Weekly News 10-8-26

 Weekly News for 2-P 10-8-26

No school on 10-9 for PD and 10-12 for Indigenous People’s Day

        

*We had a visit from the WCS firefighters on Thursday. As they talked to us about fire safely they reminded us to have a planned family meet up spot for home fire alarms. 

*In math we completed unit 3 and did review work. We took the assessment and portfolios will come home next week to give you detailed information about your child’s progress with these skills. We kicked off Unit 4 which will focus on problem solving! We are writing lots of equations and learning to include the unknown! We are also working on counting mixed coins (pennies, nickels and dimes). 

*During reading workshop we worked on reading realistic fiction and identified this genre as books that are made up, but COULD really happen. We read a lot of realistic fiction - we are  tackling this genre in writing workshop so this helped us get prepared.

*In writing we drafted realistic fiction stories after mapping out characters, setting, plot and the beginning, middle and end. We also wrote our full drafts and learned how to do a peer writing conference. We revised for organization and ideas.  Our grammar tie-in was learning to use pronouns to replace proper nouns in our writing! We will do more revision with this piece next week.

*During UFLI phonics we worked on -ed endings and -ing endings. 

Our social studies work this week focused on the types of communities: rural, urban and suburban. We worked to identify what you might find in each type of community. We enjoyed a virtual helicopter ride over 6 communities and we identified every single one correctly, providing evidence for whether it was rural, urban or suburban.

We made our own grid maps!

Writers give feedback on our realistic fiction stories.

We decided the firefighter's helmet is VERY heavy!

Learning all about the tools on the fire truck.

We got to see a firefighter wearing all the equipment.

Playing a math game called Up and Down!

More map practice

We are responding to realistic fiction!

Working on a realistic fiction book with partners

New heart word game!

types of communities

Weekly News 10-2-26

 Weekly News for 2-P 10-2-26

*Library books on Fridays and sneakers on Monday for PE     

10/9 - NO SCHOOL: Professional Development Day

10/12 - NO SCHOOL: Indigenous Peoples Day

10/23- WCS PTA GET GLOWING FUN RUN

*In math we worked on skip counting patterns with 2s, 5s, 10s and 100s. Students filled in number grids with 3 digit numbers. We explored odd and even numbers and practiced identifying patterns in a series of numbers. We also reviewed addition patterns with doubles facts as they relate to odd/even numbers. We learned some fun new games to help us practice our skills. Unit 3 is complete and we are reviewing for the test next week.

*During reading workshop we expanded our focus on the genre of fiction to folk tales. We read and enjoyed a wide variety of folk tales and completed book responses that identified the setting, characters, plot and moral. This helped prepare us for our writing unit this week!

*In writing workshop we turned to writing folk tales. After reading many models we started to design our own. We brainstormed ideas and used a graphic organizer to plan our folk tales. We crafted fun and engaging pieces that we were very proud to share with our friends. Our grammar tie-in was on compound subjects and conjunctions.

*In Go2 Science we got to go along with Beth and Curtis to La Paz and saw our first cetaceans - 13 bottlenose dolphins. We enjoyed seeing a variety of animals, including a chocolate chip sea star and a HUGE fish! 

* Our phonics and spelling work this week focused on reviewing silent e exception rules and -es ending rules. 

*This week in social studies we learned to use a compass rose to find directions on maps. We also learned to use a map key or legend. As part of the community focus in our reading, we each made our own homes and labeled our families. Then we created a huge mural of the important places in a town! 

We made badges to represent our community - highlighting where people live, work, play and solve problems.

Reading with our stuffies

Jammy Day!

Building our community mural - we made drawings of all the important places in a community!

Odd and even game

We each built our "house" and labeled it with family names.

Odd and Even Race!

math games

We really loved skip counting on our calculators!

Weekly News 9-25-26

 Weekly News for 2-P 9-25-26

*Library books are due on Fridays.

*Sneakers Mondays for PE 

MATH:  We completed the unit 2 test on Monday and that will come home soon for you to see in math portfolios. We kicked off Unit 3 this week, which  will focus on patterns in numbers. We started by skip counting with numbers in the hundreds, identifying patterns on number grids and being able to read, write and manipulate big numbers.

READING:  During reading workshop we practiced identifying fiction as a genre. Students did well giving specific evidence to prove the genre. We also learned how to tell our opinion about a book. Kids did a great job explaining why they thought a book was funny or silly or serious. 

WRITING: *In writing workshop we worked with poetry, focusing on a place poem. Each child chose a special place and brainstormed sensory details about that place, before writing their first draft. Later in the week we learned to add a simile to our poem and then revised and edited our drafts. Our connected grammar work was about singular and plural nouns.

SPELLING/PHONICS: In UFLI this week we reviewed silent e words and continued to practice reading and spelling them correctly, along with our growing list of high frequency words. 

SCIENCE: In Go2 Science we got to  welcome Beth and Curtis back for Mission Cetaceans in the Baja, California Peninsula. We got to hear from a scientist, Dr. Spocter, who is worried that cetaceans are changing their migration behaviors so that fewer species are visiting the Baja California Peninsula in Mexico. We will collect data to  test his hypothesis that there are at least five different species of cetaceans still in those waters. It was wonderful to see Beth and Curtis again, learn about cetaceans, see a school and the money used in Mexico. We also learned about desert farming! 

*We finished our Mystery Science unit on Animal Biodiversity this week with a final performance task. Students researched animals in a project designed to pull together their animal knowledge!

*We kicked off a social studies unit on geography. We will explore how the geography of a particular place impacts the community. We studied what a community is and what types of places you might find there. 

We wrote animal reports to tie together our first science unit on animal biodiversity.

We worked on identifying fiction this week and finished up with reading Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs....we drew about why it was a made up story!

We worked hard on our first poem of the year - a place poem!

Illustrating our poems

Picture day ready!

Free Choice Friday - a tall tower!

Lining the animals up for our favorite game.

Some train building

Playing a UFLI game with partners

Using editing checklists to polish up our writing

Reading partners work hard!

Reading fiction together

Sharing our writing