Amazing learners in 2-2

Hello!

We had another terrific week in 2-2!

Thank you to everyone for returning their permission slips for our upcoming field trip to the Arlington Heights Police Department, which will take place on November 6th. We look forward to a wonderful walk on a crisp fall day to learn firsthand about services in our community. This field trip will tie in perfectly with our next unit- Citizenship!

Thank you for returning the note we sent home letting us know if your child will be staying at school or going home for lunch the day of our Halloween celebration. This will help the office manage student attendance, help us prepare for lunch supervision, and allow those parents who returned the notes to avoid the traffic jam in the office on this festive day!

Report card season is approaching! Please let me know if you would like a 2nd copy of your child's report card due to special family circumstances. Thank you also for sending in your conference notes promptly. We will meet as a staff this week to schedule conferences that include any/all of the specialists your child sees at school. We also do our best to arrange conferences back-to-back with other siblings in the family. 

Here are some highlights of our week!

1) The children learned new reading strategies to support them in their independent reading practice

2)  We ran a series of collision trials during our motion unit in science. 

3) We reviewed and took our Unit 2 math test- the kids did a great job!

4) We began a new writing unit: Letter writing!

5) We welcomed Paige's mom, Mrs. Otahal in for a visit to celebrate Paige's star student week.

6) We attended the 4th grade musical, what a terrific performance! 

Our first reading strategy of the week revolved around nonfiction texts. We noticed that there are many features in nonfiction texts that help us process and understand the factual information. After our lesson, the children went on to read a nonfiction text of their own and were on a mission to find their own nonfiction text features! Below, Alexandra noticed one that we hadn't thought of: increasing the SIZE of the object and labeling it, so we could better see the smaller details! 

Look at all of the post-it notes! Its so great to see the children making a note of the information that they want to remember. They are engaged, and focused, an really interacting with the text!

Tyler found an index in the back of his book! He noticed that he could easily flip to specific topics by page number using the index.

We took a moment for the children to share their findings with a neighbor. It's so much more engaging if all of the children share with a buddy, than if only one or two share with the whole class. I was so proud to see the children share the nonfiction features they found with each other!

Kelsey made numbered tabs and labeled 5 different nonfiction features with us! She found labels, captions, a glossary, a map, and an index! What a terrific listener and learner!

On to science! The children amazed me with how focused they were during our collision trials. One challenge was to find a way to make the "track" ball (the ball placed on the track) only move 10 centimeters or less after colliding with the "ramp" ball (the ball rolling down the ramp).  Another challenge was to get the "track" ball to roll all the way across the ramp. The children thought carefully about how to achieve these goals. They experimented with the height of the ramp, and the size and material of each of the balls. (They had large and small cork, glass, and metal balls.)

The children took these trials very seriously and worked to make sure that everyone in their group had a turn and a chance to participate. We were all eager to see each group's demonstration. We noticed that there were several different combinations of variables that allowed the children to achieve these goals in different ways!

We were so happy to have a visit from Mrs. Otahal during Paige's star student week. They showed us a neat experiment that got us thinking about how water may affect color dye. Paige dropped a piece of cloth in two cups. She dropped the same number of drops of food coloring in each cup. Then she added different levels of water.

Mrs. Otahal shared with us one of Paige's favorite stories, "We're Going on a Bear Hunt." We loved listening to this oldie but goodie!

Then it was time to check the results of Paige's experiment. The children noticed that the cup that contained MORE water turned the cloth a lighter shade of red (on the left) than the cup that had LESS water (on the right.)

What a sweet, caring, and hardworking student Paige is! We are so lucky to have such a loving and lovable little girl in our class. What an amazing helper, too! You had a terrific week, Paige!

Here we are enjoying the 4th grade musical!

Another reading strategy of the week was to think carefully about the elements that are typically found in folktales. We read the story "Tony's Bread" by Tomie DePaola and found all of them! The children thought about fairy tales and folk tales that they know, and came up with many examples of "long long agos," cultural words and phrases, sets of 3, events of trickery, and happy endings.

Then the children went on to their independent work! They read fairy and folktales- some new, and some old, with a new purpose. The children again impressed me with all of the examples they found of these folktale elements!

After reading with a partner, again we shared our findings. The children love sharing their learning with their classmates, and they do a terrific job of listening to each other, too!

