Weekly News 3-21-25

 Weekly News for 2-P 3-21-25

   *Next Tuesday we go to the Maine Maritime Museum for our first “Sense of Place” field trip. We will go a little early to see the Chris Van Dusen exhibit! 

*Parent/Teacher conferences are happening next Thursday between 12pm - 6pm. Both Thursday and Friday of next week (3/27 and 3/28) will be half days for students, with dismissal happening at 12pm. Parents can expect afternoon buses to arrive home approximately 3 hours earlier those days.

*In math we kicked off unit 9 with 3 digit addition work. We spent time adding 10 and 100 to 3 digit numbers mentally. Then we practiced adding two 3-digit numbers with and without regrouping. We are using base 10 blocks for this work right now and our place value knowledge is really helping with that! We are also practicing telling time to 5 minute intervals and addition facts every day.

*In reading workshop we worked on finding the main idea in nonfiction texts. We also did an author study on Chris Van Dusen in advance of our museum visit next week.

*We finished the annual Chickadee Award program and heard the last three books. We voted in the library with Ms. Luchies on Wednesday and can’t wait to find out the schoolwide results. 

*We continued our force and motion unit with an investigation called “What Makes Bridges So Strong?” In this lesson, students learned about real-life bridge design. In the activity, Paper Bridge Engineering, students used their knowledge of forces to build a strong bridge that supports as many pennies as possible -- using only paper. Lots of great teamwork was evident!

*In writing we worked on a persuasive letter to Mr. Libby. We brainstormed a list of things we might like to see changed or added to our school and came up with our opinion and supporting reasons. We wrote a letter to him sharing our opinion. We will revise, edit and publish these next week.

*Our focus was on final stable syllable words in spelling this week. During our phonics time we practiced doubling rules for words that end with one vowel and one consonant before we add a suffix (i.e. hopping, bagged, bigger, flattest).

 

Force and Motion experiment

Partners used their hopper poppers to explore concepts of push and pull.

One partner held the popper and one released the ruler off the popper to make it leap!

We recorded our data after every trial.

We had fun trying it over and over again to perfect our air time!

See that popper in motion! 

Mrs. Hudak read us a great Chickadee book on Monday!

St. Patrick's Day cuties!

Illustrating our persuasive essays

We met with writing partners to share our persuasive writing.

Mr. Libby read us a Chickadee book in the forum on Tuesday!

Math game - adding 10 and 100 race!

This group is brainstorming ideas for their next piece of writing.

Place value stars!

Solving a tricky problem in math - teamwork helps!

Recording our place value work with 3 digit addition

Scientists at work on our bridge experiment

We built 3 paper bridges to see how many pennies they could hold.

This design held A LOT of pennies!

Experimenting means lots of trial and error.

We kept track of our results.

Our new favorite inside recess game is store!

Stuffies are sold, money is exchanged and change is given!

A wonderful reader's theater presentation on Friday!

Serious one arm plankers at Fitness Friday!

Great planking work!

This kid has the boat pose down (Mrs. Pols had to take a "break" from her pose to snap a photo!)

We are so proud of our plants. We take turns watering them and love to care for them.

All the radishes are now in the sun and we can see the difference between the ones that started in the shade vs. the sunlight.

Organizing chart for our new piece

We worked on prepositions that tell WHEN.

We are writing persuasive letters to Mr. Libby. Here's a sample one!

We will do the endings and closings on Monday!