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