The Week in Review!

What a wonderful week we had at school! It was jam packed full of reading, math and science, and also a bus evacuation practice, a fire drill, and a fall craft! Read on to learn/see more!

The common theme to our literacy activities this week was seeds and planting. 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. All of the children met with their small guided reading groups as well.  In our guided reading groups we continue to work on our deep reading strategies including making predictions, asking questions, visualizing, summarizing, and evaluating what we have read. The children are also on an ongoing lookout for "juicy" words they come across while reading!


The grammar skill of the week was identifying nouns, and sorting them the appropriate group (person, place, or thing). We also practiced separating 3 or more items in a list with a comma.

The children and I are currently reading aloud one of my all-time favorite stories, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl. We are currently at the point in the story where Charlie has just found the 5th golden ticket! The class literally cheered for Charlie when it happened! He and Grandpa Joe have entered the factory and are in awe of what they are finding all around them. It is so much fun to share a story together- activating all of those deep reading strategies aloud as we enjoy such an engaging story! I especially love to see the children get excited about reading!!

We participated in our annual bus evacuation practice this week! The children learned what to do in case of an emergency on the bus.

I'm sure you have noticed... the children’s math fact scores continue to rise! It is very clear that there is a lot of practice happening! Way to go, class!! 

We have reached the end of Unit 2 in math. The children worked with “in and out” boxes and “frames and arrows” problems using a variety of rules, and also looking critically at completed problems in order to identify the rule.  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 have begun Unit 3! Looking ahead, the children will be working with place value, money, and time!

Here is a link to some math fact pages you can print out and practice at home: http://www.tlsbooks.com/fiveminutemathadditiondrills0-18.pdf

Here is a link that will allow your child to practice their math facts online:

http://www.harcourtschool.com/activity/thats_a_fact/english_4_6.html

(Click on addition, sums to 20! The facts come through in groups of 30. Once your child can get all 30 in 4 minutes, go down to 3, etc… this can be fun and motivating!) 

Here the children are playing a round of "Addition Top-it" using our Everyday Math playing cards. This game is just like the game of "War," except the children draw two numbers instead of one and then have to add them together. The person with the larger sum wins all of the cards of the round.  You could play this at home, too! (It's a sneaky way to practice adding! :)

Below you can see Max and Maeve using our interactive white board to drag and drop the proper coins next to a variety of fruits and vegetables!

During our science lessons, we looked a little bit more closely at friction and traction. The children noticed that the traction on the bottom of their shoes determined how much friction there would be. Below you can see that Jennifer and Erick practiced racing their shoes down a ramp. Erick's shoe had lots of bumps on the bottom of it, therefore a lot more traction, and did not move down the ramp very far at all! Jennifer's shoe had a much more flat surface, and zoomed down the ramp with no problem (and almost no friction!)

Here we tried placing Erick's shoe on a piece of wax paper before sliding it down the ramp. The children were eager to make predictions before the experiment and share their thinking behind it!

We also discussed gravity this week. We learned that gravity is an invisible pull toward the center of the earth, and we did a series of experiments that proved this. We also watched a few video clips of astronauts in outer space to help us imagine what it would be like if there was NO gravity! We watched the astronauts floating through their space ship, shaving their faces with a razor that was floating next to them, and even one making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich! Below you can see the children drawing a picture in their science notebooks of what their classroom would be like if there was no gravity! I think I might be floating by in one or two of these drawings... :)

It was time to spruce up our classroom a bit! I asked the children what type of craft they would like to make to help our classroom feel more like fall. They pretty unanimously agreed upon a scarecrow! Below are a few of the scarecrows that you will find hanging in our classroom right now- it's a good thing we don't have a crow problem in our classroom, because these scarecrows turned out pretty cute!

    Mr. Salzone, a college student learning to be a teacher, popped by for an hour on Friday morning to observe and work a little with the class. He helped out by giving a number of our students some additional reading practice! 

The Arlington Heights Fire Department assisted us with a scheduled school-wide fire drill on Friday! Our class showed amazing listening skills and perfect behavior during this very important practice. I am so very proud of my students! Way to GO boys and girls!!

 Our last highlight of the week was a visit from Erick's mom, Mrs. Owsiany, for Erick's star student presentation! She helped Erick perform an experiment using baking soda, vinegar, raisins, and water. They showed us how this combination of materials causes bubbles to attach to the raisins- making them float up and down! Together they read a fun Sponge Bob story with the class, and finally we all shared reasons why we think that Erick is a super star 2nd grader. What a sweet, caring, respectful, friendly and hardworking classmate he is! We are SO lucky to have Erick in our class!