Weekly News 6-5-26

 Weekly News for 2-P 6-5-26

6/11 Go 2 Science’s Beth and Curtis visit!

6/15- 2nd Grade Bird Showcase 12:15-1:30

6/16 Reid State Park Day for grades 1 and 2

6/17 - Field Day!

6/17 - K-7 Step Up Day (p.m.)

6/18 - Last Day of School for WCS K-8 Students (Dismissal at Noon))

**In math this week we did a ton of review work, focusing largely on 3 digit addition and subtraction, telling time, counting money and bills, refining our 3D shape and partitioning knowledge and solving problems. We are working our way through the year-end test as well.

*Students completed their research on a bird of their choice. They wrote a report from their notes, practiced drawing realistic pictures of their bird and typed their own report in Google Docs. I will now turn these into bookmarks! In writing, we have also been working on our memory books, writing letters to the third grade teachers and completing the year-end writing prompt.

*In reading workshop we have been doing a variety of comprehension work with Scholastic News, short passages and fiction texts. Some of the skills we have been refining are identifying the main idea and supporting details, making inferences, and answering questions about characters or factual information. 

*In phonics we worked on the suffixes -ible and -able and the prefixes uni, bi, tri. We also reviewed doubling rules when adding suffixes and when to drop the final e and how to spell words with -sion and -tion endings. 

*We will start to clear out our lockers and desks a bit at a time. If you can send a plastic bag or a recyclable grocery bag next week, it will help your child carry some extra items home so there is not a huge load on the last day.

Proofreading our bird bookmarks to give Mrs. Pols any changes to do this weekend before she prints them!

Writing Projects on Friday

Kids got to choose from several different writing projects; nonfiction, fiction, poetry books!

Free Choice Friday Fun!

Scooter time in PE!

Researching countries

Careful drawing for the bird project

We used our drawing guides to help us be accurate.

Weekly News 5-29-26

 Weekly News for 2-P 5-29-26

6/1 - Run Club Race 3:30 pm 

6/11 Go 2 Science’s Beth and Curtis visit!

6/15- 2nd Grade Bird Showcase 12:15-1:30

6/16 Reid State Park Day for grades 1 and 2

6/17 - Field Day!

6/17 - K-7 Step Up Day (p.m.)

6/18 - Last Day of School for WCS K-8 Students (Dismissal at Noon))

*In math we worked on partitioning shapes into equal shares (halves, thirds and fourths) and completed the unit 12 test. We will be doing lots of review work with essential concepts from here on out and will take the end of the year test as well.

*I am doing year-end reading assessments with students who hadn’t already met the benchmark - it is amazing to see so much growth! We are also completing year-end phonics/spelling assessments and I will pass this detailed information onto the third grade teachers. 

*On Tuesday, we completed our loon projects. This time our project was a poster and students created nonfiction “cutaways,” with facts and quality illustrations. We added a big loon drawing to our poster. Second graders are proud of their high quality projects! They are pulling so many big skills together in these projects. Now we are working on our last research project - an individual bird research project! Students chose and researched a bird of their choice. They wrote a report from their notes, and next week will continue to practice drawing realistic pictures of their bird. They will also type their own report in Google Docs. I will turn these into bookmarks. You will be amazed by all their projects. We are fortunate to have the tools to do research online (Pebble Go), as well as many nonfiction books from Ms. Luchies. These projects will be on display at our Bird Showcase on June 15th from 12:15 p.m.- 1:30  p.m. 

*Our phonics focus was suffixes (-ment and -ible and -able). We did more work on synonyms and antonyms as well, and also practiced writing “shining sentences” by adding predicate expanders that give more detail. 

Dance Party (with a couple of big brothers!)

School wide dance party Friday afternoon!

Working on a realistic toucan drawing

Working on final drafts of reports

Note catchers for research

Chewonki brought lots of artifacts for us to explore

We met Haven, the saw-whet owl.

And Loona, a barred owl.

We got to look up close at Haven.

Exploring wings, talons and feathers

Fort and Flashlight Fun

 We earned another reward and Friday we created "forts" and read with flashlights in our fort creation while having a little snack! 

