Weekly wrap up!

We are keeping so busy in 2-2 that the time seems to be flying right by!
This week we tackled:

• visiting the book fair
• family reading night 
• identifying answers to the "five Ws" (who, what, where, why, & when) during our Nonfiction reading, and then developing an opinion about what we read 
• wrapping up our Australian animal presentations 
• reaching the end of our unit researching the country and continent of Australia
• small groups creating commercials about their territory
• finishing persuasive posters of a place we love to visit 
• participating in a lesson about Erin's Law
• more cursive!
• subtraction fact practice
• subtraction with regrouping
• beginning multiplication
• and celebrating our star student Luke!

Kelsey prepared and presented a bright and colorful presentation including both an informational poster and a habitat  of the adorable rainbow lorikeet.

Luke taught us so many interesting facts about the burrowing billy. His project was complete with a burrow!

Here are a few photos of the children "behind the scenes" in front of their green screens, recording their Australian commercials! The children spent several weeks researching their territory, searching for reasons why we might want to either visit or live there. We will watch these commercials on Monday in the LMC and then vote on our favorite territory!

Samantha was our most patient presenter who wrapped up our presentations with a bang. She shared a powerpoint presentation about the saltwater crocodile, including a miniature model!

The children were SO excited to have the Scholastic Book Fair at Dryden this week. Each day they eagerly waited until it was recess time to head down there to pick up some new books and fun trinkets!

We reached the end of our main nonfiction reading lessons this week. As I mentioned, our lessons this week involved choosing an important person or event to read about. The children searched for details about their topic including who the person or event was, why this person or event was significant, what they did or what was accomplished, when this person or event made history.

The book we practiced with as a class was this one:

We discovered that Althea Gibson was the first African American to win the coveted Wimbledon Cup. After learning about her history and learning about her wild character, the children and I found that we had developed an opinion of her! We decided that Althea was a very talented athlete, but she did not like to follow rules!

The children did a great job of choosing "right fit"books for themselves and got right to work in transferring our whole group skills to their independent practice.

Our math lessons led us to delve a bit more deeply into our subtraction practice with regrouping. The children were reminded to always begin in the ones place to decide first if regrouping was necessary. Then we used our catchy little poem to help is recall what to do next!

This is still a new concept for us, and many of the kids are really starting to get the hang of it! Please help us to catch if the children accidentally try to subtract upwards... sometimes the children will notice the bigger number on the bottom, but forget to regroup. We will continue to practice!

It was Luke's week to shine! He showed us an amazing experiment in which he turned a regular old screwdriver into a MAGNET using a battery, some wire, and paper clips! I'm sure the kids were dying to try this one the second they got home!

 

Luke read the story "If You Give a Dog a Donut" to the class and did a wonderful job!

We especially enjoyed having Mrs. Horcher in for a visit on Friday afternoon to share in Luke's fun with us! She gave us some background information on his cool pictures and told us why she thinks he is a super star son. We are so lucky to have such a friendly, happy, hard working and focused student in our class! Hooray!