Learning.... Rain or Shine!

The engaged learning continues in second grade! The children had several fun learning experiences this week!

· We have been watching the in-depth presentations the children have prepared on their endangered animal. There were so many, they will continue through next week! I am amazed at the ownership that the children took over their learning with these projects. I have noticed how comfortably they are able to speak about their animal and share what they’ve learned. Thank you for supporting your children and their learning with these home-based projects!

· Even though it was rainy and a bit chilly, our field work at the Brookfield Zoo was a success. You might have noticed that I used the words “Field WORK.” I stressed to the children that our learning may look a little different because it is outside of the classroom while we are at the zoo, but it is still important, authentic work toward our learning.

o The children kept track of the animals they saw, classified them, and jotted down interesting facts they encountered.

o The children made countless connections to our habitat unit, they saw real life animals that we studied in the rainforest, and witnessed upcoming marsupials that can only be found in Australia- in preparation for our upcoming lessons comparing the Australian culture to our own.

o Finally, the children identified the very endangered animals that they studied. We recognized that conservation is a movement that applies in the real world outside of our classroom, and that our actions as humans have a direct impact on these animals.

I am so impressed with the how much the children pulled from this learning experience! It was a huge success!

§ The children participated in a hands-on conservation lesson back in our classroom. Using rainbow goldfish crackers to represent the seaweed and various levels of fish in the ocean, the children experienced “overfishing,” firsthand, as they greedily tried to capture more fish on their spoons than their neighbors. They soon realized that they had taken more fish than what they need, the fish could no longer repopulate, and that we as human beings can cause a species of animals to become endangered or even extinct. The second time we “went fishing,” the children fished much more carefully and slowly, and were careful not to take too many of one type of fish so they could continue to repopulate. This activity proved to be very meaningful for the children.

§ During our Junior Achievement lesson this week, the children had the opportunity to select a business to fill an empty space in a town. They learned about effective decision making by listing the pros and cons of each choice before making a thoughtful decision. Of their choices of a skate park, a toy store, and an animal shelter, the children selected the animal shelter!

Spelling

This week our focus was on words that have a hard c and soft c, (ex: car, cent) as well as words with a hard g and a soft g (ex: giraffe, guitar). Next week we will have a review week of skills and concepts not only in spelling, but in reading as well, before taking the Unit 5 assessment at the end of the week.

Reading

Our theme this week was all about the Moon! We read a cute oral story called, “Why the Moon is in the Sky,” to kick off the theme. New oral vocabulary words include: dazzling, phase, capable, deserve, and sphere. Our whole group story was simply entitled, “The Moon,” and it was full of information about what the moon is made of, what it looks like, and how it compares to the earth! Vocabulary words associated with our reading lessons this week were: discovered, footprint, lunar, spacecraft, surface, and visible.

The children also spent some time working on their fairy tales! We have read several fairy tales, and fractured fairy tales (versions with a twist) for inspiration as we write. The children heard The Three Little Pigs, The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig, Kate and the Beanstalk, Sleepless Beauty, Rapunzel, Falling for Rapunzel, and more. We are listening to the descriptive language and noticing how the characters are developed and described. We hope to finish these stories early next week!

Grammar

The children worked this week on contractions and possessive pronouns!

Math

We continue working on decimals an place value as we move through Unit 10! The children practice estimating numbers that are written in decimal notation. We identified several different names for a dollar, a dime and a penny. The children increased their familiarity with the calculator as they entered in different dollar and cent amounts, and practiced adding multiple amounts together. Finally, the children viewed a “Then and Now,” poster in order to compare prices. They were able to determine how to figure out price differences, and again used the calculator as a problem-solving tool.

Science:

We will finish our Endangered Animal projects next week, then look ahead to our last social studies unit of the year, a cultural comparison between the United States and Australia. The children will be creating passports, packing their little suitcases, and “flying” to Australia next week.

Thanks for reading! Have a nice weekend!

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle!

Hello 2nd Grade families!

Even though the week was short and sweet, it was a whirlwind of activity!

Read on!

* The 2nd Graders recorded their Arlington Heights song with Mr. Deptula! It is playing in the background of all of the children's artwork on display in the column on the right. We think it will be used in some fashion for the celebration of Arlington Heights' 125th birthday!

* The whole class participated in the "6 minute solution!"

* We learned about the 3 R's! We put "re-use" into practice by turning an everyday milk jug into a fancy bird feeder!

* We listened to a number of fairy tales! The children began planning their own fractured version of "Little Red Riding Hood!"

