The Presidential Inauguration

After learning all about the lengthy election process during our citizenship unit back in November, the final step in the process has arrived! Today just before noon, President Barack Obama was sworn into his second term as the President of the United States of America. He had a private ceremony today at the White House, but the public ceremony will take place tomorrow at the Capitol Building in Washington D.C. before an expected 800,000 visitors! Hopefully you will get a chance to see this historic event with your families at home!

It's time for CURSIVE!

The children are SO EXCITED to finally begin to learn how to write in cursive! Their cursive handwriting is coming along beautifully! Before each of our writing lessons, the children make sure they: 1.Are sitting tall in their chairs with both feet on the floor, and their shoulders back. 2. Have their paper slightly slanted. 3. Have their guide hand down on the top corner of their paper. This encourages proper posture and reminds the children to do their very best. Please encourage these same steps at home. Also, just a small request.... please do not get ahead of us at school! It can become very confusing for the children if they have learned to make a letter one way at home, and then learn another way at school. Thank you so much for help!

Reading Update

This week we followed a farm theme in our reading lessons! Our whole group story was a fantasy, called "Click Clack Moo, Cows That Type." The children are practicing the comprehension strategy of visualization. We know that good readers create mental images of what they are reading. It helps us to better understand if we can see what we are reading about in our minds. Also with this story, the children deepened their understanding of cause and effect. There were tons of examples of this! In the story, the cows find a typewriter, and type a note demanding an electric blanket from Farmer Brown to keep them warm. When the farmer says no, they go on strike. No milk! Through reading this story, the children are able to see that when one thing happens, it causes something else to happen, and so on. Our vocabulary words this week were: demand, emergency, furious, impatient, sincerely, and snoop.

We also practiced using the computer to find synonyms for our vocabulary words. When I asked the children where we should search for these words, they suggested Pinterest! They are so funny! We went to webster.com and clicked on the "thesaurus" tab. The kids got a huge kick out of the juicy words they found that we could use in place of our vocabulary words! Instead of "demand" we found request or require. In place of "emergency" we found crisis or predicament. In place of "impatient" we could use anxious or restless. The online dictionary/thesaurus is such an easy resource to use- and it makes our vocabulary so much more colorful and interesting! Make sure to use it as a resource at home, too!

Grammar Update

Our skill this week was combining sentences! First we had to identify when two sentences were talking about the same subject. Then we combined these sentences into one using the conjunction “and.”

Math Update

The children continue to practice their math facts! I am so excited to see the pride the children demonstrate as they improve their scores. Our goal is to complete 100 problems in 5 minutes, so if you notice your child is not yet able to accomplish this goal, please continue to practice for a few minutes at home each night! Here are some websites that could make the review process a little bit more appealing: http://www.oswego.org/ocsd-web/games/Mathmagician/cathymath.html http://www.playkidsgames.com/games/mathfact/mathFact.htm http://www.funbrain.com/math/ http://www.aplusmath.com/Games/index.html Other than our basic math facts practice, the children reviewed solution strategies for subtraction of 2 digit numbers. We developed an understanding of multiplication using arrays to help us count using groups. The children used grids and geo-boards to help them better visualize the concept and create accurate visual representations of the arrays. We used various strategies to solve equal groups number stories- some children felt comfortable drawing a picture, others used tally marks, and many grew comfortable making an array to help them solve the problem! We also completed an activity where the children used counters and rolled dice to determine how many children get “n” things. We learned that “n” can be any number! They practiced forming equal groups and counting how many were left over (the remainder). Lastly, the children solved multiplication number stories using rectangular arrays. They also practiced writing a number model to represent it! The multiplication and division foundations are building!

Budding Geologists

We had our in-school field trip yesterday! The company "High Tech, High Touch" came to Dryden yesterday and visited each of the 2nd grade rooms. The geologist, Miss Tabitha, who visited our class talked to us about igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary rocks. She helped us look carefully at rocks with a magnifying glass. We thought about properties that described the rocks, and we looked for similarities and differences between them. The children especially enjoyed searching for gemstones in a tub full of sand and water. Again the children were eager to identify and describe each one that they discovered! The children greatly enjoyed this hands on learning experience! Thank you so much for supporting such a fun and memorable activity for our students!

