Week of Oct. 1-4

This Week's Objectives...

Language Arts (Unit Review):
Reading- character, setting, main idea and details, facts and details, alphabetizing
Conventions- subjects and predicates, declarative, interrogative, imperative and exclamatory sentences
Phonics- review of short vowels, long vowels (VCe pattern), consonant blends, inflected endings, and consonant digraphs

Math:
- comparing two numbers using the less than or greater than sign
- ordering three numbers at a time
- inventing strategies for adding three numbers
- unit review for unit 1 math test scheduled for Thursday

Social Studies:
- living in communities
- using grid maps
- communities large and small
- customs and traditions

This Week in 2nd Grade

Equation Chain

This is the longest equation chain I have ever seen! Each student wrote their own equation equaling 6 to make our chain true. We thought a picture in front of our May Overby Elementary sign would be pretty cool since we couldn't all fit in one long line in our classroom.

 Here are a couple of close-ups of our chain.

Daily 5 update

This is our Daily 5 "Wall", aka our heating and cooling unit. Here we display reminders of rules and strategies  for independent reading and writing. We did begin our "Listen to Reading" portion of the Daily 5 this week. Right now, I will be reading to the students to fulfill this portion. Hopefully we will be adding the option of listening to taped stories on a cd player with multiple headsets. I introduced our novel study, Meet Addy (from the American Girl collection) on Friday. They are VERY interested in her story, which takes place during the Civil War.

Images of the World 
Our assembly last week brought us to China! We were able to view Chinese culture through photography. 

Computer Lab

We are busy at work in the computer lab. We have been using computer time to practice our math skills using the program IXL. I will be sending out a letter later this week on how you can access the program at home for addition practice. As a class, we have answered more that 2,000 math problems!

Sign Language Class

Miss Roggow shared her knowledge of sign language with us last week as well. We have arranged for her to visit us once a month for a 30 minute sign language class. She helped us understand what it might be like to have a hearing impairment and how to go about communicating with someone who does. She also taught us the sign for our names and many animals. Miss Roggow is in our room three times a week to help with guided reading groups and writing workshop. We know her well and appreciate all of her help!

Here students are demonstrating the sign for "happy ape". We also practiced "angry ape," which was a ton of fun too!

How much are we reading at home?

Each day, reading logs (blue sheets in our G.O. books) are sent home. It is recommended that we read at least 15-20 minutes a night at home. The students have done a pretty good job of logging their minutes. This picture is of our display in the hallway reminding us of how many minutes we have read as a class so far. We are now at 3,500 minutes! Great job, 2nd graders!

This Week in 2nd Grade

Beautiful apple drawings from art class

We are working very hard on gaining independence when it comes to these areas:

Reading to self

Writing

Reading to someone

This week we introduced the "Read to Someone" portion of our Daily 5 approach to independence. It takes a lot of hard work and practice to be able read to someone successfully without anything else getting in our way and without needing help from a teacher. We focus on these rules: 1. Get started right away. 2. Read the whole time. 3. Stay in one spot. 4. EEKK (sit Elbow to Elbow and Knee to Knee) 5. Read from one book and take turns by page.

 We also discussed what to do if our partner needs help with a word. We say "Coaching or More Time?" We can offer help with a word if our partner asks for a coach, or we can wait patiently if our partner just needs more time figuring out a word. We are also learning strategies to use if neither of the partners knows the words. For example we can reread the sentence or we can read the word in chunks.

 Next week we will be introducing ways to increase comprehension.

  Partners are selected by the teacher according to reading level.

This week we wrote a three paragraph report on our neighborhoods. Monday we practiced writing a report together about our playground. What do we see? What do we hear? What and who lives here? 

We are now using math mountain cards to help us learn our addition and subtraction facts where a teen number is the total. Here a student is making her own math mountain card. The teen total is written at the top of the mountain with the two parts at the bottom points of the triangle. 

With partners or small groups, one student will cover one angle with his/her thumb while the other students guesses what number is under the thumb. This gives the students another mode of practice besides the traditional flash card.

 Here a student uses our number line to solve a math mountain fact.

This week we introduced our fast finisher activities. If a student is completely finished with all assignments, they may chose to read in the book nook or complete one of our fast finisher activities. This week's activities were all based on increasing comprehension skills. Each of our fast finisher baggies had a short story to read and comprehension questions to complete with a partner. Here the students demonstrate one of those activities.

 Our neighborhood reports are finished! Getting twenty 2nd graders to write a three paragraph report was by no means a piece of cake, but with help from our reading tutors and Grandma we were able to conference with every single student and publish our reports by Friday! Most of the students even had time to draw a picture of their neighborhood to go along with their report. Overall, I was very proud of the whole class for their hard work.

Music class looks like a blast! Our second graders turned into a marching band!

Week of Sept. 24-28

Objectives by Subject

Language Arts:
Reading- features of a drama, developing characters, building fluency
Conventions- imperative and exclamatory sentences
Writing- writing a play, developing charcters
Phonics- consonant digraphs
Spelling Words- that, wish, patch, when, what, math, them, shape, whale, itch, chase, bunch

Math:
- understanding the equals sign
- recognizing the symbol for "is not equal to"
-  writing equation chains in vertical form
- creating and solving story problems

Social Studies:
-communities, rules, and laws

Week of Sept. 17-21, 2012

Objectives by Subject

Language Arts:
Reading- non-fiction, main idea and details
Conventions- interrogative and declarative sentences
Writing- organizing our "My Neighborhood" reports into paragraphs
Phonics- inflected endings
Spelling words: dropped, dropping, excited, exciting, lifted, lifting, hugged, hugging, smiled, smiling, talked, talking, early, warm, water

Math:
- using a number line to solve addition and subtraction problems
- using math mountain cards to solve addition and subtraction problems
- making a ten to find an unknown partner

Science:
- exploring the desert

This Week in 2nd Grade

 Do you have a writer's eye? 

