A Whirlwind of a Week!

Our days in 2nd grade are full and contain so many opportunities for the children to learn in different ways. Read on to learn more about the ways the children spent their time at school this week!

1) Book Fair
The children were so excited to browse the shelves of the book fair this week at school.  I was so pleased to see their excitement for books and eagerness to choose some fun new reading material!

2) Small Guided Reading Groups
Our small guided reading groups continue to meet to build upon decoding and comprehension skills.

3) Whole Group
Our whole group story this week was Nutik, the Wolf Pup. This story lent itself nicely to the concept of making inferences while reading. The children practiced mixing information that they read, with information that they know to come up with new understanding in the text that remains unsaid. They did a terrific job!

4) Text Talk
Our story this week was the Princess and the Pizza! It was a cute story about an ex-princess who was interested in getting back into the princess game. Robust vocabulary words we practiced this week were:                                                                 fragrant

gracious

humble

muttered

fret

practical

5) Cursive
The children are plugging away at their lowercase letters! They are remembering to sit tall in their chairs, slant their papers, and hold their work down with their guide hand! They also promised me they wouldn't go ahead! :)

6) LMC
We missed our library time on Monday due to the snow day from school. We rescheduled our book check-out time for Wednesday, and we popped into the LMC for a little lesson using the iPads on Friday morning. Using the app "nearpod" the children were able to think about a question together, and then come up with an answer to display on the projection screen for everyone to consider. It was so much fun to see ALL of the children engaged, as well as the clever ideas they came up with - all to the same question. We will have to try this again in our classroom!

7) Math
The children worked hard to strengthen their number sense this week. We counted in uncommon patterns (other than 2, 5, and 10 :) and looked for patterns. We practiced adding in sets- more beginning multiplication! Finally, we worked to add two digit numbers together. The key to this lesson was to add numbers together first that make a ten. The rest was a breeze!

8) Science
We wrapped up our rock unit by creating our very own "fossils" using playdoh! Pressing a small dinosaur figure into playdoh allowed us to envision how mold fossils formed long ago. The children took notes and summarized the key rock concepts we learned over the last month in the back of their science notebooks. They took their assessment on Friday and now we are excited to look ahead to our next unit, a social studies unit on Australia!

9) High Tech High Touch returns! They had a few more explorations for the children about fossils that we didn't have time for, so they came back!

10) Germs!
I came across an interesting experiment that the children and I completed together. It was about germs and how even though we can't always see them, THEY'RE THERE! We used 3 pieces of bread. One was the control group and remained untouched. The second piece of bread we passed around the room for all 19 sets of little hands to touch.  The last piece of bread was also passed around the classroom, but this time the children cleaned their hands with hand sanitizer first. All three of these pieces of bread are in a sealed zip-loc bag. We are hopefully going to see just how important it is to wash our hands!

Coming up:
* Our Social Studies unit is up next! We will be learning about the history and culture of Australia!
* Our Valentine's Day Party, Friday February 13th from 1:15-1:50
* No School on Monday February 16. Happy Presidents' Day!