Happy Halloween!

From the desk of Mrs. Schmidt...

It was a “spook”-tacular week in 2-2!  The children all looked fantastic in their costumes!  It was a fun day, despite the cold weather!

We read a story called “Farfallina & Marcel” this week.  During our reading of it, we looked at how this story fit the genre of fantasy and compared this type of writing with realistic fiction.  The talking animals gave it away as a fantasy story!  As we read the story, we discussed our background knowledge about a caterpillar and gosling, as these were the main characters in the story.  Combining what we know about these animals with what we learned from the text, we made inferences about these characters and the events in the story.  This discussion was extended into our guided reading groups, as we made inferences in the fantasy stories that we read.  Making inferences about the characters and events helps us to better understand characterization and cause and effect in what we read.

This week we are learning about letter writing.  We are working on identifying the parts of a friendly letter, such as the greeting, body, and closing.  Correct formatting and punctuation will be emphasized in our letters.  We used parts of Dear Peter Rabbit by Alma Flor Ada as a model text for our letters.  After practicing with example letters, we will write our own letters.

Unit Three in math was brought to a close this week.  Looking ahead to next week, we will explore number stories using a change diagram for change-to-more scenarios.  Parts-and-total diagrams will also be utilized for number stories in which the total is unknown.  Using the number grid as a valuable learning tool, we will find distances between numbers too. 

We are learning a lot about how our country operates in our Citizenship Unit.  Our discussions have centered around comparing and contrasting our city, state, and country governments in terms of the leaders and responsibilities of the branches of government.  The children were very interested in how elections and voting  play a part in these levels of government.   As an extension of our city government study, the Arlington Heights Book Mobile visited Dryden.  The class enjoyed learning about it and checking out books!  Looking at American symbols will be our topic for next week.

We also enjoyed our visit from Mrs. Neumann for Art Appreciation this week.  She shared a painting by Picasso called “The Three Musicians.”  As a follow-up, the class made their own collages using various media of ribbons, gems, fabric, and paper strips.  It was great to see how creative we can be!

Up & Coming

*The Landmark Challenge Packet came home on Wednesday.  Please review it with your child.  The choice of a landmark is due on Friday, November 7^th.  Please have your child return the slip in the packet for this purpose.  The final project is due Monday, December 1^st.  Please let me know if you have any questions!  Thanks!!!

2nd Grade Stars!

From the desk of Mrs. Schmidt...

What a week!  It was so fun to see the excitement and energy in the 2^nd Grade Musical!  The children did a fantastic job of singing and dancing, really showing how much music means to them!  There was much anticipation for our walking field trip to the Arlington Heights Police Department too!  We lucked out with the weather and had a great time learning about our local government in action! 

We read a nonfiction article called, “A Trip to the Emergency Room,” this week.  The children were able to make many real-world connections, as they shared their own experiences with the emergency room.  Our focus was on sequencing again this week to understand order in what we read.  We became reading detectives as we looked for transition words, such as first, next, then, after, last, etc.  We talked about the importance of these words to signal a change in what we are reading.  In our guided reading groups, we discussed the nonfiction topics of why leaves change color and how pumpkins are grown.   In these groups, we explored the author’s purpose for writing and used an acronym of PIE to help us distinguish the reasons.  P is to persuade the reader to their opinion, I is to inform the reader about a topic, and E is to entertain the reader.  There was a lot of content-specific vocabulary, so we discussed strategies of how to pronounce these words as well as how to use the context to decipher their meanings.  As an extension, we learned about prepositions such as in, out, under, above, etc. and looked at how these can change the meaning of a sentence.

In math, we practiced with some “timely” topics as we told and wrote times on a clock.  We also calculated coin combinations and exchanged coins and dollar bills.  Comparing and ordering numbers is an important skill to demonstrate our understanding of place value with numbers.  After collecting data, we put that information into a tally chart.  Then we displayed it in a bar graph to find the maximum, minimum, and median.

At the LMC this week, we started our research of U.S. Presidents as part of our Citizenship Unit.  Mrs. O’Kelly assigned us a president to research and then we were able to choose another president in our search.  Using PebbleGo.org, we looked at the lives of these presidents.  In our research, we are looking at certain criteria to persuade others that our president should be nominated to be a part of Mt. Rushmore.   For our criteria, we are looking at what kind of contributions these presidents have made to our country.  This will be an ongoing project in the next two weeks in the LMC.

Up & Coming

 *Wednesday, October 29^th-Arlington Heights Memorial Library Book Mobile will be here.  See the letter on Monday about this visit.

*Wednesday, October 29^th-Mrs. Neumann comes in for Art Appreciation.

