Week of September 30-October 4, 2013

Language Arts (Unit 1 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:

~Solve addition and subtraction story problems

~use the + sign and the - sign to correctly represent situations

~practice doubles fluency

~identify names and attributes of 2D and 3D shapes

~sort 3d shapes using geoblocks

~draw 2D and 3D shapes

Social Studies:

~personal time lines

This Week in 2nd Grade

Math

We are practicing our doubles addition combinations by playing a game called Double It. Students draw a card, record its double, and make a table to show which numbers appear most often. 

Our discovery? Odd numbers are never the answer to a doubles addition combination!

 We have many resources and manipulatives available in the classroom to help us solve math stories (aka story problems). Here students are using connecting cubes to add numbers larger than 10.

 

This image was flashed on the SmartBoard for 3 seconds only. Students were to figure out how many dots were on the screen. There isn't enough time to count them all, of course, so we came up with other strategies. They understood that the first two ten-frames had 10 dots total and that adding 4 more dots to 10 was easy. 14 DOTS!

Language Arts

We are practicing scenes from a drama this week in language arts. The play we were reading from here is called The Strongest One.

Two students enjoy reading a chapter book together!

These boys just finished sharing the sentences they wrote in language arts.

 This student uses the SmartBoard to correctly match our vocabulary words with their definitions.

Week of September 23-27, 2013

Language Arts

Question of the week: How does exploration help us find answers?

Story of the week: The Strongest One
Comprehension Skill: understanding the features of a drama

Phonics Skill:  consonant digraphs

Spelling Words: that, wish, patch, when, what, math, them, shape, whale, itch, chase, bunch, gone together, often

Conventions: Imperative and Exclamatory Sentences

Writing: Play Scene

Math

~retelling and modeling the action of subtraction
~subtracting from 30

~recording strategies for solving + and - story problems

~solving story problems

~doubling a quantity

~using rectangular arrays to model doubling

~working on fluency with doubles addition combinations

This Week in 2nd Grade

Math

Number of the day: 15
On this particular day, we worked on making 15. However, we were asked to make a combination of 10 first and then add 5 more to make 15. Here is an example of the many ways the number 15 can be broken apart!

 

How many pockets do we have altogether in our class? A few weeks ago we collected our pocket data by giving every student the amount of cubes equal to that of the number of pockets they were wearing. Then, we counted up all of our cubes. This week we collected data in a much different way. We listed everyone's name and number of pockets. 

What's the best way to add up 23 numbers? 

Find combinations of 10 of course!

Our total this week? 67!

The first week we did the experiment, we had only 33 pockets.

Our conclusion was that cooler weather means more pockets!

G.O. Books

Our G.O. (Getting Organized) books not only serve as ways to keep all of our school "stuff" organized, they also serve as dividers during tests.

Gym Class

2nd graders are working on catching and throwing skills in gym class this week.

Writing

This week we worked on brief reports. We researched plants and animals of the desert by reading nonfiction books, researching deserts on the computer, and watching a short video. Our reports turned out great!

Snack and Spelling
Students here are showing their multitasking skills as they eat a snack while studying for their spelling test.

One student shows her pictures and other information she found on the desert. She did all of this extra research at home! It was great to see her share her findings with her friends at school.

Desk Fairy

We had quite a few students who earned a "Desk Fairy" prize for having neatly organized desks!

Hall of Fame

Outside our room we have a Hall of Fame wall showcasing some of our latest writing projects. Here are our realistic fiction stories with the theme of camping.

Henry and Mudge

All of our Henry and Mudge stories are complete!

Week of September 16-20, 2013

Language Arts

Question of the Week: What can learn by exploring the desert?

Story of the Week: A Walk in the Desert

Comprehension Skills:  Main Idea and Details

Phonics: inflected endings -ed and -ing
Spelling Words: dropped, dropping, excited, exciting, lifted, lifting, hugged, hugging, smiled, smiling, talked, talking

Conventions: declarative and interrogative sentences

Writing: brief report

Math

- finding missing addends to make 10

-recording equations

-develop fluency with numbers that make 10 and additions sentences with +1 and +2

-setting time one hour ahead

-visualizing, retelling, and modeling additions situations

-making predictions about data

-counting by groups of 10

Science

-exploring the desert

-habits of desert animals

Social Studies

-communities and families

-fluency with vocabulary: urban, suburban, rural, timeline, guardian

This Week in 2nd Grade

Henry and Mudge

We love the Henry and Mudge books by Cynthia Rylant.

We made Mudge writing projects!

We read lots of Henry and Mudge books.

...and even more!

We used this poster board to come up with words that described our favorite dog, Mudge. We used the board to help us use creative words for our writing project.

Math

This week students learned a math game called Make 10. We used numbered cards to collect and record those that make 10.

Another math game that helps us learn our addition facts that make 10 is this game, called Tens Go Fish!

Guided Reading

Our guided reading groups are taking off. When help is available, we have leaders in almost every group. Sometimes groups are asked to lead themselves. The students this year have proved they are very responsible and can do this with ease!

Art Class

We learned great drawing techniques in art class this week.

Week of Sept 9-13, 2013

Language Arts

Question of the Week:What can we discover by exploring nature?

Phonics: consonant blends

Spelling Words: stop, strap, nest, hand, brave, ask, clip, stream, mask, twin, breeze, state, couldn't, live, build

Conventions: predicate of the sentence

Story of the Week: Henry and Mudge and the Starry Night

Comprehension Skills: plot, setting, and character

Writing: realistic fiction

Math

- combining two quantities up to 45

~compare two amounts to find the difference

~fluency with +1 and +2 addition facts

~coin equivalencies

~finding the missing addend to make 10

Science

-exploring nature

PLEASE NOTE:

~Picture Day is on Wednesday.

~Please remember to send your conference scheduling notes back to school with your child. Thanks!

This Week in 2nd Grade

 Math Games

We learned a new math game this week called Plus 1 Plus 2 Bingo. This game focuses on fluency with plus 1 and plus 2 addition facts. It seems to be that we are professionals already!

Wonderful Experience

 Our second butterfly, Cupcake, emerges from the chrysalis. The butterfly stays here for about 15 minutes as it dries off and pumps blood through the wings.

Bye, Bye, Butterfly

 Once Cupcake had moved away from the shell of the chrysalis, we took the cage outside and let her free!

 Expository Nonfiction Writing

Here students are working on their expository nonfiction writings about space, astronauts, and the space shuttle. We use our spelling dictionaries often to practice those hard-to-spell words!

Art

Our 2nd graders are working on using watercolor and color pencil to create these pictures of apples.