Weekly News 5-22-26

 Weekly News for 2-P 5-22-26

5-28: Chewonki Owls of Maine

5/30 - Run Club Race 8:30 am

6/15- 2nd Grade Bird Showcase 12:15-1:30

6/16 Reid State Park Day for grades 1 and 2

6/17 - Field Day!

6/17 - K-7 Step Up Day (p.m.)

6/18 - Last Day of School for WCS K-8 Students (Dismissal at Noon)

*We will be having our annual Beach Day for grades 1 AND 2 at Reid State Park on June 16th. If you would like to join us please be sure to fill out a volunteer form on the RSU 1 website right away.  If you filled it out earlier this year you are all set! 

 

*We are almost done with unit 12 in Reveal Mathematics, the last unit of the year on  geometry and fractions! In this unit we learned about 2D and 3D shapes and equal shares (fractions). We learned to identify shape attributes (sides, angles, vertices) and name thirds, halves and fourths. We also learned how to partition shapes into equal size squares Next week we will learn to name partitioned shapes with repeated addition and multiplication. After the unit 12 test is complete we will do lots of review work and practice securing critical skills. 

*On Monday we took care to do quality final drafts of our owl reports and then practiced realistic owl drawings. Our final projects were completed and we were so proud of our owl knowledge. Next week Chewonki will be here for an owls presentation, thanks to our amazing PTA. 

*On Tuesday we began to study a water bird, the loon. Our research has taken the form of videos, books and bird guides. Students are much more independent taking notes on their graphic organizer. We created posters to share our loon knowledge. We will wrap them up and then tackle our final bird project, an individual research project.

*Our spelling and phonics work was more suffixes, words that end in -y and -ness. As the phonics patterns get more challenging we are adding more vocabulary work to understand the meaning of the words AND learn to spell them!

Cutaways

Loon research

Loon poster!

Working on our loon posters

Geometry game!

Working hard on our final drafts

Playing "Spell Around the Room" with our heart words

Weekly News 5-15-26

 Weekly News for 2-P 5-15-26

*We will be having our annual Beach Day for grades 1 AND 2 at Reid State Park on June 16th. If you would like to join us, please be sure to fill out a volunteer form on the RSU 1 website right away. VOLUNTEER FORM   If you filled it out earlier this year you are all set! 

 *In math we completed  Unit 11, studying data and graphs. We did a lot of work with line plots this week. One tricky skill is learning to ask specific questions that can be answered with the data in the graph. We took the test on this unit Friday and will head into our final unit next week on geometry and equal shares. 

*After finishing our blue jay project and creating our final “pop-up” projects, we turned to a new research topic. Our literacy and science time this week was focused on a bird of prey, the owl. We read books, watched video clips and used our owl research packet to learn all about this fascinating bird. Each day students read a book in our Epic or Pebble Go library to build their owl knowledge and vocabulary. We recorded what we learned on our graphic organizer as we gained information about beaks, feet, habitat, feathers, diet, size and special features. Students used their notes to write a report. There was a big jump in our independence since this was our second report. Throughout the week we practiced drawing realistic looking owls, using drawing guides.  We wrote first drafts, revised and edited and started final drafts. On Monday we will finish our owl projects. 

*Mission Capybara wrapped up this week. We spent Thursday and Friday analyzing the data and since we are graph masters, we made a bar graph and pie chart to help us decide if we thought the hypotheses were true (they were!). Students will get to see Beth and Curtis in person when they visit us at WCS in June!

*We completed our final spelling unit in the Spelling Connections program this week on compound words. This means formal spelling lists won’t be coming home. I will send some individualized list of words for students who are working on certain patterns.  In UFLI phonics we worked on-sion and -tion and  -ture words. We are reading LONG words these days and doing lots of vocabulary work with them as well. Kids are finding these words challenging to spell; we are breaking them down into syllables to read and spell them accurately. 

This week was all about our owl research project getting underway!

A completed blue jay project

Inside recess Friday - an artist doing portraits! 

We had fun exploring catapults!

Just like Beth and Curtis, we excavated some "poop" (brown playdough) to see what the animals had eaten.....grass or bones.

Partners researching owls

Run Club cuties

Practicing big words!