2-2 in review!

We have been busy in 2nd grade!

Below you will find photos of the meaningful learning experiences the children have been participating in lately.  

 Mrs. Beane came by as our Dryden Tech Facilitator to talk to the children about safely researching topics online. She directed us to perfect age-appropriate resources and search engines on the Dryden LMC web page including Pebble Go, Brain Pop Jr., World Book Kids, Kid Rex, and DK find out! The children are ready to brainstorm their "wonders" and create a question they want to look more deeply into answering on their own!

 We learned about the Dryden Dolphin book awards in the LMC this week. The children were so excited to begin reading these interesting books and earn small awards and incentives from Mrs. Kenney and Mrs. Kovacic in the library.

 Look at these readers go! Once they start reading, it's hard to stop them!

 The children have gotten comfortable subtracting 3 digit numbers with regrouping! The children supported each other working in partners. One partner built the numbers using base 10 blocks, and the other partner wrote the numbers using their dry erase marker. They swapped roles to get practice problem-solving in both ways. The kids have learned how to check their work by using the opposite operation (adding to check subtraction).

 The children were beyond enthusiastic to dissect owl pellets during science! Using a document camera, I modeled for the children how to carefully break apart the owl pellet, being careful not to break any bones if possible. Using a reference guide, I showed the children how to match the bones to the different animal they could have belonged to. Then the children were ready to begin investigating on their own!

 Using gloves, magnifying glasses, probes, and tweezers, the children got to work! It was great to see the teamwork ensue between partners! We are ready to record our observations and conclude which animal we think we have discovered before wrapping up this portion of our lessons!

 After regrouping in the ones place, the children were ready to move on to regrouping in the tens and hundreds places, too! They know to always start in the ONES place, and decide "If there's more on top, don't stop. If there's more on the floor, go next door and get 10 more!"

 The kids worked together to create our class oak tree! They loved creating one of the many insects, animals, birds, mammals, and reptiles that share this diverse habitat.

 One of our reading lessons was to notice and note words that identify the movement of time in a fiction text. The kids found a plethera of examples! These included "later that afternoon,"  "the next morning,"  "after school that day," etc. It was great practice!

 We enjoyed watching the 4th grade musical! What a terrific celebration of music and talent!

 It was time for Dominic's star student presentation! We were happy to welcome his mom and dad to the classroom to show us his experiment (making a screwdriver magnetic!) and sharing a funny story about playing rock, paper scissors.

 Halloween was a blast this year! We started out our fall fun with a parade through the school, then we burst through the front school doors into the fresh fall air. It was so much fun to see all of the parents and families lining the sidewalks admiring all of the kids' adorable and interesting costumes!

Many many thanks to our room moms for making this day so much fun for the children! There were so many fun games and countless prizes! We couldn't have done it without Mrs. Fronimos, Mrs. Yakoubov, Mrs. Bradtke, and Mr. Lokun. Thank you for spending the afternoon with us!

 Another reading skill we focused on was making connections to the text. We realized that making a connection to another text, to our life, or to the world helps to deepen our understanding! We thought about the difference between shallow connections (I have a cat, too!) and deep connections (I also like to spend time with my grandma. She gets lonely sometimes and I think it makes her happy to see me, just like Sammie would go and visit his older neighbor, Miss Ellen.)

Another star student celebration! We watched as Jayla and her dad transferred magnetic energy from a magnet through several paperclips! We could see where the transfer stopped when the last paperclip fell off the chain.  Then, they shared a cute story about a mama monkey who told her baby monkeys to put their books away and go to sleep. Then they caught their mom reading in bed, and made her go to sleep! It was such a cute story!