Happy Thanksgiving!

 Hello!

It's hard to believe this is our last week of school before the Thanksgiving Break. Read on to find out what we have been working on in 2nd grade!

Grammar:

We practiced identifying and writing commands (imperative sentences) and exclamatory sentences!

Reading:

Skills we've been working on include:

- Making predictions while reading "The Leaky Robot"

- Using dialogue in a story to consider the characters' point of view while reading "Abigail, Enough!"

- noting the special features found when reading a drama or play, and comparing them to a fictional text while reading "The Lost Sock."  The children enjoyed reading an additional play with a small group of their classmates. It was so much fun watching them work together!

- indentifying figurative language including idioms, personification, similes, alliteration, and onomatopoeia. These figurative elements make the texts we read more fun, vivid, interesting, and artistic!

Writing:

After editing our work to add description and sight and sound words, we shared our "Fun Time Outdoors" story with a friend. Partners shared what they liked or what they learned after listening to their friend's story.

Math:  

- Solving story problems using bar models

- comparing two sets 

- identifying when to add and when to subtract

Social Studies:

- discussing communities and how they work

- learning about the history of the Pilgrims and the 1st Thanksgiving

    - the children have been asked to decide if they would have boarded the Mayflower back in 1620, and give 3 reasons why, or why not!

Word study:

- sorting words by their number of syllables

Veterans Day:

We focused on this important day in the United States on Thursday. We learned about the different branches of the military, and why this day is such a meaningful day to Americans. The children also enjoyed making cards for our Veterans.

Upcoming Dates:

11/16 - PTA Dine-Out at Portillo's in Rolling Meadows

11/19 - Deadline to order Cocoa Bombs for ABC/25 Fundraiser

11/19 - Report Cards emailed to parents

11/22 - 11/26 - Thanksgiving Break, No School

11/29 - School resumes

12/1 - 12/4 - Pick up pre-ordered ABC/25 Fundraiser Cocoa Bombs from Berry Yo

12/3 - ABC/25 Get Burbed Challenge T-Shirt Design Contest entries due

Reminders:

As the weather turns colder, please be sure your child is dressed for the dropping temperatures. We will go outside every day that the temperature feels at or above 0 degrees. Remember hats, gloves, and warm coats. Please LABEL these items with your child's name.  On the days that your child brings snow gear, please remember to send a change of shoes for them to wear indoors. We have PE on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so be sure to have a pair of gym shoes on those days! It's always a good idea to keep an extra pair of gloves and socks in your child's backpack in case they get wet during the day.

Riley and Shane were phenomenal star students! We enjoyed learning more about these terrific 2nd graders during their star student week. 

 Hello!

As usual, the kids have been hard at work in 2nd grade! Read on to find out the latest happenings in 2-2.

Reading: The children have been working to make connections to deepen their understanding while reading. We have learned about text-text, text-self, and text-world connections.  We have also been looking for clues about the author's tone in a text. The author might use specific words, punctuation marks, and illustrations to convey a tone in the story. The author's tone creates a mood in the reader! This can be sadness, happiness, frustration, anger, or silliness!

Math:  We have moved on to Chapter 4 which focuses on bar models. We are reading story problems carefully to determine what information we can pull from the text. Sometimes it will be combining two groups of items (adding) sometimes it will be comparing two groups of items (subtracting) and sometimes we will be given a total number of items, and a group, and it is our job to figure out how many are in the remaining group. Drawing a bar model helps us to visualize what is happening in the story problem, and then solve.

Science: We finished up our studies of various habitats. Our last investigation involved learning about pollination. The children watched as a bee landed on a flower, bumping into the pollen dusters as it headed to the center of the flower to get some nectar. The bee then flew off to another flower and spread the pollen from the previous flower to the stamen of the next flower, mixing the pollen from both flowers together. We learned that insects and animals (including monkeys!) help plant life to prosper.

Social studies:  We began learning about communities. We learned that communities provide people the opportunities to live, play, work, and solve problems. The children created beautiful community maps that contained examples of each of these!

Writing:  The children finished their scary stories, adding interesting sight and sound words to make them very exciting to listen to and to read. The children also wrote notes of appreciation to our Veterans in honor of the upcoming Veterans Day on November 11th.

