1-6-23

 Weekly News for 2-P 1-16-22

     *Thanks for sending coats, mittens, hats and boots, plus indoor shoes daily! 

  *In math we kicked off unit 5 with a lesson on “fact power,” the ability to know your basic facts automatically. The kids played “Beat the Calculator to practice!  We also worked on money and paying for items with different coin combinations. We are learning to make change.  We use this prompt to help with this concept:  “Start at the cost and count UP to how much you paid!”

*During reading workshop we read and explored “All About Books” in depth. We practiced recording the topics and details for each book. Then we got familiar with common topics in this type of book and found that we were quite good at predicting what topics would be listed on a book’s table of contents with a few days of practice. 

 

*In writing workshop we finished up our realistic fiction series writing unit. These won’t come home for your viewing just yet, as the kids want to keep them here to work on when they have spare time. Up next is nonfiction writing. We began our “All About Book” writing by brainstorming topics that we know enough about to fill a 6 page book! We used sticky notes to keep track of our knowledge and sorted them by category to create out chapters or sections.

*You may have heard we planted “grassheads” this week in science. This is part of an investigation to help us understand the importance of sunlight to plants. We also did an exploration about plant adaptations and habitats. We had to practice thinking like gardeners to explore what plants need and how an environment can change over time.

*It was a focus on long i patterns in spelling this week (i-consonant e, y for long i,). Next week is long e patterns. Our phonics was centered on soft c and g words, formed by silent e endings. We also learned that there can be exceptions to spelling rules - great thinking by our 2-P students as they practiced tough concepts! 

Playing BEAT THE CALCULATOR!

The goal is to get the addition fact faster than the calcuator.

Nice teamwork to practice our math facts

Preparing our grassheads!

Realistic fiction page and illustration

We got our QUICK WORDS this week.....

These writing tools are like mini spelling dictionaries - the kids were so excited!

Working on money amounts in math

The kids enjoy doing their mental math on slates every day.

Making a visual representation to solve a word problem

Exploring the QUICK WORD!

We did scavenger hunts to find non-fiction text features.

We played our favorite game (Clap, Boom, Snatch) with short vowel tents to mix it up!

Working with our writing partners to share ideas and plan our informational books

We explored lots of nonfiction "All About Books" this week!

Playing "Salute" in math to increase our fact power!

Working with a vending machine to pay for exact costs

Sharing our topics in writing workshop

SLUGS!

So many topics to learn about!

Doing a nonfiction text feature hunt with a buddy!

Searching for bold words, captions, glossaries and more!

Students drew the setup of their individual grassheads and made predictions about how the hair (grass would grow).

Sometimes you have to wave when your teacher takes your picture!

Writing facts about our topics

Students used sticky notes to jot down things they knew about their topic.

Their goal was to fill 10 sticky notes!

We played "Plant Survivor" to help us think about optimal planting needs as a gardener.

You might have so many stickies you have to use the side of your desk to store them all! 

Next we organized our stickies into similar categories.

These categories will be our headings or chapters.

We each brainstormed topics we know about and chose our favorite to start with.

Mrs. Pols showed us how to sort our "facts" into categories.