12-2-22

 Weekly News for 2-P 12-2-22

     *Thanks for sending coats, mittens, and hats daily.  Once snow is on the ground, kids will need snowpants, boots, plus indoor shoes daily!

*I highly recommend sending an extra hat and pair of mittens for kids to keep in their locker as a back up.  This will save a lot of time during the school day with us hunting for gear to keep kids warm at recess. 

          *We completed the unit 3 assessment before the break. We began unit 4 and worked on telling time to hour, half hour and then began to work on 5 minute intervals, which is more challenging. We also touched on AM and PM and worked with place value (building 3 digit numbers with base 10 blocks and representing them with base 10 drawings). 

*For the last few weeks we have listened to books in the realistic fiction genre and learned to identify the characteristics of this type of book - made up stories that could happen in real life.  We explored different series in this genre and the kids had access to a digital library on EPIC as well. This work in reading is helping us with our work as authors!

*During reading workshop we focused on character traits. First we practiced the difference between inside vs. outside traits. Then we learned to identify a characters’ traits based on their thoughts, words and actions.  This was fun to work on with several engaging books - students improved with finding proof in a story to back up the character trait they chose.

 

*In writing workshop we used our realistic fiction series planners, where we had brainstormed our characters’ names, family, friends, likes, dislikes and traits, to write our first introductory book.  Each student is creating their very own series and learning to pull ideas from their own lives.  We made lists of realistic problems that could be solved in our books. Kids are getting the chance to put many of their narrative writing skills to use in a slightly different way. We also began a 5 minute “Daily Edit” to practice proofreading our writing for spelling, capitalization and punctuation.

*Our spelling pattern this week was long a patterns. This was a phonics focus as well so it doubled our exposure!  In grammar we worked on parts of speech, long vowel sounds, adding details to sentences and correct spelling patterns. We are doing word chains or other quick dictation activities daily to reinforce new patterns and practice older ones.

*In science we built background knowledge about seeds and plants.  We learned about the parts of a plant, what conditions are necessary for plant growth and how seeds travel. Next week we will do some plant experiments!

Reader's Notebook Work

Realistic Fiction Story Planning

Creating our characters in our realistic fiction series

Illustrating AM and PM

We made time books!

Base 10 blocks work in math

Drawing base 10 block representations

3 digit number work!

Reading and relaxing!

Mystery Science project....

Learning about how many bones are in our hands

Writing realistic fiction has been a fun change!

After we read a trickster tale students knew how Monkey had been clever and tricky!

Our bones look like x-rays in the sun!

We brainstormed lists of realistic problems for our stories.

We are learning all about seeds, plants and how seeds travel.