A snapshot of our week!

Greetings! Thank you for popping by our blog to learn about our week at school!

Our main reading selection this week was entitled, “Farfallina & Marcel,” a friendly story about an unlikely pair of friends, a caterpillar and a duck. We talked about how these two types of animals grow and change in different ways- the caterpillar goes through the metamorphosis process and changes entirely, while the duck simply grows larger in size until it reaches its mature size. While reading this story, the children learned how to make inferences to build their comprehension. We learned that an inference is a good guess about something that happened in the story that the author doesn’t specifically say. We broke down this process into steps. First, we thought about what we read. Then, we think about what we already know about it. Last, we put the two together and think about a likely outcome based on these two things. For example, we READ that Farfallina was up in the tree, wrapped in silk. We KNOW that caterpillars create a chrysalis in order to go through their metamorphic change. Therefore we were able to INFER that Farfallina would

soon be a butterfly! As we continued reading, we were able to confirm that we were correct! Making inferences can be a challenging skill, but breaking it down into steps this way seemed to be very helpful for the children. Vocabulary words we focused on in this story include: fluttered, recognized, snuggled, vanished, peered, and giggled. We noticed that all of these words are verbs, and they are all in the past tense!

Here are a few pictures of our classmates "buddy" reading the story. Notice how they are all sitting elbow to elbow, knee to knee! They did a wonderful job of supporting each other during their reading!

During our grammar lessons, the children were exposed to possessive nouns this week. We learned that when a singular noun “possesses” something, we add and apostrophe s to the end. When a plural noun possesses something, we add an apostrophe to the end! We had to really think about what to do in the case of irregular plurals, including “mice,” “children,” and “geese!” (we added ‘s to these!)

Below is a picture of our 5th grade student council representative! Kinzie stopped by on Thursday to let the kids know that they can bring in boxed/canned food to donate to a local food pantry, and she reminded them to wear their spirit wear on Friday! The kids were so cute, they clapped when she was done! :)

Below are some pictures of the steps of our class election. The children are going through the election timeline with a handful of "mock" candidates that are running for the position of our class president! We started off by having PRIMARIES. The 4 (brave) students introduced themselves and shared the reason they want to be our class president. The candidates were Tough Tom, Silly Sam, Healthy Hannah and Fair Francine.

After the primaries, we had a miniature NATIONAL CONVENTION. The class split in half, and each party had to nominate one candidate to represent them in the election. The candidates were narrowed down to Tough Tom and Fair Francine!

Now its campaign time! Tough Tom and Fair Francine gave a speech telling the children the things they will accomplish if elected. Tom said they would work hard, and have a lot of homework with little time to play. But they would be smart! Fair Francine said there would be time for fun and learning. The children made buttons and posters promoting their candidate. They are really enjoying learning about the voting process!

The children also spent some time making cards for Veteran's Day. We talked about how fortunate we are for the men and women who protect our country, whether it be through the Army, Marines, Navy, or the Air Force. They wrote very nice messages that will be mailed to a VA Hospital and will hopefully brighten the day of a courageous military worker! 

The Arlington Heights Book Mobile visited the Dryden 2nd graders today! They were so eager to get on board and take a look around. The children listened to a story and learned how the book mobile works. So many of the children brought their library cards to school today! Thank you for helping them remember! They were very excited to choose some fun books to read over the long weekend!

The children have learned about a challenging home project option this week! They have the opportunity to choose a landmark in the United States, study its history, and create a report and presentation about its importance to share with the class! The children were so excited to choose a landmark to work on at home! Thank you for your support of this fun and engaging learning experience! It might be fun to work on this project with the family during your week long Thanksgiving vacation from school! I will attach the project information to the email message so you can easily click on the links. More than half of our class has chosen to participate! It’s not too late to decide to take on the challenge! 

It was Faiz's week to be our star student! With the help of his mom and dad, he showed the class a really neat experiment using pieces of cloth, water, and food coloring. The children noticed that the cup with less water caused the cloth turn a brighter shade of blue than the the cup that had more water in it! Faiz shared a cute story about "Fly Guy," and we all shared why we think Faiz is a star in our classroom! He is a hardworking, caring, respectful and responsible student! We are all so lucky to know him!