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!