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:
* 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!
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