Weekly Update! November 8-12

Greetings!

Hi everyone! It’s hard to believe that there is only one week left until Parent/Teacher Conferences and our Thanksgiving Break! Below are some points to note!

* The children had a visit from Mayor Mulder this week! She did an amazing job of connecting her presentation with what the children learned during their Arlington Heights unit, as well as with what is coming up in our Citizenship unit! It was truly an authentic learning experience! 

* Progress Reports will go home next Friday, November 19th! Please sign and return your conference envelope at our conference, so we are able to use the envelope again the following trimester.

* The second grade musical will take place on Tuesday evening, November 17^th!

* The children received a brightly colored leaf today to decorate for the musical, feel free to decorate it and bring it back to school on Monday

* The children also received their Optional Landmark Challenge project packets today. They are encouraged to study a National Landmark, learn some interesting facts about it, create a visual representation, and present it to the class. Look through the packet to find out more about it, or visit:

** The beautiful drawings of our students' Arlington Heights landmarks have been added to the District 25's cable network!  From November 13-22,  the children's work can be seen at 9:00 am and 11:12 pm on AT&T U-verse 99, Comcast channel 15 or WOW channel 17. Or, you can view it here: Arlington Heights Projects

Spelling

Next week the children will be focusing on words with the long /o/ sound, spelled ‘oe’, ‘oa’, ‘ow’, and just plain ‘o’!

Reading

Throughout the week, the children were exposed to texts involving animals. The piece we read to build our listening comprehension was about the life cycle of a frog. Our oral vocabulary words included: mature, occur, hatch, sturdy, and develop.  The children enjoyed learning the aspects of the development of a frog from this nonfiction text. They also enjoyed writing about their life from the perspective of a frog! Our main selection this week was entitled, “Farfallina & Marcel,” a warm story about an unlikely pair of friends, a caterpillar and a duck.  We talked about how these two types of animals grow and change in different ways- the caterpillar goes through the metamorphosis process and changes entirely, while the duck simply grows larger in size until it reaches maturity.  While reading this story, the children learned how to make inferences to build their comprehension. We learned that an inference is a good guess about something that happened in the story that the author doesn’t specifically tell us. We broke down this process into steps. First, we think about something that we read in the text. Then, we think about information we already know about it. Last, we put the two together and think about a likely outcome based on these two things. For example, we READ that Farfallina was up in the tree, wrapped in silk.  We KNOW that caterpillars create a chrysalis in order to go through their metamorphic change.  Therefore we were able to INFER that Farfallina would soon be a butterfly! As we continued reading, we were able to confirm that we were correct!  Making inferences can be a challenging skill, but breaking it down into steps this way seemed to be very helpful for the children. Vocabulary words we noticed in this story include: fluttered, recognized, snuggled, vanished, peered, and giggled.  We noticed that all of these words are verbs, and they are all in the past tense! The children are very observant, and also identified these SAME vocabulary words in the books from their guided reading groups, too! (This is one nice example of the alignment Treasures has built into our program!)

Grammar

The children were exposed to possessive nouns this week. We learned that when a singular noun “possesses” something, we add and apostrophe s to the end. When a plural noun possesses something, we add an apostrophe to the end!  We had to really think about what to do in the case of irregular plurals, including “mice,” “children,” and “geese!” (we added ‘s to these!)

Writing

The children reviewed the components of a Friendly Letter this week. They noticed that often there is a heading at the top of a letter that includes the sender’s address and the date. Next we found the greeting, body, signature, and closing.  The children wrote friendly letters (cards) to veterans in honor of Veteran’s Day. They were sent out to a Veteran’s hospital to bring a smile to one of our everyday hero’s faces.  The children further practiced this skill by writing YOU a friendly letter! You will be receiving it at conference time!

Math

We worked with frames and arrows with two rules this week! The children were very successful incorporating this added component into their math practice! We also learned to make change. The children practiced counting up from the cost of the item, to the amount paid, in order to find their change. They also practiced identifying more than one way to make change. We used the hundreds chart to assist us with this practice. We are nearing the end of Unit 3 and our assessment will be approaching next week!

Social Studies

We learned about a patriotic song this week -“America, the Beautiful.” We broke down the words in the song and talked about their meaning!

We also reviewed rules and consequences, and their importance, in a community. The children learned about our local government- including the Mayor, the council that supports her, and the judge and court system that maintains fairness and equality for the members of a community. We talked about taxes, and the government services that are funded because of the taxes that citizens pay. Why not watch a village board meeting with your child at home?! We learned that “we are the government,” since we have a voice in what happens in our city, state, and national government through the election process and otherwise.  We especially enjoyed our visit from Mayor Mulder. She talked to us about her job in our town, and how she wants Arlington Heights to be the best town it can be. She also explained a little bit about the voting process, and how important it is to choose a leader that listens to the people he or she represents. The children learned so much and were very engaged during her visit!

The children were given one of our past 43 presidents to research! They used several websites in the LMC this week to learn interesting information about their president, including: where they received their education, their political party affiliation, and important events that happened while they were in office! These will be on display in the hallway for everyone to learn from! They practiced searching for an image online, then they cut and pasted the picture of their choice onto their report. 

       

Coming Soon:

November 17: 2^nd grade Musical

November 19: Report Cards go home, Landmark Challenge Contracts due

November 22/23:  No School, Parent/Teacher Conferences

November 24/25/26: No School, Thanksgiving Holiday

November 29: No School for students. SIP day

December 7: Landmark Challenge Projects are due!

Thanks for reading!