Weekly News 5-12-23

 Weekly News for 2-P 5-12-23

 

*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. Toward the end of the week we learned how to do the trade first algorithm with subtraction (also known as borrowing!).

*During reading workshop we read lots of books by Maine author, Matt Tavares. We enjoyed his visit Thursday so much!  We had great questions for him after reading so many of his books.  His visit on Thursday was a big hit with 2-P.  It was fun to watch him draw on the spot and he drove home the point that the best writing comes from your own life experiences.  A huge thank you to Ms. Luchies and the PTA for bringing us this fabulous opportunity. 

 

*In writing workshop we shifted to a new genre; poetry.  Our initial lessons helped us see how poetry is all about looking at everyday objects through a different lens. We read lots of examples of poetry and then tried our own.  The kids were naturals and had the best time writing small poems on a variety of topics; their pets, favorite objects, classroom items and special sports. We love transferring these creations into our own personal poetry anthologies!

*Our spelling focus was r controlled vowels. In phonics we worked on silent letters and -ou patterns.

*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 though 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 third and final GO2 Science Mission ended this week and we are still in the process of analyzing the data we collected, to see if the hypothesis is true. On Monday we will dig back into our data to form our conclusions. On Friday the kids participated in a very rich conversation about whether or not they think there is truly a resident tiger population in YKK, Thailand. I was impressed with the high level discussion we had! 

*Next week we kick off our annual bird expedition!  

Student "teachers" in math

Leading the class through partial sums algorithm!

Showing us how it's done!

Soil testing in science

The Sticky Test!

Will it stick to the toothpick?

Good and clumpy

Sorting out the model soil types

Feeling them to identify their properties

Author Matt Tavares shows us how he gets ready to illustrate a page of his book

Mathematical grouping

Looking for combos of 10 to add efficiently

Poet at work!

Matt Tavares shows us how he sketches

He adds the detail after the main part of the drawing

Kids loved watching him draw!

Word chain practice for silent letter words

The class erupted with excitement when we saw a TIGER caught on the camera trap!

We looked at the evidence we collected and made these amazing observations.

This evidence chart helped us evaluate the data.

On Friday morning we stood outside to cheer on our friends going to the Special Olympics!

Painting special cards for a particular upcoming weekend holiday

Poetry (sorry it's sideways!)

We visited the Ancient Civilization Museum in 6th grade        

Art with Mrs. Devin

Prepared to deliver to mom