Spelling

This week our focus was on words with that have silent letters: gn, kn, wr, and mb. Next week the children will be working with words that have a hard c and soft c, (ex: car, cent) as well as words with a hard g and a soft g (ex: giraffe, guitar).

Reading

We had a garden theme this week! We started off listening to a story called “Brer Rabbit in Mr. Mans’ Garden”. This story allowed us to enhance our oral vocabularies with the new words: abundant, ripe, conceal, edible, and scrumptious. We went to read our main selection entitled, “The Ugly Vegetables.” In it, a girl and her mother begin to plant a garden. All the neighbors are planting, too. As the weeks go by the girl keeps wondering why the neighbors’ gardens seem better than her own. First one thing happens, and then another. That’s called sequence. Breaking the story into steps helps us to understand it! New vocabulary words in this story include: aroma, blooming, muscles, prickly, scent, and trade. Other skills the children worked on over the course of the week include homophones and identifying/using the text feature of written directions!

6 Minute Solution

The whole class participated in the 6 Minute Solution this week! It is a quick program designed to boost reading fluency. On Monday the children received the passage they would practice for the whole week. They read through it once to get a feel for it, and to identify any unknown words. I then read the passage to them, to clear up any unknown words and to model fluency and expression. Each day of the week, the children read the passage for ONE minute to a partner. The partner circled any errors, and then computed their score. (Total words read- errors = score.) The children graphed their correct words read on a graph. The first read is always in blue, as it is their first experience with the passage, and considered a "cold" read. The following days we graph using red, as these days are "warm" or rehearsed readings. The children were SO EXCITED to see their graphs grow taller each day! They were so proud to see how many words they were able to read in such a short amount of time. I do not want the children to only focus on speed while reading, but the more information they can conquer successfully in a given time will absolutely benefit their learning in the long run. The children have requested to continue the 6 minute solution next week... I think it was a success! :)

Grammar

The children reviewed that a pronoun is a little noun that can take the place of a bigger noun. Ex: Andrew/he, school/it, The girls/they. They worked this week to make sure that their nouns and verbs agree in sentences. We also remembered to underline book titles, and capitalize the important words!

Writing

The children were exposed to several fairy tales this week! We noticed that fairy tales typically have some of the following components: good/evil characters, an element of magic, the numbers 3 and 7, a problem, and a solution (happy ending!) We read Little Red Riding Hood, (only this version was set on the prairie and didn't end the way you might think!) Rapunzel, Falling for Rapunzel, and Sleepless Beauty (based of course on Sleeping Beauty.)

The children then received graphic organizers to begin writing their own fractured fairy tales. We decided to take the structure of Little Red Riding Hood and make some changes to make it our own. The children worked on changing the setting ( the beach, the rainforest, the big city, the desert!) as well as the characters, mode of transportation, and what they'd bring to Grandma. We are really working on developing the characters and the setting as we begin to tell our story.

Math

We continue working on decimals and place value as we move through Unit 10! The children practice estimating numbers that are written in decimal notation. We identified several different names for a dollar, a dime and a penny. The children increased their familiarity with the calculator as they entered in different dollar and cent amounts, and practiced adding multiple amounts together. We played a game in which we rolled the dice to see how many pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, and dollars we could roll for. Then we used the calculator to combine these amounts, making sure to put the decimal point in the correct position! (The children beat me. By a lot. :)

Science

We delve further into the topic of the 3 R's- Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. The children learned how crucial recycling is to our planet as we read the book "Recycle" by Gail Gibbons. We discovered just how much garbage a person can make in a day, and in a lifetime! We also learned where the garbage goes- into landfills- and how so much of that garbage can be eliminated if we consider the 3 R's. In order to show the children just how simple it could be to re-use something, they were asked to bring in an old milk jug to turn into an earth-friendly bird feeder. (Thank you for sending those milk jugs in! And for sending in extras!!) The children designed their bird feeder in their journals and then wrote about how this project 1) reduces the amount of garbage 2) reuses the resources that were used to create it and 3) allows us to watch/learn about an animal without removing it from its natural home! The children are really beginning to think about the earth, and how to help it, on a daily basis! Great job, kids!! Next week we will take a look at conservation, the effects of oil spills, and we are looking forward to learning about endangered animals from the children's home projects!

We will also be exploring the "Live" versions of these precious animals at the Brookfield Zoo on Thursday! Please dress your child comfortably, and for the weather. Layers and comfortable shoes for lots of walking are recommended! Don't forget to pack a lunch for Thursday! We will be leaving Dryden at 9:15 am, and returning at approximately 2:15.