Handwriting:  We continue to learn proper letter formation, including size and space on the page. The children practiced writing a paragraph in their handwriting books this week beginning with an indented first line, a main idea, and at least 3 details. We noticed that the first word of each sentence, as well as the names of cities and countries are capitalized. We made sure to end each sentence with a period/punctuation mark, too!

Pen Pals:  Our pen pals are inspiring us to write some fantastic letters! This month, we added a turkey bookmark for each of our penpals in our mailing. The children enjoyed adding a turkey joke to the back of their letter, too! We are having some fun with our friends across the country in California. We learned that many of them live in Hollywood! We are looking forward to our next response from our 2nd grade pals! The children are snapping pictures and posting their letters (both written and received) on Seesaw so you can follow along!

Thank you for continuing to write to the children in our Friday journals! Our writing skills continue to grow with all of this authentic practice! We love sharing our learning with you!

 

Upcoming dates:

11/10 - Birthday Books for November Birthdays

11/12 - End of First Trimester

11/16 - PTA Dine-Out at Portillo's

11/19 - Report Cards emailed to parents

11/22 - 11/26 - Thanksgiving Break, No School

11/29 - School resumes

12/3 - ABC/25 Get Burbed Challenge T-Shirt Design Contest entries due

Happy Halloween!

 It was so great meeting with all of you during our parent-teacher conferences last week! It's clear that the children have supportive families that care about their learning. Thank you for all of the wonderful conversations! 

Reading: 

We are enjoying our fiction reading unit. The children compared/contrasted The Wolf's Story vs. Little Red Riding Hood A Newfangled Prairie Tale. As a class, we looked carefully for similarities and differences regarding the characters, setting, problem, events, and solution of each story. The students went to compare the story of Cinderella with Cinderella and the Vampire Prince so they could practice this skill independently.  We also took a close look at the journey the characters go on in traditional fairy tales. We read a Norwegian folktale called "The Most Valuable Treasure." We thought about how the main character, Halvor, went on a personal journey. He changed during the story, realizing that he is his mother's greatest treasure. Thank you for re-reading and discussing this story with the children at home. We went on to analyze the character of the Wolf in The Wolf's Story. We learned that characters may change as they go through a journey in the story. The change may affect their age, personal appearance, their actions, beliefs, or what they say. Sometimes, characters in a story don't change at all. We noticed the Wolf did not learn a lesson in this story. Nothing changed for him, except for his injured tail at the end.

Writing: 

We read a "scary" story called Harry and the Whatzit. We jotted down the scary words we heard while reading. Our writers then opened up their writing notebooks and wrote down some scary sentences that they might use in a scary story. We are focusing on beginning with a capital letter, ending with punctuation, and sounding out all of the words that we write carefully. The children began writing their own scary stories!

The kids also had some fun writing a "For Sale" Ad for a Haunted House! We loved stretching our imagination to think about how to sell something so spooky! :)

Word study:

We practiced identifying nouns that "own" something, and adding the possessive 's to show ownership. We also worked to split two-syllable words that have double consonant in the middle of the word, in between their double consonant. The children have been encouraged to use their personal word wall during writing that they keep inside their desk. A dictionary/glossary full of alphabetized word wall words was shared with the children on Seesaw to be used as a resource to increase our spelling accuracy.

Math:

We have been working on subtracting 3 digit numbers within 1,000. The children have been checking to if there's "more on the top" or "more on the floor" to decide if they should regroup or not. The children took a review test in their math workbook, we reviewed it together, and then they took their chapter 3 test. You should find a Chapter 4 parent letter inside your child's red home folder.

Science:

We changed our focus to plants and how they grow. We learned about seed dispersal, and how seeds can spread with the help of wind, water, and animals. We will learn about pollination tomorrow before we shift gears and move into our social studies curriculum.

Upcoming Dates to remember:

10/31 - Last day for 5% off Yearbook price

11/1: Math and Reading Homework logs are due! They can also be brought to school on Tuesday.

11/1:  New intervention cycle begins. Changes to student support services (that have already been shared with parents) go into effect this week.

11/4 - PTA Reflections Art Program entries due

11/4 - Chess Club (pre-registration required)

11/5 - Deadline for Veterans Day RSVP

Have a fun and safe Halloween!