raise awareness and donations for an important charity (TBD as the students will choose it!!!) This show is a great way for us to support each other in what we love, build self confidence, and for us to give back to the community! The dragonflies are now planning their acts and we will be ready to perform on the 15th! We have everything from soccer, Irish step, art work, fidget spinning, poetry reading, and so much more! If you are able to join us and give any form of donation, we would love to have you!

Gingerbread House Decorating

On Thursday December, 21st at 2:00 we will be decorating gingerbread houses as a class. Feel free to join us for this fun activity! We don't eat these houses, they are purely for decoration! Here's what we need for this fun filled afternoon:

Volunteers prior to decorating (to help hot glue graham crackers to milk cartons for the base of houses)

3 boxes of graham crackers

Bags of candy such as gumdrops, hard peppermints, twizzlers, jelly beans,  and anything colorful! (nothing containing peanuts)

6 containers of store bought white frosting

Spoons

*If you are willing or able to volunteer or bring any of these supplies in, please email me so we don't get too much of one thing!*

We hope to see you at 1, 2, or all 3 of these events if you are available! I know it is such a busy time of year! Thank you for all you do!

Classroom Wishlist

Hi Everyone! As we enter into December there are a few things we need in our classroom. We are running low on tissues and disinfecting wipes! If you are able or wish to send some of these supplies into our classroom we will be very grateful! We want to fight away these winter germs and be prepared! Thank you for all you do and your help in keeping our learning environment germ-free!

😷

Scholastic Book Fair Reminder

Happy Monday!

As you know, the Scholastic Book Fair is at SMS this week! The students are so excited and are looking around at the books this afternoon in library class. Many of you sent in money for your child for the book fair today. I have this safely put away in our room as we are visiting the book fair to view and shop as a class on Thursday from 1:45-2:15. You are more than welcome to join us and help us shop if you are available and would like to come! If you would like to send in money for your child this week, I can hold onto it for your child until Thursday to keep it safe! Thanks and happy shopping if you wish! 📚📚📚

Newsletter 🦃

Hi Everyone! 

It is hard to believe that November is wrapping up. This month has flown by and we have some busy times ahead of us! I hope everyone had a fabulous Thanksgiving and mini break from school. It seemed like the perfect amount of time to recharge and get ready for the winter of learning ahead of us! Before we left for break, the students did a lot of thinking about what they were thankful for. We came up with some amazing things to be thankful for and our writing reflects that. This writing will be coming home to you this week! As we venture into December, we have a few events coming up that you will want to keep an eye out for- gingerbread house building with families and 2D's Got Talent! I will be posting these dates in a separate post with more information about each event later on this week! 

Reading

We celebrated all of our learning from our nonfiction unit with a fusion activity of informational writing, poetry, and art! The students worked so hard on their "Who Am I?" books and it was such a fun way to wrap up our unit. The students learned different painting techniques and created textured pictures with details that reflected their expert topic they had been studying. Each student also gave informational clues about their topic so the reader could guess what it was. We ended our celebration booklets with an acrostic poem, also written with facts we learned about while studying our expert topics! Mr. Fosher, Mrs. Belanger, and Mrs. Bates all joined us as we shared our work during our celebration reveal. Since our celebration we have worked a lot on our fluency as readers and have entered into our newest reading unit where we deeply study our characters. 

Writing

We are finishing up our own expert books and working a lot on our handwriting and good writing habits. Students are beginning to go back into their writing and double check for appropriate punctuation and capitalization of letters. We have focused on eliminating run on sentences and making them short and sweet. Short and sweet.... that reminds me a lot of these dragonflies. 🙃

Math

We continue to work on our subtraction strategies and now choosing the ones that work best for us when solving. Not everyone is going to want or need the same strategies. We have learned great ones but now the dragonflies are becoming more independent in the way they want to solve the problem! We are also working on rounding to the nearest ten and hundreds place. We have talked about how rounding is a strategy in it's self. Rounding can help you double check your answer quickly.

Social Studies

We had so much fun on our Strawberry Banke field trip! Students walked through the historic community and learned about Thanksgiving traditions and how they have changed through the decades. 

Our second grade rotating community day was a huge success! The students rotated the second grade classrooms and learned about different places in the community. First the students learned about the police station and it's role in the community. Since police officers work hard to keep us safe, we talked about the importance of knowing our addresses and phone numbers of our guardians in case of an emergency. The students filled out license cards with their information. The students did an activity with fingerprinting and looked at their own unique fingerprints. 

After the police station the students stopped by the SPCA room! The students filled out adoption papers and named the pretend pets they adopted! What fun!

