A short, but very full week!

Our 2nd grade musical took place this week!  On Wednesday, the children sang, played kazoos, told jokes and shined in the spotlight during their music show! It was a fun, playful, enjoyable "Tribute to Silliness!"

 While the children were hard at work at school, I was hard at work at a conference with Dryden's Leadership Team! We listened to a wonderful and very reputable speaker, Susan Hall. Our time spent at this conference deepened our understanding of the new Common Core Standards. It was a really terrific learning experience that helped our team better envision our future steps with the Common Core.

Back in the classroom, the children were beginning to get into the Thanksgiving spirit! The children made some colorful feathers to dress my turkey that explained why they are thankful!

 Our classroom campaign continues! Here you see our "Tough Tom" and "Fair Francine" candidates Alex and Kelly field questions from their voters. They restated what they would do if elected, and they had to think on their feet to explain some answers to the tough questions from their future constituents! They did a great job! The children completed a Venn Diagram showing the similarities and the differences in the points of the candidates. We are are learning that it is very important to be an informed voter that carefully processes the available information and asks questions before making a decision. We will be "registering" to vote next week, and then it will time for our big election!

In math this week,

the children practiced estimating the cost of a variety of items. Then they were asked to decide if they could purchase a combination of items for $1.00 using the estimating skills we practiced.  We noticed it is easy to add numbers that end in 0, and the children learned to round up those numbers that end with a five or higher, and round down if the number ends with a 4 or less. The children did a nice job during their first time working with this concept!                                                       

The children also practiced using a tape measure to measure lengths and distances to the nearest inch and centimeter. The children also practiced estimating two digit numbers. I am pleased to see how comfortable they have become when deciding if they should round up or round down. 

In reading,  the children read a realistic fiction piece called, “There’s Nothing Like Baseball.”  We practiced making inferences again to build our understanding of the story. We remembered that when we make an inference, we mix a little about what we read with a little about what we know to determine what the author is intending for us to understand.  Our new vocabulary words that popped up all week included:  imaginary, uniform, practices, starting, tryouts, and coach! 

In Grammar, we continued to work on apostrophes this week! The children reinforced what they learned last week: ‘s is added to a singular noun who “possesses” something, s’ is added to a plural noun who “possesses” something, and sometimes, the letter s is just used to make a noun plural, or more than one! It can be tricky to decide when to use that apostrophe!