Junior Achievement

The children learned about the government with Ms. Younan this week. They learned about services that the community provides that are paid for with taxes. Each of the children were given JA money- very exciting! Then about half of it was taken away to pay for services such as schools, parks, and police/fire departments- not so exciting! It was a great tactile lesson that shows the children how money flows through the community and keeps it functioning. One of the children was so funny- at the end of the lesson he informed me that he decided what he'd like to be when he grows up... a tax collector! :)

Upcoming Events:

* Reading Map Test on Monday... a good night's rest and a healthy breakfast work wonders! :)

* Junior Achievement on Tuesday afternoon

* Field Trip on Thursday to the Brookfield Zoo

* Math MAP test on Friday

Hello!

Read on to learn about the full week we had in second grade!

• We have been talking about ways to help our earth all throughout the week. The children have been helping me come up with an additional "green" homework assignment each day! These "extra" assignments included taking a shorter shower, turning off the lights, and turning the water off while brushing their teeth! Making small changes like these are very simple, but can make a big difference!
• The children enjoyed their Junior Achievement lesson this week! Ms. Younan talked to the class about “Assembly Line Production” (working together to accomplish a goal) and “Unit Production” (working independently to accomplish a goal). Then, the class split in half to put both of these methods into practice. One half of the class made paper donuts one at a time. The other half worked together to assemble the donuts, with each student having one particular job to do. Each team had an inspector who was very quick to find the faulty donuts and put them in the “discard” pile! The activity helped the children better understand the difference between the two different types of production. We learned that working together helps accomplish a task quickly! Thank you to Ms. Younan who rewarded the children with their very own munchkins!

• We received field trip permission slips back from everyone! Thank you!

Spelling

This week our focus was on words with the /schwa/ sound, spelled most often with an /a/. Next week, the children will practice words that have a silent letter, ex: wrong, climb.

Reading

Our theme this week was Exploration. We kicked off the theme listening to a story called, “A Tale from Puerto Rico.” It was about an adventurous chick who leaves his farm to explore the world. The oral vocabulary words we worked on include: adventurous, insignificant, route, anxious, and inquisitive. We went on to read two more nonfiction articles; one about continents and oceans, and the other about Christopher Columbus. New vocabulary words that were embedded in these passages include: oceans, areas, voyage, planet, and vast. The comprehension strategy that the children built upon this week was summarizing by identifying the main idea and supporting details. We also practiced using context clues to determine the meaning of unknown words! Finally, we built upon our informational literacy by learning about some technological terms including: URL, search engine, home page, and menu. We identified these words using the computer, so we could better visualize the words and their meanings!

Grammar

We worked this week with both singular and plural possessive pronouns, including: my, our, their, and your. We also reviewed the capitalizing of proper nouns.

Math

The children reviewed the concepts of area and perimeter. We moved to learn the different units of measure for capacity, and identifying equivalent units of measure for capacity. The students learned a silly story to help them remember how a gallon, quart, pint, and cup go together. Hopefully they told you about it! This is the general idea, and while it is a stretch, it works! “On the island of Galapagos (GALLON) there lived 4 beautiful queens (QUARTS). Each queen had two princes (PINTS) that wanted to marry her. So, they appeared before her with two of their best canaries, (CUPS), one on each shoulder. The queen was then able to choose her prince.” With this story we are able to determine that there are 4 quarts in a gallon, 2 pints in a quart, 2 cups in a pint, 8 pints in a gallon, etc. Ask your child to draw the picture that goes along with the story! It really does help to visualize the concept! After working with capacity, the children compared weights by feeling objects, and using a variety of scales including a pan balance, spring scale, and a regular scale. The children also discussed the purpose of each of these scales. It was also a great time to review that there are 16 ounces in a pound! The children took their Unit 9 test. In Unit 10 we will be covering decimals and place value, and much of this will involve working with money!

Science

We have begun talking about our planet, and how to preserve and protect it! We learned what natural resources are, and ways to conserve them, as some are renewable and some are nonrenewable. In the LMC they created a poster with a “Save the Earth” tip in honor of our upcoming Earth Day! These will be on display in the hallway for everyone to learn from. We will be talking about the “3 R’s” next week! Thank you for sending in those milk jugs so quickly! The children will be very excited to find a way to “Reuse” a household item in our class project next week!

As always, thank you for reading, and for your interest in our classroom! Enjoy your weekend!

Save the Earth!

Hello! There is so much happening in room 153... Thanks for checking in!

• Our upcoming lessons in science focus on ways we can help our earth. One way is to learn about an Endangered Animal! To tie in with our lessons at school, the children have the opportunity to participate in our final optional Challenge Project of the school year! Their mission is to choose an endangered animal, research it, and create a visual project informing us why it is in trouble and what we can do to help. Project contracts are due on Monday April 11th, and the projects themselves will be due Monday, April 25^th. (It will be a fun additional challenge to locate the animals the children studied while we are at the Brookfield Zoo during the week of presentations!)

