Weekly News & Photos

 Weekly News 10-30-20

Important Dates & Events:  

11/1 - Daylight Savings, Fall back 1 hour

11/3 - Election Day - Professional Development Day - No school (no home learning work either)

11/5 & 11/6 - School Picture Day 

11/23 & 11/24 - ½ Days for Parent/Teacher Conferences

11/25 - 11/27 - Thanksgiving Break

Our Work this Week:

*In spelling we worked on short e words.  This is typically the most challenging short vowel sound as kids often mistake it for other letters.  Using short e words, we practiced synonyms, antonyms, multiple meaning words, proofreading, rhyming, word patterns and syllables.  In our grammar and language work we did many of those same skills, plus also hit on plural/singular nouns, long vowel teams, complete vs. incomplete sentences and possessive nouns.

*During math we really focused on fact families and how they help us identify two addition and two subtraction facts.  Kids are getting good at recording these with independence for a given fact set.  We also practiced how doubles fact power can help us with subtraction facts when the numbers are a double family (i.e. if you know 6+6 = 12, then you know 12-6 will be 6).  We practiced telling time on the hour and will now be able to move on to quarter hours.  We continued to hone our place value understanding as well.  

*In reading workshop we spent more time practicing story elements and retelling a story in sequential order and with details like characters’ names and the setting.  This is a great thing to ask your child to do orally after they read you a book.  Next week we will explore the fiction genre and how we know when a story is fiction.  The kids loved Library with Ms. Luchies this week and enjoyed a fun story, “Creepy Carrots” with a matching craft activity. 

*Writing workshops were about being reading detectives - rereading carefully to find errors that we need to fix to be clear writers.  These could be spelling, capitalization or punctuation errors or they might even be the dreaded “ANDITIS,” when an author writes a very long sentence with too many “ands” and very few periods.  The kids spotted this writing error immediately!  Second grader writers were so excited to get their second grade “Quick Word” handbook - a spelling dictionary for young authors.  They loved finding words they needed and learned to search for words alphabetically.  I conferenced with each child multiple times to practice some editing and also to focus on their own personal writing goals.  

*During science we did our second investigation into animal biodiversity, exploring animals, habitats and species with a mystery called  “Why do Frogs Ribbit?” Second graders learned about many types of frogs and had the opportunity to listen to their various calls and record descriptions of their sounds.  Our final challenge was to listen to two pond areas and identify the frog calls - we did pretty well - and our research notes really helped!   It was a fun way to learn why and how animals communicate with each other, how scientists research animal behavior and how they observe and track data in habitats.  

Mask making in Art!

Proud Artist

Stuart Little displays his mask!

Mrs. Pols as "Fly Guy!"

Our experiment and exploration on animal biodiverstiy

We listened to and described frog calls.

We got second grade QUICK WORD BOOKS!

These tools are spelling dictionaries!

They help us find words we want to use when we write!

In Library Ms. Luchies read us Creepy Carrots!

Then we got to make our own!

In writing workshop we practiced reading like detectives.

We found lots of errors to fix!

We made posters with our animal grouping science work.