Weekly News 1-16-26

 Weekly News for 2-P 1-16-26

     *Thanks for sending coats, mittens, hats and boots, plus indoor shoes daily!

*We could use some Clorox wipes for extra desk cleaning. 

*Next Thursday we go to the Maine Maritime Museum in the morning!

*In math we have continued our work with subtraction in unit 6. We have practiced regrouping with base 10 blocks, subtracting on a number line, and adjusting to subtract with friendly numbers. We have also learned to use a related addition fact to count up to subtract. We have also been working hard to learn to identify coins. We are working on naming and telling the value of pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters. This is a great thing to practice at home with some mixed change!

*In science we focused on balanced forces and engineering in an exploration called “What Makes Bridges so Strong?”  Students learned about the different types of supports and designs that engineers use to build bridges and got to try their own hand at creating a sturdy paper bridge that could hold as many pennies as possible. There was a lot of trial and error and bridge revision happening Friday.  Some of our paper bridges held 88 pennies!

*In reading workshop we read lots of nonfiction texts about force and motion. We also did work solidifying our understanding of nonfiction text features - hunting for these helpful organizational parts in a variety of texts. When you are reading at home with your child you can point out bold words, the table of contents, captions and photos as ways to get more information while you are reading.

 

*In writing workshop we published our invention reports and shared them with classmates. Then we took the mid-year writing prompt, a chance for me to see how students do with writing a piece independently. This is helpful for me in setting individual writing goals to get students working toward year end writing benchmarks. Toward the end of the week we kicked off a new unit on descriptive writing, where we will focus on describing a place with sensory details.

*Our focus was on silent letter words in spelling this week. During our phonics time we practiced  /ew/ spelling patterns and did vowel teams review work.

Brainstorming for descriptive place writing

We shared our invention reports this week.

We loved seeing sea lions with Beth and Curtis this week.

Force and motion fun: trapeze training!

Identifying the swing pattern of our model trapezes

We counted the swings in a variety of ways.

Setting up for the experiment!

Making our friend Harry birthday cards during read aloud

Free Choice Friday Fun

Great partner work on the trapeze model

Look at those mini trapeze models go!

Ready to launch!

Showing multiple strategies to solve a problem

We researched about MLK on Pebble Go.

UFLI story student leader

Working on spelling with magnetic letters

Sample bridge design notebook

Partners tried to build paper bridges with supports to hold many pennies.

We are practicing how we get information from nonfiction text features like headings and photos and captions.