• Zoo permission slips are due on Friday, April 15th! We have about 90% of them back already! Thank you for such a speedy response!

• The children participated in our annual “Bus Evacuation” practice this week. They learned about bus safety and what to do in case of an emergency on the bus.

• The children enjoyed meeting Ms. Younan, our Junior Achievement representative this week! The children identified various businesses in a community and had fun “highlighting” these places with stickers on a supersized map. Coming up next week is our lesson on unit production vs. assembly line production. The children will be racing to see which way allows them to create the most (paper) donuts. The children will have an opportunity to have a donut hole at the end of the lesson on Tuesday as stated in a note I sent home on Friday. Please let me know if you would not like your child to participate in this portion of the lesson!

• I heard there was a great turnout for the 2^nd Grade Book Club! 40 second graders have signed up! Book Club begins this coming Wednesday during the lunch hour. How exciting!

Spelling

This week our focus was on words with the /oy/ sound, spelled ‘oi’ and ‘oy.” Next week, the children will practice words with schwa sound, spelled often with /a/.

Reading

Our theme this week was performing! We read several plays over the course of the week. To kick off the week, the children listened a story called, “La Cucarachita Martina Gets Married.” You would have enjoyed our pre-reading discussion about how you find someone to marry! The oral vocabulary words the children learned were: depart, exaggerate, gesture, attractive, and soothing. We went on to our main selection which was a play called, “Pushing Up the Sky.” It’s a play that begins long ago when the sky was too close to Earth. This was the problem in the story. Tall people kept bumping their heads on the sky! Arrows got stuck in the sky, and children got lost in the sky. We learned that most stories start with a problem and end with a solution. We practiced identifying the problem and solution while reading this week, as well as visualizing the events in the story. New vocabulary words include: agreed, gathered, jabbing, randomly, and signal. We noticed that several of these words have inflected endings, including ‘ed,’ and ‘ing.’

Grammar

The children worked this week on the pronouns I/me, and we/us. They learned that the pronouns I and we are typically used as the subject of the sentence, while the pronouns me and us are used in the predicate!

Math

We looked carefully at a ruler and counted the segments in between the inch marks. The children labeled these sections, for example: 1/8 of an inch, 1/16 of an inch, 1/10 of a centimeter. They practiced measuring to the nearest half-inch and half-centimeter. The children explored the concept of perimeter. They measured the length of the sides of a variety of shapes and added them together to find the distance around it. (The children applied this skill as they found the perimeter of their spelling words on grid paper during the week, too!) We started our talk about capacity, area, and ways to measure them. To illustrate volume, we created cylinders from identical sheets of paper, but one was tall and narrow, and the other was short and wide. We used macaroni noodles to compare how much each cylinder holds. We found out that even when we used the same size paper to make our cylinders, the short and wide cylinder held more than the tall and skinny one! We also traced different objects, such as a deck of cards, and estimated the area using centimeter and inch measurements.

Science

As we brought our Motion unit to a close, the children had fun with two final explorations. During the first, we looked at the bottom of our shoes. Several students who had different types of shoes on came up to volunteer in our “shoe race.” With a table slanted downward, we had a series of races with our shoes down the table. We found that the shoes with a smooth/flat bottom (ex: Annie’s shoe!) flew down the ramp at a quicker rate due to less friction. The shoes with a textured bottom that have grooves (Brooke’s shoe, Michael R’s shoe) either moved slowly, or didn’t move at all due to the friction (traction) between the shoe and the table. Our second exploration had us thinking about the rate of speed at which objects drop. Using sand as a landing pad, we dropped two marbles of different materials (cork, glass, metal) simultaneously. After several repetitions, the children agreed that the balls –regardless of their material- dropped at the same rate! We also noticed that the heavier ball made a deeper imprint in the sand. The children took their Motion assessment on Friday.

Up Next- a series of lessons on Saving the Earth! Don’t forget to set aside a clean and empty milk jug for our upcoming project. Thank you!

Have a wonderful weekend!

Hello, April!

Hi Everyone!

Its hard to believe its April! That means there are just about 10 weeks of school left! I have a feeling they are going to zoom by....

In the meantime, here are some key points to note!

* I enjoyed meeting with you at conferences before break! Thank you for taking the time to come in and talk with me so openly about your child's progress. I truly believe that when we work well together, and the parents are supportive of the instruction at school, the children seem to flourish! Thank you for such productive meetings as well as the open communication!

