Weekly News 5-17-24

 Weekly News for 2-P 5-17-24

*Thank you for all the tissues to get us through our spring colds! 

*We will be having our annual Beach Day for grades 1 AND 2 at Reid State Park on June 10th. If you would like to join us please be sure to fill out a volunteer form  on the RSU 1 website right away.  If you filled it out earlier this year you are all set! 

 

*In math we completed the Unit 9 assessment work. Next week we will peck away at the end of year assessment in small chunks. Every day we will work on refining key skills; problem solving, time/money, math facts and the regrouping algorithms (partial sums and trade first). 

*Our social studies work included starting a new unit about globes and maps. Students got familiar with the compass rose, the many uses of maps and identifying land vs. water. More next week! 

*We had a wonderful author’s visit with Melissa Stewart on Tuesday. The kids loved hearing about how she comes up with ideas for her nonfiction books. She explained the process of getting a book published and we found out how many times she revised “Can An Aardvark Bark?” before it was accepted. Second graders were an amazing audience! 

*After finishing our blue jay project we turned to a new research topic. Our literacy and science time this week was focused on a bird of prey, the owl. We read books, watched video clips and used our owl research packet to learn all about this fascinating bird. Each day students read a book in our Epic library to build their owl knowledge and vocabulary. We recorded what we learned on our graphic organizer as we gained information about beaks, feet, habitat, feathers, diet, size and special features. Students used their notes to write a report. There was a big jump in our independence since this was our second report. Throughout the week we practiced drawing realistic looking owls, using drawing guides.  Next week we will finish our owl projects. 

*Mission Namibia with Beth and Curtis wrapped up this week. We are hard at work looking at the data to decide if our hypothesis is true. Next week we get to meet BETH AND CURTIS in person and we are so excited to spend an hour with them. Thanks, PTA, for making this happen!

*Our spelling and phonics work was alternate long a and long o graphemes. These are tough ones to spell. We did lots of practice and played games to help us learn to master these less common patterns.

*While we don’t have any spelling lists from our Spelling Connections anymore, I will send individualized lists for students who are working to master some of our UFLI phonics patterns. 

*We circled back to poetry by each writing a poem about blue jays. They came out beautifully!

Final stages of our blue jay pop up project

practicing drawing the blue jay

Working on a final draft of the report

A finished project

Proud ornotholigist

Author Melissa Stewart reading us her book

Playing "musical doubles facts"

Proud of her hard work

Author Melissa Stewart tells us about her publishing process

She shared her notes and revisions.

We enjoyed a career day focus in Guidance with Mrs. Sturgeon.

Kids chose a potential career of interest

We LOVE to play "Last Person Standing," a fun place value game.

Multiple drawing attempts

We began our owl research mid-week

Run Club FUN

Starting owl reports on Friday -using our resources

Fitness Friday Fun

Working Hard!

Shoulder touches!

Weekly News 5-10-24

 Weekly News for 2-P 5-10-24

     *Author Melissa Stewart will be at WCS on May 14th!

*Run Club is WEDNESDAY next week.

 

*In social studies we learned about important patriotic symbols of our country (the bald eagle, the Statue of Liberty, Uncle Sam and the Liberty Bell).

*In math we worked on fractional units of length, reading and writing money amounts in dollar and cents notation. We also practiced trade first subtraction, estimating money amounts and place value with big numbers. The kids loved playing a place value game called “Last Person Standing” on Friday. We worked with multiplication and equal number group stories as well.

*We continued to read books by author Melissa Stewart. We loved learning that the reason she writes nonfiction animal books is that she used to be a biologist! Ms. Luchies is preparing us so well for our visit with Ms. Stewart.

*Our reading and writing workshops were integrated with our science focus on birds and their adaptations.  After building background knowledge about birds last week, we tackled our first research project on a seed eater; the blue jay. We read many books and each got our own research packets about blue jays. It was fun to watch several videos to see these birds in action. We also listened to their calls. Students learned how to take notes on a graphic organizer. Next we practiced how to organize a report with a topic sentence, details and a conclusion. It was a big goal to figure out how to take notes and turn them into complete sentences. Second graders practiced drawing accurate blue jay pictures with how-to drawing guides.  We wrote final drafts of our reports and next week we will make a pop up blue jay project! 