Persuasive Posters

The children brainstormed a few things that they really enjoy. They made a list of their favorite restaurants, vacation spots, books, movies, and activities. They thought about which of these 3 topics they could write the most about, and narrowed down their list to their favorite one. The children then wrote a persuasive paragraph about their topic. They made sure to use as many descriptive adjectives as they could to persuade the reader to visit, see, or do what they were describing! The kids did an AMAZING job! These beautiful posters are currently hanging in the hallway, but here are some pictures of them so you can take a quick peek!

Peter is a STAR!

It was Peter's star week this week! Mrs. Fronimos came in for a visit on Friday afternoon, and helped Peter demonstrate a fascinating science experiment! Using vinegar, and baking soda, they made raisins float up and down in a jar of water! We noticed small bubbles (Carbon Dioxide) affix themselves to the raisins, causing them to rise to the top! What a fun experiment! Instead of a story this week, Peter and his mom played a game with the class. The children were challenged to talk about a topic for one solid minute- without using the word "um" or "and". This is a lot harder than it sounds! We enjoyed our afternoon with Mrs. Fronimos! Peter had a terrific star week. We are so lucky to have Peter in our class- he is hard working, fair, and an amazing athlete! Way to go, Peter!

Math Update

In Unit 6, the children will be reviewing strategies for solving addition problems. They will also be challenged to add problems that have three addends. We will be building their problem solving strategies using a variety of diagrams. They will also be creating tally charts and graphs based on given data. Thank you again for all of your replies when we collected the favorite foods of our favorite adults. The children really enjoyed comparing these two graphs! Toward the end of unit 6, the children will look at the beginning stages of division- including sharing equal parts, and the beginning stages of multiplication- using arrays. Remember to access the parent letter in your child’s red home folder for more information! Finally, the students are ready to begin studying their subtraction facts! Some strategies that they will learn to help them more quickly recall these facts include: Minus doubles, Minus zero, The “Nine Trick,” and our “Count Up” and “Count Back” strategies. Keep an eye out for those!

Grammar Update

Throughout the week, we worked on the past tense of the word “have.” The children practiced substituting ‘has’ and ‘had’ for this word in a variety of sentences. We also identified book titles in sentences, making sure to capitalize the important words as well as underline them for emphasis!

Reading Update

Our theme this week was “putting on a performance.” The children read a nonfiction piece about the students at the Alvin Ailey Dance School in New York City. They were preparing for their spring show. We practiced summarizing the story. To do this, we identified three key ideas we read about, and then put them all together to recreate what the story was mainly about. . Our new vocabulary words of the week were mood, perform, effort, proud, remember, and students. The children also learned about the literary elements of alliteration! After listening to a silly story about The Worrywarts, the children were quickly able to see that alliteration is the repetition of the initial sounds of words in a text. The Worrywarts were a group of wombats and weasels who ate watermelon and wafers and worried about warthogs! We also read the lyrics of a song together, highlighting repeated phrases and alliteration as

Our Favorite Foods

The children practiced collecting data and graphing the results today. We wrote down our favorite foods, categorized these foods according to food group, tallied the total number for each group, and we learned that the majority of the children in our class prefer the GRAIN group over the others! This group was chosen by 11 of our students. The Fruit and Vegetable came in 2nd place, with 9 votes!

From January 9, 2013

We then thought it would be interesting to see if adults prefer the same type of food that the children do. We sent an email message to our parents and a few teachers asking them to email us with their favorite food. We received 15 responses this afternoon! Thank you so much for sending us those messages! Up until 3:30, the favorite food of the adults that responded was MEAT. 7 adults chose meat!

From January 9, 2013

We did receive a few responses after school and here are our latest results: Fruit/Vegetables: 5. Grain: 5. Dairy: 1. Meat: 9. 30 total responses. Meat is the winner for the adults! Thank you again for participating in our survey!

A Response from the White House!

From January 9, 2013

From January 9, 2013

From January 9, 2013

The children had written friendly letters to the President back during our Citizenship unit back in November. Upon our return to school, the children and I were happy to see that we had received a response from the White House! Our response included a letter from President Obama, photographs of the White House and Bo, the first dog, as well as information about the White House itself- including some of its amazing artwork! It was such a happy surprise!