Next, the students learned about the post office. They learned how to fill out addresses on the mail they were sending out and then delivered mail throughout  the school! Students also learned some tips about writing letters!

Lastly, students learned about the bank. Students learned how to fill out a check and deposit it! The highlight was getting a lollypop to bring home on their way out!

Science

We had a visit from Wildlife Encounters. We learned about how animals effect the earth we live on. We learned about their roles in spreading seeds and mixing up the seeds and dirt. It seems every animal has it's own role in nature and it was so fun learning their roles and  seeing some of these animals in real life!

School&Home Talk:

What was your favorite part of our Strawberry Banke field trip?

Which animal was your favorite to see/ learn about during our Wildlife Encounter visit? 

What is one hint you can give me from your "Who Am I?" book? 

What is one thing you would like about being a child in 1624? What is one thing you would dislike?

How is fluency in your reading the same as singing? (hint: Shawn Mendez activity)

What is one thing you can say to make yourself feel better, when you feel like giving up? 

What is one thing you are really good at that you might want to share at 2D's Got Talent?

Reminders 11/18/17

Hello Everyone!
Thank you for meeting for conferences! It was so great meeting with you! Report cards were sent home yesterday and they are blank due to conference notes that were given out at conferences! Please check out the format of the report cards and then sign the envelope and return it to school. Friday Folders will be sent home on Tuesday at the end of our short week!
Here are some upcoming Dragonfly Events:
Monday- Visit from Wildlife Encounters in the morning.
Tuesday- 2nd Grade rotation day with a focus on community.
There will be no school Wednesday-Friday for Thanksgiving Break!

Have a safe and happy weekend!

Newsletter and Field Trip Reminder 🚌💨

Hello Everyone!

We had a great week and a half of learning! We have been really challenging ourselves and having a great time while doing it! We have a field trip as soon as we return to school on Monday the 13th! Second grade teachers are asking that students come with a lunch from home on Monday if possible, as we are switching our lunch time when we come back from our field trip and eating in our classroom. Students will be able to get lunch from the cafeteria if needed!
Book Fair
The SMS Book Fair will run from November 27th to December 1st in the library! I will let you know what day our class will venture to the book fair if you would like to meet us there or send your child with money if you wish! Here is a link for more infomration:

 https://bookfairs.scholastic.com/bookfairs/cptoolkit/homepage.do?method=homepage&url=strathammemorialschool

Math
We have been venturing into the world of subtraction and our first strategy that we have been working with has been using a number line to help us. Students have been using number lines to count by fives, tens and twenties! We use number lines that have given numbers on them but we also use open number lines and create our own tool to help us solve! The students have been working so hard to try different strategies to figure out which ones work best for them! We are also working on explaining our thinking and getting speedy with our math facts. As we work our way into trickier subtraction problems, we are using our knowledge of place value to help us solve as well!
Reading
Nonfiction reading has been so fun. Did you know your child is an expert?! They have been learning so much about their topics of choice by looking at multiple texts on one topic and seeing what is the same and different. We even added on to books we thought could add more information that we already knew! Besides feeling really cool- I've noticed the students really take ownership in their learning as they research their interests. Now we are ready to teach others. We have started our celebration for this unit- an artistic, fact filled way to share our knowledge with others! Stay tuned for your dragonfly's creation!
Writing
We have looked at nonfiction as authors and are in full force creating our expert books! We have learned so much about facts vs. opinions while writing nonfiction books! We have also learned how author's of nonfiction can still hook their readers with amazing facts, pictures and diagrams.
Social Studies
We have entered our community unit and we have taken a trip back in the past to learn about how communities have changed. We began learning about some of the first communities on our land. We have learned about Plymouth Plantation and what life was like in 1620 as a child. We have also talked about life during the colonial times to link with our Strawberry Banke field trip that the students are SO excited for. We then began to talk about our community of Stratham. We are noticing some huge differences between communities from the past and our community now. We also noticed that some things stay the same, which has been quite interesting!
Dragonfly News
Thank you so much for meeting with me at conferences! I can't wait to finish up this week with some families! I have loved sharing progress with you. Thank YOU for letting me share my days with these amazing learners!

School to Home Talk:
How does jumping on a number line help you solve an equation?
What animal did you paint pictures of for your celebration in reading?
How many pumpkins seeds did you estimate during pumpkin math? How many did your pumpkin have?
What was your strategy for counting your pumpkin seeds?
If you were a kid in the 1620's what would your day be like?
Would you rather live in a community like Plymouth Plantation or Stratham?
When you were your own teacher in math, what kinds of things did you add to your test to get 4 stars?