Language Arts

Reading (review week): dictionary skills, cause and effect, fact and opinion, prefixes, suffixes, 

Writing: Humorous Fiction, continued

Conventions: contractions and pronouns
Phonics: suffixes -ly, -ful, -er, -or
prefixes un-, pre-, re-, dis-
vowel patterns aw, au, au(gh), al
consonant digraphs ph, gh, ck, ng
Spelling Words:
talk, because, August, caught, draw, walk, chalk, auto, taught, thaw, fault, launch

Math

-Making and justifying generalizations about adding even and odd numbers

-Relating unknown combinations to known combinations

-Using cubes and the number line to show how addition combinations are related

-Developing fluency with the plus 9 combinations

This Week in 2nd Grade

Social Studies

We have spent the last week and a half learning about our seven continents. We learned many facts about each continent and read books like the ones pictured below. To end the unit, we made paper mache globes. As of Thursday, our balloons have been completely covered with paper mache and will be drying over the Easter break. We plan to paint them and glue our continents on this week. Thank you to all of the families who were able to donate newspapers or their time to help with the project.

We have also been studying sharks and whales. The students collected information on both topics and chose one in which to write a report. We have been busy typing these reports in computer class. We keep all of our information in neatly decorated folders like the ones pictured below.

Congratulations to our Jump Rope contest winners!

We studied words with the vowel patterns "au", "augh", and "aw."

If students are fast finishers and have a few minutes to spare, they may play our new game, Boggle. They must use the board to create words out of letters that are displayed on the Boggle Board (our door). One letter must touch the next in order to make a word. Students have shown they can put together some pretty big words.

Math

Students use square pieces of paper in order to show fourths. We studied fractions for most of the last two weeks. We studied halves, thirds, and fourths of a whole. We also studied halves, thirds, and fourths of a group.

Here, students are determining thirds of a group. For example, if three children share 27 cookies, how many would each child get?

Week of March 31-April 4, 2014

Language Arts

Question of the Week: How can we be responsible animal owners?

Reading: plot and theme, classifying and categorizing

Story of the Week: Bad Dog, Dodger! by Barbara Abercrombie

Writing: Expository Nonfiction Writing: Research reports on sharks/whales

Conventions: using "I" and "me"

Phonics: silent letter combinations (kn, wr, gn, mb)
Spelling Words:

knock, sign, knee, wrong, write, climb, wrap, wren, gnat, lamb, comb, knob

This Week in 2nd Grade

Science and Writing

We are having our very own version of Shark Week. Second graders are learning how to take notes on nonfiction resources. We have read online articles and many books from the library to help us learn about sharks. We are compiling and organizing our facts this week and using that information to create reports.

Science

We ended our unit on the eye this week by dissecting a sheep's eye. We had fun learning about how the eye works and all about eye safety. It was a great experience, and I think the students enjoyed the opportunity as much as I did when I was in 2nd grade.

Math

We created special dice like the one pictured below. Students paired up and took turns adding 10 or 100 or subtracting 10 or 100 from a given number depending on what they rolled. This was a fun way to practice these facts. Students recorded their rolls, equations, and new start numbers using the form below.

 

Students played the game with partners.

We began our math unit on fractions. Students are using our geoblocks to show the many ways we can show half.

Reading

We absolutely love having our grandma volunteer in the room. Here, she is reading with one of our guided reading groups.

 Our second graders are so busy reading, nobody noticed I snapped a few quick pictures!

 We studied words that have prefixes. This group was assigned the prefix pre-. They came up with a list of words using the prefix and created a flower, displaying their words on each petal. 

Literacy Night

A big thanks goes out to all of the families that came and participated in our school's literacy night. Families had fun as they traveled room to room participating in different literacy activities.

Week of March 24-28, 2014

Language Arts

Question of the Week: How can we be responsible community members?

Reading: prefixes, cause and effect, visualizing, dictionary skills

Story of the Week: Carl the Complainer by Michelle Knudsen

Writing: Expository Nonfiction Writing: Research reports on sharks/whales

Conventions: singular and plural pronouns
Phonics: prefixes un-, re-, pre-, and dis-
Spelling Words:
unsafe, preheat, rerun, disappear, unlock, discolor, rewind, 
unpack, unplug, regroup, preschool, disagree

Math
~plus and minus 10 or 100
~reading and writing 3-digit numbers
~using place value to find and compare 3-digit numbers
~understanding halves

This Week in 2nd Grade

Language Arts

This week we learned about firefighters and read the story Fire Fighter by Angela Royston. To end our week, we invited fire fighters and paramedics to our classroom. We learned about fire safety, saw a fire fighter's uniform, and viewed the fire truck and paramedic vehicle.

Math

Students often gather together in groups for a quick math discussion.

Students are working on reading and writing numbers 200-400. After writing 10 numbers, students trade papers with their partners to help them look for mistakes. 

Science

In science this week, we continue to learn about our eyes and how they work. We studied the purpose of our pupils. As lights are turned on and off, these students watch as their partner's pupils adjust to the light.

Writing

After our writing project, students get a chance to share their writing with their classmates.

Thank You!

Thank you to everyone for the well wishes as we welcomed our new baby, Micah, into the world! The time at home with him is a wonderful gift. 

I will be returning to school on March 12th. I look forward to seeing everyone again and getting back to updating the blog weekly!