* The field trip permission slip to the Brookfield Zoo went home today. Thanks to Mrs. Bohnen, Mrs. Lumia, Mrs. Kostova, Mrs. Ahlstrand, and Mrs. Cole for arranging their schedules so they could come along with us on March 28th! Please send those slips back as soon as you can. (Keep an eye out for the bottom of the note- most children choose to bring their own lunches on field trip days, and parents will sometimes mark the box choosing to purchase a school lunch by accident. Just something to watch for!)

* Our Junior Achievement lessons will begin next week! Colleen Younan is our Junior Achievement representative, and she works for Motorola in Schaumburg. She will be coming in to teach the children 5 lessons about the community, businesses, and how money flows between the two. We are excited to welcome her!

* DON'T FORGET to sign up for the 2nd Grade BOOK CLUB! It begins on April 13th during the lunch portion of the children's lunch hour. It is a fun way to get the children to be excited about reading, and its a mixture of all of the 2nd graders at Dryden, not just the ones in our class! The children will have their regular recess time as usual, and there is a celebratory pizza party at the end. Information/Registration was sent out on Friday in an email from the Dryden PTA. If you didn't receive it you can also click here:

https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dERlWFdvR2dFM1lhZHFuZ1lkaGlpVWc6MA

* Speaking of books, Scholastic Book Orders are due on Tuesday! Getting some new reading material is another great way to encourage your child to read! :)

Spelling

The children worked on words with the /ou/ sound, spelled /ou/ and /ow/

Reading

Our theme of the week was the Desert! The children read a piece about the life of a Spadefoot Toad. They learned how it waits safely underground until it hears the rain falling, and then it will dig its way out of his burrow, lay its eggs, and a new life cycle begins. The comprehension strategy we focused on was determining the Author's purpose -Did the author intend to inform, entertain, or persuade us? We decided that since we learned so much about the life of a spadefoot toad, as well as other animals that live in the desert, that the author intended to teach us! New vocabulary words: ranger's, lengthy, burrow, beyond

Math

The children took their Unit 8 math assessment. We have begun Unit 9, which focuses on Measurement! We tried to measure our class using the unit of "second graders." We quickly realized that all second graders are NOT the same size, and the length of this particular measuring unit is not clear to all. Together we came up with a list of appropriate measuring units (centimeters, inches, pounds, ounces, yards, feet, etc.) We learned that these units are the same size every single time and are much more appropriate for measuring. We practiced measuring objects in the classroom using our yard sticks, as well as using a paper ruler the size of a decimeter and a foot. We went on to develop a "Table of Equivalent Measures" in both the US Customary System as well as the Metric System. It looked a bit like this:

US Customary System

1 yard = 36 inches

1 inch = 1/36 of a yard

3 feet = 1 yard

1 foot = 1/3 of a yard

1 foot = 12 inches

1 inch = 1/12 of a foot

Science

Our unit on motion continues! This week the children explored friction. Using a penny, a ramp, and several different surfaces, the children thought about how two materials would rub against each other. We rolled a penny onto newspaper, tin foil, a thick carpet, sandpaper, plastic wrap, and a paper towel. The children could see that the more friction there is between two things, the more resistance there will be and the slower the object will move.

We did another lesson on gravity. The children stood up and dropped their pencils. Then they pretended that their muscles could no longer hold them up and slumped onto the floor. We talked about how gravity is an invisible pull toward the center of the earth. I hung a marble from the ceiling and asked the children "Is gravity working on the marble now?" (this time the ball was not physically falling) We noticed that the ball was not floating upward and the string attached to the marble was pulled tight. Their answer was yes! To further illustrate the point, I cut the string and the marble fell to the floor. The children went on to draw a picture of how our classroom would look if there was no gravity. They were very clever as they drew objects floating out of their open desks, hair floating upward, and even me floating in front of the chalkboard! As they worked, I showed them a few video clips of the astronauts floating in and outside of their space shuttles in a zero gravity zone- outer space!

Handwriting

The children have learned all of their lowercase cursive letters! They took a "cursive quiz" on Friday, and we will be looking forward to learning the capital letters now! They are so excited to be able to write their names!

Coming up:

In the next few weeks we will be learning about ways to help our planet Earth. As we learn the 3 R's, (reduce, reuse, recycle) the children will be asked to bring in a clean, empty gallon milk jug. They are going to be finding a way to "reuse" it during the week of April 18-22nd! If you could set 1 (or 2) aside for our upcoming project, that would be great! Please don't send them in before then, our storage space in the classroom is a bit limited. Thank you!!

That's it for now! Have a nice, restful weekend!