*Friday, October 31^st-Halloween Parade & Party in the afternoon.  If your child will be home lunch, please send in a NOTE for this day.  Also, please make sure that they are back on time after lunch, so that we can get ready for the parade.  Thanks!!!

The fun never stops!

From the desk of Mrs. Schmidt...

The next few weeks will be exciting ones in 2-2!  The end of October will welcome many fun events, such as the 2^nd Grade Musical, our field trip to the Arlington Heights Police Department and, of course, Halloween!

We brought Unit 2 to a close in math.  Looking ahead to Unit 3, we will take a look at place value to help us compare numbers.  Working with time, we will estimate with the hour and minute hands.  Collecting data, we will examine picture and bar graphs and create graphs of our own.  Real world connections will be made as we exchange money to “buy and sell” items. 

Sequence became an important topic of discussion this week as we looked at the importance of order in the structure of a story.  As we were reading a nonfiction selection entitled “A Harbor Seal Pup Grows Up,” we put the critical details into our sequence chart of first, next, and last.  Being able to identify the order of events in what we read will help our understanding of a story and our ability to retell events. 

For Guided Reading this week, we integrated our writing theme of Fairy Tales and read some leveled Fairy Tales.  Our discussions involved exploring cause and effect and using context clues to help us discover the meaning of unknown words in the text.

We started our Citizenship Unit in Social Studies this week.  Our discussions revolved around how we get along in a community, forming a government that helps citizens run the community.  We are very excited to see one of our local government’s branches of services in action when we go on our walking field trip to the Arlington Heights Police Department on the 24^th.  Let’s keep our fingers crossed for nice weather!

Up & Coming

Wednesday, October 22^nd-2^nd Grade Musical at 2:30 and 7:00 pm

Friday, October 24^th-walking field trip to Arlington Heights Police Department

Listening to reading through Tumblebooks online is not only enjoyable, it helps the children listen to a great example of fluency and intonation, it helps to build the children's sight word base and it expands their vocabulary!

The 2nd grade musical is coming up next week! Here is snap of the children rehearsing!

Our learning really bloomed this week!

From the desk of Mrs. Schmidt...

This week we named numbers in new ways to find equivalent names for numbers.  Name-collection boxes helped us to keep track of these new names.  Using frames-and-arrows diagrams, we looked at finding patterns with numbers while practicing our math facts at the same time.  We also discussed counting-up and counting-down strategies to help us with addition and subtraction.

In “The Tiny Seed” by Eric Carle, we read about the cycle of a seed to a flower and back to a seed again.  As we read, we took notes on the facts we learned and then drew conclusions based upon these facts.  Using the conclusion chart was very beneficial in organizing what we learned about seeds.  Using such an organizer will translate well for note-taking and research that we will do in the LMC in the next few weeks as we research presidents.  This will be a great tie-in to our Citizenship Unit, which we will start after bringing our Motion Unit in Science to a close next week.

We are gearing up to write our own Fairy Tales.  This week, we read different Fairy Tales with a buddy.  As we were reading, we stopped to talk about the different elements of Fairy Tales that we observed in the story, such as spells, good vs. bad characters, settings of a forest, castle, etc.  Looking at the structure of different Fairy Tales will help us in organizing our own Fairy Tales.  We will focus on having a beginning, middle, and end to our own stories, incorporating features of common Fairy Tales.

 The children are working together so nicely during the Daily 5 centers! They are so engaged while reading with a buddy!

 This is even BETTER than elbow-elbow, knee-knee! This looks like a high-interest book that both boys are enjoying!

 Wonderful teamwork! You can see the quality reading practice happening here!

 Another terrific example of the Daily 5 in action! Great reading, guys!

 Super teamwork, both sets of eyes are looking in the exact same spot! Way to go, girls!!

 It is amazing to see the children working together at school in this way. Cooperative learning like this is sure to translate across the subject areas!

 In science the children experimented with gravity. They thought about what it would be like if there was no gravity in the classroom- everything would be floating around! Here the children are thinking about how two balls of the same size but different weight (cork, glass, and metal) will fall. They thought about the speed as well as the impression the balls would make in a tray of sand. What do you think the results were?

Up & Coming

*MAP Test results come home on Thursday, October 9^th.

*A permission slip for our walking field trip to the Arlington Heights Police Station (Friday, October 24) comes home on Thursday, October 9^th as well.  Please return the slip to school by October 17^th.  Thanks!

*No school on Friday, October 10^th, for a SIP Day!

*No school on Monday, October 13^th, for Columbus Day!  Enjoy!!

*Looking Ahead:  2^nd Grade Musical on Wednesday, October 22^nd, at 2:30pm and 7:00 pm.