Here are a few reminders to everyone of the important rules of writing. Are you remembering your capital letters and punctuation? Are you using the right size spaces? It is always nice to have a model to refer to.

Our classroom rules. 

We have talked about these quite extensively and believe that they are important to the success of our classroom. We have some hand motions and even songs for a few of the rules. So far, we have been doing a pretty good job of keeping these in mind throughout the day.

 MATH

We have been working on making the number 10 in as many ways as possible.

Making Change

Buy an item at our class "rummage sale" with a dime and make the change.

Making a 10 to help solve problems when the answer is greater than 10.

For example: Betty holds 8 fingers up, and Jan holds 7 fingers up to represent the problem 8 + 7. Betty is only two numbers away from making a 10, so she borrows 2 of Jan's 7 fingers. Now Betty has 10 and Jan has 5!!! 10+5=15 is an easy way to solve 8 + 7.

Using a number line

 Take a look at the list everyone helped come up with.

Reading Groups and Partner Reading

Writing

We read and wrote realistic fiction stories this week with the theme of camping.  Here is our anchor chart showing a web of camping words that we referred to throughout the week.

Our "happy camper" stories turned out pretty awesome!

Week of Sept. 10-14

Language Arts:
Comprehension Skill: Plot, Setting, and Character

Phonics Skill: Consonant Blends

Conventions: Predicates  

Writing: Realistic Fiction

Spelling words: stop, strap, nest, hand, brave, ask, slip, stream, mask, twin, breeze, state
Story of the Week: Henry and Mudge and the Starry Night

Math:                                                         Science:                     

-working with teen numbers                        - exploring nature

-comparing finger, written,                         
and mental strategies of making a ten
-counting on to solve addition, mystery addition,
and subtraction problems

This Week in 2nd Grade

 BREAKING NEWS: We had a few students bring butterflies to school over the last few weeks in baggies or envelopes. We examined them closely and learned a lot from them. Friday was a different story. Again, a student brought a butterfly to school, carefully packed in his backpack. What he didn't realize is that it was ALIVE!! When he brought it out of his schoolbag, the little thing flew around the room causing mass chaos! What a crazy and fun memory for everyone!

 Our hallway wall is starting to fill up with writing projects! We wrote nonfiction stories about butterflies last week. We are now getting used to the writing process and understanding the steps we need to follow to make our writing the best it can be.

 Our word wall is also filling up as we learn more high frequency words and vocabulary words. Here the students are recording our word wall words into their G.O. books! G.O. stands for Getting Organized. We bring our G.O. books to and from school everyday. It is filled with the things we need daily: Reading Log, Daily Focus Activities, Spelling Dictionary, Homework Folder, etc. All of our 2nd graders have remembered to bring them back to school EVERYDAY! Now that's an awesome accomplishment! Way to go!

 A Great Metamorphosis!

Here is a work sample of our study of life cycles.

 and another

 Our nonfiction butterfly stories turned out pretty well. We have been studying butterflies for quite some time now and our 2nd graders are becoming experts. Some chose to write about random facts that they found interesting and some students chose to write about the life cycle of a butterfly.

This picture is actually from last week, but I forgot to add it then. Here students are working on the monarch art projects that are now beautifully displayed in our classroom.

A tiny peek at music class

In math this week, we studied break aparts of numbers 10 and under. Here a student demonstrates and records one way we can break apart the number 7. 

Last, but not least, this is Grandma hard at work. We have a volunteer grandma who comes to our classroom for an hour everyday to help out with anything we need. She puts away mail, makes copies, corrects papers, meets with guided reading groups, etc. We love her and appreciate her a ton already! Thanks Grandma!!

Week of Sept. 4-7, 2012

Language Arts:
Comprehension Skill: recognizing the difference between main idea and detail.  

Phonics Skill: reading and spelling long vowel words 

Conventions: identifying the subject of a sentence   

Writing: expository non-fiction

Spelling words: page, nose, space, size, fine, mice, late, huge, blaze, race, rice, vote

Math:                                                         Science:                     

-breaking apart numbers under 10                - studying life cycles

-counting on to find a total                            - exploring space

2nd Grade Happenings

 Watch us FLY! We wrote a few of our goals for the year on two balloons like the ones above. I asked the kids to pose for a picture as if they were being lifted up in the air by gigantic balloons. They probably thought that it was a crazy request, especially on the first day of school, but they listened well and our projects turned out awesome!

 I got a chance to jump into the art room to see what our second grade class was up to!

 One student explains his thinking on the smart board as we discuss the multiple ways math stories can be solved!

 We worked in groups of two to represent the numbers we see in math stories by using real objects.

 Here we are using secret code cards to make a teen number. The students were challenged to make the number fourteen without using their 1 card and their 4 card together. We had a few that realized if you layer the 10 card and the 4 card, you can make 14.

  What an awesome discovery and a deeper understanding that the number 14 has a 10 hidden inside of it!   "SO THAT'S WHAT THE 1 IN 14 STANDS FOR!"

Well, I must report some sad news. : ( Crawly Junior and Little Fella (our class caterpillars) will not be making their transition into butterflies. Although they did both begin to make their chrysalises, they did not have the energy to complete the process. The picture above is of a chrysalis made by a caterpillar in one of the other 2nd grade classrooms! We appreciated the chance to visit their classroom and see their awesome chrysalis.