Week of 2-26-21

 Weekly News 2-26-21

Important Notes:

*Next week is Read Across America Week.  We are celebrating in a variety of ways. We hope that lots of Wildcats join in on the fun.

We will have daily themes and here they are: 

Monday, 3/1: “Wear it, Read it” (clothing with school appropriate slogans and message, please)

Tuesday, 3/2: “Hats off to Reading” (wear a hat!)

Wednesday, 3/3: “Reading Rocks” (wear your coolest shades...we will rock out to music over the PA periodically throughout the day)

Thursday, 3/4: “Reading Makes You Bright” (wear bright colors)

Friday, 3/5: “Snuggle Up and Read” (schoolwide pajama day - appropriate PJs only)

Our Work this Week:

*In spelling we worked on common long a spelling patterns, (ai, ay, and a-consonant-e).  In addition to our regular work we practiced sorting extra words that follow these patterns.  Next week we will work on long e patterns.  We will continue to practice vowel teams and second graders see this skill in their Lexia daily.  It helps them learn to both read and spell words. In grammar we have added work with plural words, adjectives and using commas correctly. 

*During math we started off Unit 4 with telling time.  Students are working to master hour and half hour as we begin working to move on to 5 minute intervals.  This is harder and takes lots of practice and repetition. We also worked on place value and began expanded notation.  These are big foundational skills that will help kids be ready for bigger concepts that follow.  We continue to work on fact mastery.  Some students have doubles plus one fact tools in their folders to help them master that set of facts.

*In reading workshop we intertwined two important comprehension skills; author’s purpose and author’s message.  Students learned to identify WHY an author wrote a text - to inform, persuade or entertain.  Then we also worked to name the message or lesson the author wanted us to learn.  This is a great question to ask your child after they read or listen to a story.  

*Writing workshop and science were tied together this week. This week was all about learning to follow the steps of the scientific process.  We did three experiments following that framework.  On Monday we experimented with friction and whether a car went farther on carpet or on our smooth desks.  On Tuesday we did another experiment to see if a car would go farther off a ramp onto tin foil, wax paper or a napkin.  We measured and recorded results.  These starter experiments got us ready for our first big lab report.  Our question was “Will the car go farther off the ramp on the carpet or the bare floor?”  We wrote a hypothesis, listed our materials, planned our procedures and then conducted the experiment.  Students used tape measures to measure distances and then recorded their data in a chart. Next we looked at our data and wrote conclusions.  Our next lab will be revising the experiment with a small change to see if we can create a better result.  The kids had a ball with this change in writing genre!

*Art was our special this week.  We worked with clay, painted landscapes and then painted our clay on Friday.  A creative week for 2-P!

Here are our class procedures for our car/ramp experiment!

This diagram shows how it worked.

We kept data as we conducted our experiment.

Afterward we analyzed our data and drew conclusions.

Students have vocabulary books to help them remember important science terms having to do with force and motion. 

Each student planned the materials they would use ahead of time.

We learned to write a hypothesis.

Experimenting on bare floor

In math we practiced writing combinations of 3 digit numbers.

We worked with base 10 blocks for place value concepts in math.

A "starter" experiment about friction

We are learning to identify the Author's Message in fiction.

Trials for our starter experiment!

We are learning to record an author's purpose and message in our reader's notebooks.

We worked with clay in art this week!