Our week in review!

We accomplished so much during school this week! Read on to see all of the skills and concepts the 2nd graders conquered in such a short time!

Our caterpillar observations continue! The caterpillars made noticeable growth over the weekend, and they increase in size more and more each and every day! It won't be long before they begin to create their chrysalis and they move on to the next stage of their life.

I sent home a note this week detailing something new that the children will begin practicing for a few minutes during their morning work: TYPING! Familiarity with the keyboard and the "home position" will be helpful as we look ahead to processing our learning by typing facts that demonstrate our learning. It will also be helpful for our students to develop comfort while typing so they will be successful on upcoming national assessments! Feel free to encourage your child to practice keyboarding for a few minutes each night- and over the summer, too!

In math, the children have been practicing counting by 1s, 10s, and 100s.  They better developed their understanding of place value by reading, writing, and modeling numbers to the ten-thousands using place value tools. The children also grew more comfortable identifying the values of digits in numbers, For example, in the number 72,365: The number 7 is worth 70,000.  The number 2 is worth 2,000. The number 3 is worth 300. The number 6 is worth 60. The number 7 stands for 7 ones.  We practiced counting by 1,000s.  The children enjoyed learning a brand new concept regarding the order of operations. We realized this week that we always need to complete what is inside the parenthesis in a number sentence first. The children were challenged to view a series of operations that included a sum, and THEN decide where the parenthesis should go for the equation to be true.







The children have finished their personal narratives in which they share a small moment from their life in great detail, highlighting a problem and a solution. They wrote, edited, and illustrated their work. They even went on to include an "About the Author" page! The children were also challenged to include dialogue in their writing. They did a fantastic job! Here are a few pictures of them sharing their stories with their classmates.

The class and I are reading the story of Charlotte's Web together as a read aloud. During Chapter 9, Wilbur attempts to spin a web just like Charlotte. We talked about how visualizing the text, or making a picture in your mind, is a great way to strengthen our understanding while reading. The kids took a few minutes to draw an event that happened in this chapter, including labels and captions. They shared their work with their small group, noting how they read the same chapter, yet their pictures were so different!

 We also popped down to the kindergarten room to share our wonderful stories. The kindergarteners were a captive audience and made the 2nd graders feel great about their work!