Weekly News 5-1-26

 Weekly News for 2-P 5-1-26

Next Tuesday we take our 2nd trip to Maine Maritime Museum to learn about the lobstering industry!

 *In math we started the week with review work, completed the 3rd Benchmark Math Assessment of the year and then kicked off Unit 11 on Data Analysis. We learned how to fill in a picture graph from data on a tally chart. We will keep practicing our 3 digit addition and subtraction work to help us master those challenging skills. 

*This week we did a mini social studies unit on Civics. We learned vocabulary such as government, leaders, laws and citizens. Big questions we tackled included, “How can one person make a difference?” and “How can leaders help their communities?”  Students asked lots of thoughtful questions and we had rich discussions. 

*In Go 2 Science Beth and Curtis traveled to a new area to continue testing their hypotheses. We are seeing so many interesting animals: ocelots, a tree climbing anteater, monkeys and more! We are collecting lots of data about capybaras and have a suspicion that the hypothesis may be true! 

*This week we kicked off our annual bird expedition and will be integrating science into our reading and writing for the remainder of the year. This is a highly engaging unit that helps students gain research practice and synthesizes many of the skills we have learned in second grade. We began by studying the characteristics that make a bird a bird. Then we learned about their anatomy. Next week we will tackle learning about the function of their beaks and feet.

*In writing we spent the week joyfully creating poetry! We learned how to add rhythm and repetition to our poems, and how to use line breaks effectively. We are really writing beautiful poems from the heart! The energy in the room of young poets was refreshing. They will each be creating a booklet of their own poems to share with their families soon.

*Our focus was on digraphs in spelling this week. During our phonics time we learned about less common spelling patterns, such as alternate long u sounds and the two sounds of ough.

 

We learned about some historical people who did important things for their communities long ago.

Mr. Libby stopped by to hear all of our poems!

Poem in Your Pocket Day is always fun!

We had several "poet share circles" this week to share our amazing writing.

Social studies collaboration work

We published and shared our book reports before turning to poetry for the week!

 

Weekly News 4-17-26

 Weekly News for 2-P 4-17-26

   

*In math we spent lots of time refining our 3 digit subtraction skills. We often prefer using base 10 shorthand for regrouping as 2nd graders but also have practiced adjusting to friendly numbers, counting up to solve or decomposing one number to solve. We completed the unit 10 test and will keep working on these skills as we enter unit 11 on data analysis after break. 

*This week in Go 2 Science Beth and Curtis started their first full day in the Pantanal and encountered wildlife at every turn! We LOVE seeing so many neat animals. Each day we are collecting data about how many adults are in each group of capybaras and how close they are to the water. Later in the week we saw firsthand why capybaras need to stay alert and close to the water!

*In writing we began our last persuasive piece; a book report. Students chose a favorite book and began by filling out a chart with key details; title, author, setting, characters and plot. Then they went a step further and recorded the beginning, middle and end. Next we began to draft our introductory paragraph! We completed our four paragraph draft and will revise and publish next week.

*Our reading workshop time was spent exploring poetry. We read so many different types of poems and learned to find rhyming pairs and interesting words. We learned to summarize poems and create mental images of what we read. Students loved reading poems with friends and worked to record their thinking on a poetry response page. They will LOVE collecting tokens on “Poem in Your Pocket Day” after break.

*Our focus was on r-controlled vowels again in spelling this week. During our phonics time we learned about less common spelling patterns, such as alternate long a (ey, ei, aigh) and words that say /ear/.  These are some tough patterns! 

Tracking our data on capybaras in Go2 Science

Recording drawings from our radish experiment

Money game!

Observing our radishes and how they changed

Slime Party fun!

Tie game!

Slime creation

We loved our blue/purple day treat!

 

Pics

 

Sunny weather!

Amazing fruits and veggies all week!

Exploring poetry with partners

Checking on our radishes!

An incredible virtual field trip with Mystery Science!

New favorite math game - Knockout!

Chief plant waterer

Weekly News

 Weekly News for 2-P 4-10-26

   

*In math we did lots of work on using base 10 blocks to regroup 3 digit numbers for subtraction. First we learned to look at a subtraction equation and see if trading was necessary. Ask your kiddo what our special way of celebrating the need to “double trade” is. We spent some extra time practicing our regrouping of hundreds, tens and ones to help us solidify this challenging skill.

*Beth and Curtis were back for our last Mission of 2nd grade: Mission Capybara in Brazil. Their friend Dr. Navila is sending them to the Pantanal in Brazil to test two hypotheses about capybaras—the world’s largest rodents! She thinks human activities may be causing capybaras to change their behavior in dangerous ways. We are already busy collecting data with Beth and Curtis to see if the capybara behavior is changing. Ask your child to tell you about these cool creatures.

*In writing we wrote another persuasive piece; this time an essay to convince others about a location for a great field trip. We worked hard to organize our essay into more than 3 paragraphs! We are learning to support our reasons with specific examples. Our grammar connection this week was working on expanding the predicate in a sentence with “why details.” We revised our pieces to include at least one such detail. 

*We kicked off our Mystery Science unit on “Plant Adaptations.” Our hook leading into the unit was the phenomenon of the superbloom in Death Valley, California. Ask your kids to tell you about it! In our first investigation, “How did a tree travel halfway across the world?”  students investigate the mystery of the koa tree, a type of tree that grows in only two places—islands halfway across the world from one another. We developed three different physical models of seed structures and practiced dropping them to see how structure affects the seed’s function in dispersing away from the tree. During our second investigation “Animal Seed Dispersal” we explored how the structures of seeds enable them to disperse, with a focus on seeds that utilize animal structures to aid in their dispersal. We developed a model of a furry animal (“fluffadoo”) and then used it to test how far seed models with different structures can travel.

*We continued our Mystery Science unit on “Plant Adaptations.” In the lesson, “Could a plant survive without light?”  students investigated how plants need water and sunlight to grow. We set up an experiment with growing radish seeds in light and dark conditions. We will be comparing the seedlings to see what happens initially and then when all are placed in sunlight. Next we did a new experiment to investigate how different plants grow best under very different conditions, ranging from deserts to tropical rainforests. 

*Our reading workshop time was spent reading nonfiction texts about capybaras and seeds as part of our Go2 Science and Mystery Science focuses. We worked on identifying main ideas and supporting details. This helped us build our background knowledge and vocabulary in these two areas. 

*Our focus was on r controlled vowels again in spelling this week. During our phonics time we learned about less common spelling, such as  -ear, -are, -air patterns and low frequency /er/ patterns at the end of two syllable words.

Capybara facts

Free Choice Friday Fun

Persuasive Essays

Mystery Science 

Amazing regrouping work!

Watering our radishes

Writing partners meeting

FLUFADOOS!

Flufadoo experiment

Four Square Game in math

Testing our seed models

Counting how many hops our seeds can stay put