Weekly Recap!

What a wonderful week we had at school. The children and I (along with Mrs. Goodman, Mrs. Domlija, Mrs. Basu, Mr. Denney, and Mr. Psarros) took a walk to the Police Department on Friday afternoon. It was a beautiful day to be outside and in the community we have been learning about. The children were outstanding listeners as Officer Doug Hajek took us through the important places of the Police Department. The children viewed the jail cells, the fingerprinting computers, the evidence room, the shooting range, and even the report room- where the officers were ready for role call! We also went outside to take a good close-up look at the police cars. Not only did we learn about the role of the police officers in our town, but we were reminded to make good choices, always tell the truth, and to use our words in situations that could be harmful. I was so proud of the stellar behavior the children showed during this trip. Way to go, class! And a special thank you to the parents for coming along!

One quick reminder before the academic recap...

* Please return your pink conference forms tomorrow if you haven't done so yet. It will help to have this information before we meet as a staff to arrange our conference schedules. We do our best to set sibling conferences back to back, and to include any specialists your child may work with at school. Thank you for being flexible, it can be a challenging task to meet everyone's requests.

Also...There was a “Hard Lock Down Drill” at school today, reminding us what to do in case of a security situation. The children were reminded that in a situation like this, they are to find the nearest secured location, stay quiet, and listen to their teachers for further direction. They did a great job during this drill!

Spelling

After working with short and long /u/ sounds this week, our pattern will become more complex next week. The children will study words that have both long and short /i/ sounds, and long and short /a/ sounds!

Reading

The common theme to our literacy activities this week was seeds and planting. We began the week listening to Jack and the Beanstalk. New oral vocabulary words include: thrive, expect, fertile, and sprout. Our whole group story was called, “The Tiny Seed” by Eric Carle. It was about a little seed that blows through the air with its companions. The seeds face a variety of dangers including potentially landing in the ocean and desert, blowing too close to the sun and burning up, and being eaten by birds! The children came up with a great moral to the story- the seed may have been little, but it was strong! New vocabulary words from this selection include: burst, desert, drifts, drowns, gently and neighbor. The comprehension strategy we focused on was drawing conclusions. To do this, we first identified important facts from the story. Then we put these facts together to determine what the author was intending for us to understand, without directly stating it. The children went on to practice using their context clues (reading around a new or unknown word) to determine its meaning. All of the children met with their small guided reading groups as well. In the guided reading groups we focused further on gathering facts and developing our own conclusions based on books that more closely match their reading level!

Grammar

The skill of the week was learning all about nouns (a person, place, or thing). We also identified lists of items in a variety of texts, and practiced separating them with a comma.

Math

The children’s math fact scores continue to rise! It is very clear that there is a lot of practice happening! We have reached the end of Unit 2, after working with “in and out” boxes and “frames and arrows” problems. The children have not only completed these problems using a variety of rules, but they have had to critically look at completed problems and identify the rule on their own. They had practice with equivalent names, fact families, and writing addition and subtraction story problems based on a given fact family. The children took their Unit 2 assessment this week, and we were ready to begin Unit 3! Looking ahead, the children will be working with place value, money, and time.

Social Studies

We have been learning about the great William Dunton, who not only donated land for our town, but arranged to have our first one room school house built, organized the first church, and donated land and money so the train could come through town. Did you know that our town was named Dunton from 1854 until 1874? No wonder we have a statue of him at the corner of Arlington Heights Road and Northwest Highway! Learn more by visiting these websites on the sidebar to the right! This week the children looked at how transportation has developed and changed over the course of the last 120 years, from the covered wagon, to the horse and buggy, street car, early locomotive, up to our modern transportation methods of today. We also learned why Arlington Heights was such a desireable place to settle: near the train, near the city of Chicago, fertile soil, and a good climate for farming! We also learned that “Heights” was added to our name, because our town is approximately 106 feet higher than Chicago! We discussed the benefits of living on elevated land. The children learned about several additional early families, too, including the Meyers, Klehms, and Sigwalts. Finally, we have begun memorizing the names of the towns that surround Arlington Heights. The children learned a silly sentence to help them remember... Ask them to tell you! We are ready to wrap up this unit, and move on to Citizenship this week!

As always, thank you for visiting the blog to read about our adventures in 2nd grade!

I hope you had a restful weekend full of time spent outdoors!

:) Miss O'Sullivan