Mrs. Cox's Class: 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!