October 25th

 Writing

Each week the students write "Weekend News" which allows them to tell about their weekend and also gives me a weekly writing sample to share how they grow as writers throughout the year.

I try to let the kids share their Weekend News with one or two kids each week so they have practice reading their writing to someone else.

This week we also finished publishing our fiction stories. The students had to add covers to their books so we took some time to explore different books and what we noticed they included on the covers. 

We then shared our stories with a 1st grade class. They loved hearing our stories and the 2nd graders loved sharing them!

We continued our study of nouns with the difference between proper nouns and common nouns. This combines our learning of parts of speech with what words should be capitalized. The students then created a "Proper Noun Parade" where they drew pictures of proper nouns and wrote sentences about them.

The Titanic was made of metal.

We also spent some time this past week with end marks. The students found examples of end marks in books and then sorted them into these 4 groups.

We discussed when we would use type of end mark and then again looked for specific examples. I wanted to really hit hard using periods correctly, but also including question marks and exclamation points into our writing.

We found that Mo Willems Pigeon books had a lot of examples of each type of end mark so we made our own pigeons with exclamations, questions and statements. 

 We were lucky enough to have someone from the US Women's Olympic Volleyball Team come and read to our class! She read Oh the Places You'll Go and the kids were wonderful listeners!

The students wrote their inquiry questions for this unit. It was wonderful to see what kinds of questions they came up with. :)

In math we worked on double digit addition and subtraction.

Students playing spinner double digit addition

You may notice your child bringing home addition or subtraction pages. We take "Mad Minutes" every Thursday. I give the students 3 minutes to do as many addition or subtraction problems as they can. Each child has set personal goals and are only racing against themselves. They then graph their scores on Fridays. It is motivating for kids to see their scores go up. 

In order for me to help with addition facts we have been talking about the "quick" facts we already know. This week we talked about ways to make 10. If a student is able to look at 6 + 4 and automatically know it is 10 then they don't have to count up, use their fingers or spend any time thinking about it. This is our goal for 2nd grade!

Some of the "Ten Men" that the students created with their 10's facts

And finally, pictures form our Fall party!

Pumpkin treats

Scarecrow craft

Action shot of pumpkin bowling

October 11th

Writing:

The students are working on finishing writing fiction stories. This is one of the harder units for writing because they have to match their problem to the solution and come up with a story for the middle. They have all been working very hard to stretch out their stories so they aren't super quick or short.

We will be publishing the stories and sharing them with 1st grade. The students will then get to take their story home, donate it to the 1st grade class, or add it to our classroom library.

We have also been working on writing complete sentences. We have discussed that complete sentences have a subject and a verb, start with a capital and end with punctuation. This will be something we will hit hard all year in 2nd grade!

Finding complete sentences in books.

Looking for the subject and verb in our sentences.

The students sorted complete vs. incomplete sentences

Reading:

The skill we focused on this week was making a prediction. The students spent a lot of time looking at books that they hadn't read before and then making a prediction. They then had to use text evidence to check if their prediction was correct or not.

We also started a new unit in Lead21. This using is about how is science a part of our community? We will be looking for inquiry questions to answer and students will start researching in the next couple of weeks!

The questions students came up with for inquiry topics.

Math:

We started a new chapter this week that jumps around for math topics. 

We worked on place value with base ten blocks (125= 1 hundred, 2 tens, and 5 ones).

We practiced counting up money (1 dime, 2 nickels, and 2 quarters=?). The next skill that this will build up to is counting back change. This can be a tricky skill for kids so practicing at home would be wonderful! "If I buy a candy bar for 75 cents and I give you 90 cents, how much will I get back?"

Counting Coins

Playing store. They told each other what fruit to purchase and then their partner decided what coins to use. 

Playing penny-nickel-dime exchange.

Finally, we reviewed telling time. We practiced estimating to the nearest hour and half hour. We also discussed using the terms quarter after, half past, and quarter till. This was tricky for most students still but it is good for them to start hearing the language. 

This week we did a math minutes. Each week students will be doing math addition, subtraction, or mixed for 3 minutes. The goal is to beat however many they got the previous week. Students will be graphing their own math scores to see how they are doing. Since they are just trying to beat themselves there isn't pressure to get to a certain number.  

Guest Speakers

We had TWO guest speakers this week! The first one came from Des Moines Water Works and she told us how they clean water and get it safe and ready for us to use. 

The second guest speaker was Rock in Prevention. They came and spoke to our school about bullying and how we will prevent it in our school. There was lots of singing and dancing and it was a wonderful assembly!

The high school students made a bridge for us to walk through to get to the assembly!

The high school students who came to help with the assembly.

Singing!

Listening to our guest speaker on bullying.

Some of our class got to go up and help sing the songs!

Teachers also got to help!

Hopefully this video works, they were such cool songs!