*Our spelling focus was compound words.This was the last spelling unit of the second grade program. This means there won’t be more spelling lists from our Spelling Connections program. We will continue to practice spelling in our UFLI phonics lessons daily. In phonics we worked on low frequency patterns that make the long a sound and the long u sound). 

Fun art project with Mrs. Devin

Working on money-paying for items in various ways

A "Bird Club" has been created. Inside recess was a great time to sing fellow birders up!

Using nonfiction texts to take notes about blue jays

Working to learn the color pattern of the blue jay

We wrote our first report!

This is how we take notes about birds in this unit

Practicing drawing a realistic blue jay

We used our graphic organizer to turn our notes into sentences.

We tried many drafts of our drawings to get it just right

Looking great!

We spent some time decorating 3D bouquets for our moms - poems included!

Mr. H tired us out at Fitness Friday!

Weekly News May 3, 2024

 Weekly News for 2-P 5-12-24

     *Author Melissa Stewart will be at WCS on May 14th!

 

*In math we continued to work on equal shares (fractions), refining our language and understanding of halves, thirds, and fourths. We partitioned shapes into equivalent parts and learned to name wholes. We also dug into place value with bigger numbers and practiced reading, writing and building numbers in the thousands. 

*We read lots of books by author Melissa Stewart, who is visiting us very soon. We learned that she writes nonfiction books about animals and shares lots of important facts in her books. Right up our alley!

 

*We kicked off our annual bird expedition this week, which integrates literacy with science and research. Students enjoyed seeing lots of bird artifacts at our gallery walk in the forum!  We learned about the characteristics of a bird and their anatomy.  We also got familiar with their feet and beaks as we began to identify how particular feet and beaks help a bird function. 

*Our spelling focus was digraphs. In phonics we worked on low frequency patterns that make the /ar/ sound in two syllable words, or the /air/ sound within a word. 

*In science we completed our unit on matter with another fun experiment.  We learned that the properties of a material are what make them useful for particular jobs. We explored three models of soil to see which would be the best for building. Students had a great time being “Soil Captains” and “Water Wizards” as they put each soil through a sticky test, a clump test and a clean-hands test to see which would be the best soil to build a mud house.  

*Our livestreams with Beth and Curtis featured a lot of very interesting animals in Namibia. On one route they explored, we saw some grazers, browsers, AND some carnivore excitement! They also encountered a rather large gathering of elephants at a water hole and we learned about ways elephants can communicate with each other.

Using pattern block templates to do fraction work

Expanded notation work

Reading about birds

Labeling bird anatomy

Buddy reading about birds

Concert ready

Looking good!

Science - the stick test - does the material stick to the toothpick?

Stirring the "mud"

More concert cuties

Second grade gals

Stirring the mud

After the first part, using the mud in the cups, we dumped it on and did further investigating

Will it stick to the spoon?

Can we make it into a ball?

Lots of good work on the properties of "mud" that make it good for building

Maine Maritime Trip 2 - learning about lobster traps

The wall of local buoys

Allie teaches us about lobstering on the coast of Maine

We learn all about lobsters and their anatomy

This is the "does it stick on your fingers test?"

The lobster game begins!

Here are the hungry customers

The lobstermen set out

The chefs await the lobsters

So they can cook them up

Measuring the lobsters to see if they are big enough to keep

Closing the trap!

The director of the lobster pound

Delivering the lobsters to the hungry customers

We were fascinated by this skull Beth and Curtis shared

Bird Gallery Walk

We investigated artifacts

Lots of nests

And feathers

Turkey feathers

We even saw some eggs

Examining owl pellets

We recorded our observations on notecatchers.

We are majorly obsessed with bird web cams!

We jazzed up our roll and read work by making sentences with words we are learning.

Our 8th grade buddies wrote us stories!

Fitness Friday

We can name characteristics of birds.

We are playing Namibia Bingo - seeing so many animals during each livestream is super fun