Saturday, November 17, 2018

Academic Update! 🦃

Hello Everyone!
It’s been a minute since I have posted a formal academic update to the blog and I just can’t wait to share with you all of our new learning! Since conferences (I know this was only last week for some) we have entered new units and displayed our understanding in some new and fun ways. Before I get into the fun stuff, please remember that this coming week is a short school week due to Thanksgiving Break! We have school Monday and Tuesday. In your child’s blue folder on Monday you will find a shopping date and time for our class to visit the book fair! We will be heading down to do some browsing earlier in the week and students will shop Thursday November 29th at 8:45-9:00! Friday folders were not sent home this weekend and will continue after the break! On Monday, students will enjoy a visit from Wildlife Encounters! Be sure to ask your dragonfly all about it!

Math
We are working hard in our addition and subtraction strategy unit. Although we have only focused on addition so far, we have learned many strategies to use when we come across these math problems! Currently we are working on the traditional strategy for addition. This strategy takes some time to get used to as it follows a series of steps. We have slowed down the process and really talked about what we are doing when we carry over. Students will next use their “go-to” strategies to solve some word problems before we head into the new world of subtraction with double digit numbers!
Reading
Our nonfiction unit has been a blast! We are becoming so familiar with these types of books and becoming real experts on the topics that interest us. Next, we aim to teach others! We completed a performance task where students had to research an animal and then use their knowledge to explain what they would see if they lived a day as that animal. Be sure to check out Seesaw for this amazing work! We will wrap up nonfiction reading in the near future and head into an analytical character unit!  
Writing
I think it’s safe to say that we have some serious writers on our hands! This unit has been the students’ favorite unit so far. They first wrote informational books on a topic they are experts at! The students had so much fun with this as they got to choose their topic and play around with the nonfiction features they have been learning so much about during reading. These expert books have made us excited to now use our new research from our reading unit to create a new expert book and use this to teach our peers! We are still working on stretching our word sounds out while we write them and adding in our new word work words! We grow in our writing every day!
2D Happenings
There are some pictures from our pumpkin celebration below! We had so much fun decorating and exchanging the pumpkins- thank you for our handy dandy “hot gluers”! We are getting a cute little visitor for a mystery reader on November 20th! Periwinkle is Mrs. Belanger’s sweet pup and she’s been coming around to read with classrooms! The holidays are here! We will have some opportunities for you to join us in our learning and for some fun events! Stay tuned for upcoming dates for the second grade!

Happy Thanksgiving!