The Main Idea Is....

I am a little light on pictures this week. I have taught a couple of students how to use the iPad to take photographs so hopefully having a couple of student photographers in the coming weeks will help out!

Writing:

We worked on writing how-to pieces this week. The students first listed topics they could teach someone how to do. Then they wrote their first how-to. I then had them try to teach a partner.  Through that process they discovered that they had to add some details or pictures to their how-to’s to make them easier to do.

After Thanksgiving we will be writing a class cook book with how to cook our favorite holiday recipes. If your child can help out a little in the kitchen over Thanksgiving that would be wonderful experience before they write their own recipes!

Mrs. Cox learning how to draw a Ninja Turtle

Adding to the words so that Mrs. Cox could do a better turtle. :)

How to jump rope

How to tie your shoe and
How to play Slap Jack

How to draw an Angry Bird

How to draw a panda

Reading:

Our focus in reading this week was on Main Idea and Details. We really focused in on Non-fiction and will look at Fiction next week.

The students read many different books and articles and pulled out the main idea and details into different graphic organizers.

We also did a little with beginning/middle/end. The students read a book of their choice with a buddy and created a beginning/middle/end acorn.

Phonics

We finished up our study of pronouns this week. One of the rotations was to read a book and write sentences with pronouns onto the table. The kids loved being able to write on the table. J

Adding to our pronoun table

Social Studies

We have started our unit on how people use their environment. We have discussed that our environment is anything around us and natural resources are things we get from our environment. The students have read about natural resources we use for food, clothing and shelter. Next week we will discuss pollution and how people can hurt their environment.

Math

This week we did some work with line segments, shapes, and measuring. These are all introductory skills for 3^rd grade so we also focused on 2-digit addition with regrouping. Next week we will tackle 2-digit subtraction!

October Wrap-Up

The students have been working hard at their addition and subtraction facts! Each day we take 10 minutes of fact practice to increase their fact fluency. I have some groups doing addition, some subtraction, and we will eventually add in multiplication!

Addition Top-It

They are also recording the addition

problems in their journals for added practice.

I challenge kids to get as many done in the 8 minutes as they can!

3 in a row with subtraction

 At the beginning of Unit 5 there was a day for some math explorations. The kids worked on shape attributes, some beginning fraction concepts, and telling time review.

Playing "What's My Rule?" with attribute shapes.

Making their own "Time Match" games

Starting with fractions. They would choose a number between 8-30 to start with, then roll a dice for how many groups to split them into. They would then try to create equal groups and record them.

Halloween singular and plural nouns 

Still working on common nouns and proper nouns

With the proper and common nouns the students wrote a story about pumpkins using their proper nouns they came up with. 

We have also spent some time working on pronouns. We've discussed that they are words that replace the noun so that our sentences and stories don't repeat themselves and sound long and boring. (Susie took Susie's dog to Susie's house).

The class also finished up their 2nd round of inquiry projects. This time almost all of the projects were about technology (how does recycling work, what technology do different jobs use, how does gasoline work, what are solar panels and how to they work, etc.).

Putting the information onto the inquiry circle

Working on the inquiry facts

We then invited our 5th grade buddy class to come on down and listen as the students presented their inquiry projects.

We also had some really fun activities to wrap up the month!
A grandfather of one of the students came and read a holiday story. 

We took one smiling picture...

And one picture with our scariest faces!

All of the 2nd grade students at Westwood are working on transitions, moving from one thing to another in the classroom. I give the students 1 minute to transition (carpet to desks or math games to carpet) and any left over time they have they get to add to our "transition thermometer". The kids reached the top of the thermometer and earned 17 minutes of an activity. They chose technology day so they brought in iPads, DS games and Kindles. It was great to see how well everyone shared and worked together!