This Week in 2nd Grade

Everyone looks great for the music concert.

 Here we are practicing counting money and what it takes to figure out the total of two prices that add up to more than $1.00.

One of the beautiful drawings from art class

We are such busy writers!

We have been using centers as a means to review concepts for the week. Here, two students are playing an antonym matching game.

We also had games that focused on compound words.

We read many poems this week with topics such as winter, Santa, snow, December, etc. After seeing some models of great poetry, we came up with a few winter poems of our own.
Check out a few of them.

Week of Dec 17-21, 2012

Language Arts

Reading: sequencing, realistic fiction, appropriate phrasing

Story of the Week: Rose and Blanca

Writing: realistic fiction

Conventions: review of verbs
Phonics: long /i/ using i, igh, ie, y
Spelling Words: find, child, sky, bright, wild, fly, right, flight, spider, cry, blind, myself

Math

-administer unit 3 math test (Tuesday)
- introduce time

Science
-animal habitats
-food chains

This Week in 2nd Grade

Our Pirate Themed Literacy Night

We had a wonderful time celebrating literacy by taking our students on a treasure hunt. We learned many useful comprehension skills along the way! Here are a few of us teachers in our pirate garb!

Reindeer Verbs

Tagxedo is a computer program used to create word clouds in different shapes. All we had to do was create and type a list of words, in this case we did verbs that relate to reindeer. Tagxedo arranged them in this unique way to take the shape of a reindeer. 

Silent reading time

Adding 2-digit numbers

Busy mathematicians 

We have had the pleasure of having a junior field student from NSU observing our class the last few weeks. She present a lesson on animal groups during one of her last days in our classroom. Students were able to bring stuffed animals from home. We talked about our animals and how we could group them based on their characteristics. It was a blast!

Week of Dec. 10-14, 2012

Language Arts

Reading: compare and contrast, antonyms, expression

Story of the Week: Anansi Goes Fishing

Writing: Narrative Poems

Conventions: verbs for past, present, and future
Phonics: compound words
Spelling Words: basketball, someone, weekend, something, birthday, riverbank, bathtub, backyard, driveway, bedtime, raindrop, mailbox

Math

-represent 2- and 3-digit money amounts using dollars, dimes, and pennies
-apply addition concepts and strategies to real-world situations
-Add coins to amounts between $1.00 and $2.00.

Science
-animal babies
-animal adaptations

*Reminder: May Overby Elementary will present their Music Program on Tuesday Dec. 11th at 9:30am and again at 1:30pm

This Week in 2nd Grade

Science

Our Seed Study

 We studied grapefruit, mango, and apple seeds

We recorded our observations in words and in pictures.

We are reading every chance we get and anywhere we can, even if that means in our lockers! 

LOVE IT!

Sign Language

This month's sign language class focused on words we associate with winter and the holidays. 

We even practiced full sentences!

 Math: Estimation Day

Our math centers this week focused on estimating and rounding.

 After we made our estimations, we counted the exact total. This group organized their unifix cubes into groups of 10 to get a more accurate count.

We practiced our rounding skills by wearing the numbers and determining "who" we would round to.

 Writing

We worked on persuasive writing this week. The cute little reindeer are holding our reindeer job applications. We tried our best to persuade Santa to hire us!

Here are some of our finished products.

Physical Education

Gym class proved to be a great time again this week

 Conventions

We introduced verbs this week, and I have never seen students so excited to learn about them. 

We even made up a song to help us remember our linking verbs!

Week of December 3-7, 2012

Language Arts

Reading: drawing conclusions and visualizing

Story of the Week: Dear Juno by Soyung Pak

Writing: friendly letters

Conventions: verbs with singular and plural nouns, prefixes
Phonics: long /o/ using o, oa, ow
Spelling Words: goat, hold, show, most, bowl, float, toast, ago, open, told, toad, slow

Math

-solve 2-digit addition problems using the Show All Totals method and New Groups Below method

- choose most efficient method when solving 2-digit addition exercises

-differentiate tens and ones 

Science

-animal groups

This Week (and a half) in 2nd Grade

Aqua Sand

Aqua sand is a "magical" sand that never gets wet! The sand clumps together when in the water. When it is taken out of the water, it returns to its original form! In science, we made predictions about what would happen to the sand when we placed it in the water. We also recorded our observations during the experiment. We had a great time, and the students had the chance to be introduced to the scientific method.

Show and Share

As part of our classroom management plan, students can earn privileges for good behavior. This student earned a show and share card, so he brought a crocodile skull to show his friends at school!

Another student shows the class her interactive story book and puppy. The puppy is a character in the book and reads along with parts of the story!

We had an awesome time playing games and having treats at a Fall party on Wednesday!

We also had the chance to visit a 5th grade classroom and view the projects they created while studying Native American tribes.

Writing

We made these turkeys in writing class. The stories on their bellies are titled 

"How to Help a Turkey Escape Thanksgiving Dinner."

 "We all know contractions!"

We have been reviewing contractions this last week. Songs can really help us remember important concepts, so we have been singing and dancing to our contraction song for a few days now. 

WE LOVE IT!

Math

 Students demonstrate how base ten blocks can help us represent numbers. We are also using them to add 2 and 3 digit numbers together. 

Pie Throwing

Our student council raised money for the Wounded Warrior Project by selling tickets for a chance to throw a pie at your teacher!  Here is a clean picture before any pies were thrown.

Here is an after shot!

Week of November 26-30, 2012

This Week's Objectives

Language Arts

Reading: author's purpose, compare and contrast, fluency

Conventions: verbs

Phonics: long /e/ using e, ee, ea, and y

Spelling Words: read, feet, easy, deep, seat, party, wheel, leave, windy, sleep, teeth, team

Writing: compare/ contrast, fantasy, voice, using quotation marks

Math

-rounding to the nearest 10

-adding 2 digit numbers to 100

-estimating

Science

-seed study

This Week in 2nd Grade

Silent Reading Time Gets Silly!

 Some students pick silly reading positions, but we don't mind! They enjoying mixing it up a little bit by reading under the table, sharing a chair with a friend, or relaxing with their feet up!

Building Muscles

Gym class this week was a blast. The second graders also worked on jumping and tumbling.

Our spooky story contest winner shares her piece with the class. 

We really enjoy listening to different stories our friends are working on.

3D Patterns

Election Day

We had a ton of fun learning about the voting process. Most students said they felt prepared when casting their votes on election day, but still were a little bit nervous.

Here we all are on election day! 

Veterans Day Program at May Overby

Beautiful Pheasants

Me on the Map

We read Me on the Map this week by Joan Sweeney for social studies. This created great discussion about where we actually stand on the map. What street, city, state, country, continent, planet do we call home?

 Here is a close up of our project we called "My Place in this World"