Our new writing unit is Letter Writing! We learned that the purpose of writing a letter is to communicate with someone else.  Making sure to include the date, greeting, body, closing, and signature, the children practiced writing friendly letters this week! We carefully selected the "audience" of our letter. Then we thought about the purpose of our writing- either to persuade, inform, or entertain. We decided that if we ask a question or two, it would engage the reader of our letter and elicit a response! The children enjoyed writing a letter to and receiving a letter from a classmate this week.

Coming up in this unit, the children will practice various types of letter writing including: a business letter, a thank you note, and an invitation!

Thank you for following all of our learning in 2nd grade!
Enjoy the weekend!

A Whirlwind of a Week!

Even though it was a short week at school due to the Columbus Day holiday, the children and I accomplished so much!

1) We participated in a Bus Evacuation practice. The children listened and learned how to ride the bus safely, and they learned what to do in case of an emergency.

2) We reviewed several important reading strategies! 

* The children practiced what to do when they encounter new words: Slow down, reread the sentence, use context clues and illustrations, use background knowledge, use a dictionary or glossary, or ask a friend.

* We practiced making a "movie in our mind" while reading. The children worked to create mental images while reading to help them better understand the text. They sketched these images and labeled them during their practice of this strategy!

* We discussed the elements of poetry. We noticed that poetry has various forms and layouts that contain fewer words and deliberate line breaks. We identified special language patterns that cause rhythm including repetition of sounds (alliteration), rhyming words, and the use of sound words (onomatopeia). We also looked and listened for rich vocabulary words that help us make a picture in our mind, or cause us to feel different feelings. The children broke into small groups with books of poems and came up with so many terrific examples of these poetry features!

3) The children practiced "frames and arrows" problems during math. This involved identifying the "rule" or the pattern, and applying it to several numbers. The children made sure to reverse the rule if they changed direction. We also played a math game called "Name that Number." The kids LOVED this game! With a partner, they looked carefully at a series of 5 cards and challenged themselves to add or subtract (or multiply if they were ready!) the cards in a way that allowed them to hit the target number. I was amazed at how the children pushed themselves to use as many cards as they could to hit the target- the more complex their thinking was, the more cards they were able to collect! 

4) In science, the children learned that objects will not move unless there is a force involved, such as a push or a pull. Through a series of experiments, the children realized that the greater the force, the greater the motion. After a couple of group demonstrations, the children are also very eager to participate in collision trials next week which will involve the use of glass, metal, and cork balls rolling down a track made of meter sticks. The children will predict and measure the distance these balls of varying weights will roll when they collide with each other on the track.

5) We celebrated the writing of our autobiographies this week! After several weeks of hard work, the children were so pleased to be able to share their life stories with their classmates. The children also learned to assess their own writing using a rubric. They looked for an interesting introduction, sequential series of events, correct grammar/spelling, and an appropriate number of details to highlight their life at each stage. It was great to see them look critically at their work, (and to want to make a few more changes before giving themselves their final grades! :)

 The children learned about bus safety this week.

 Kelsey and Maggie experiment by pushing and pulling a toy car with varying amounts of force.

 Scott and Natalie watch to see how the amount of force affects the distance the car travels.

 We learned that both pushes and pulls are types of force! Force is necessary for motion to happen.

 The children read through their own autobiographies this week and measured their work using a rubric!

 It was awesome to see the children looking so carefully at their work and grading themselves accordingly!

 Scoring their work encouraged the children to go back and re-read their work. What a powerful tool to grow as writers!

 Self assessment had the children thinking about ways they will improve on their next writing assignments!

 THEN it was time to CELEBRATE our wonderful writing! The children rotated a few times and shared their work with a handful of partners. They had fun learning about each other and sharing positive feedback and encouragement.

 During reading workshop, one of our comprehension strategies was to "make a movie in your mind." Tyler is reading very carefully, and he is ready to sketch some of his ideas on the clipboard in front of him.

 Alexandra sketches her mental images as she reads.

 Look at how engaged these readers are in their texts! I love it!

 Meg keeps her place in her book so she can continue reading, but pauses to sketch what she is visualizing in order to strengthen her understanding of the text.

 The kids really enjoyed reading poetry this week, too! Our first unit of our new Schoolwide reading program touched on so many interesting genres. It piqued our interest in reading, and the children have become so eager to delve more deeply into each of these genres!

 This is what the track looks like that the children will be experimenting more with next week. They did a great job of making predictions about how far the track ball and ramp ball will move during our preliminary experiments today!

Whew! What a great week!
Thanks for checking in to see all that we have been up to in 2nd grade.

Enjoy the weekend!