February 2-6

Writing:  

“Roses are red, violets are blue, we love poetry--how about you?”  We will focus are writing poetry this week.  We have explored sensory language and now we will put that to use in our poems.  We will write poems using alliteration and rhyme as well as some acrostic and concrete poems.  At the end of the week we will showcase our poems in a poetry theater and you are invited to come and enjoy the show! It will be at 8:30 in our classroom.     

Reading

It’s poetry time is Second Grade! Students will read a number of poems to learn all about rhythm, rhyme, and repetition. We learned last week that with the use of sensory language we can create mental images in our head. By being able to describe rhyme, rhythm, and repetition, it helps us interact to create mental images in poetry.

Math

This week we will continue to explore 2-dimensional geometry by looking at different ways to compose and decompose shapes. We will learn all about area and square units with a fun activity where we will use Cheez-Its to find the area of different shapes. We will end the week creating our own robots on graph paper and challenging each other to find the area of our robots in square units!

Social Studies

This week we're moving into Social Studies. We will be learning about concepts of time and chronology. Students will describe the order of events by using designations of time periods such as historical and present times. Students will learn how to read, create, and interpret timelines for events in the past and present in their own lives. We'll have fun playing the past, present, and future game. We'll discuss what it might have been like in school long ago and even explore the history of Caraway!

At-Home Enrichment (optional homework):

Research question of the week: Why do we get a fever when we're sick?

Math enrichment:

Tangram puzzles: http://www.abcya.com/tangrams.htm

Social Studies Enrichment :

• Make a personal timeline with chronological events of student’s life and complete timeline about themselves. Put events in order with drawings, pictures, dates, and brief explanation.  Bring to share with class.
• Research the life of an important historical figure and make a timeline of their life and accomplishments in chronological order.
• Timeline Maker:  This timeline generator can be used to make vertical and horizontal time lines with events of your choice. http://www.teach-nology.com/web_tools/materials/timelines/

February 4th, Early Release Day- 12:45 dismissal

February 4th: Skate Night

February 12th: Spirit Night at Jason’s Deli

January 26-30

January 26-30

Writing:  

This week we will be using our 5 senses to enrich our writing with sensory language.  We will use a Venn diagram to compare different senses and then by the end of the week we will write a poem about a color using sensory language.  It is always neat to see how our writing can give human-like characteristics to a color.  We will need 1 jar of hamburger dill pickles, 1 jar of applesauce, 1 small bag of potato chips, and 1 bag of small marshmallows to do one of our activities. If you can donate anything please let me know.   

Reading

This week we will understand that the authors use sensory language in their stories to help their readers create mental images in their head. Students will be able to identify and categorize words according to their 5 senses.

Math

This week we are finishing up our regrouping unit. We will review everything we learned on Monday and assess on Tuesday. Then, we will go back to geometry to explore 2-dimensional shapes! We will start off by building shapes with gummies and learn all about the attributes of different figures and polygons. We will identify and discuss 2-dimensional shapes we see in real life, and create and examine art from a geometric perspective. The week will end with a fun “Guess Who?” game with shapes!   

Science

This week in science we will continue observing objects in the sky.  We have discussed the sun and moon and now we will discuss clouds. We’ll read several books about clouds and discuss the different types of clouds.  Hopefully we will have nice weather and be able to explore clouds outside with our cloud viewers.  We’ll describe what we see when we look at clouds.  At the end of the week we will review and assess for this unit.

***Remember to add to the moon chart for the of Moon shapes that was sent home last week. Students go outside (for just a few minutes supervised) and observe the moon, then record what they see on the chart.

Reminders

January 29th: International festival

February 4th, Early Release Day- 12:45 dismissal

January 20-23

Writing:

We will continue our unit on persuasive writing this week. We will be incorporating some project-based learning into this unit. Our guiding question will be "How can we persuade our parents to upgrade our bedroom?" We will use our OREO graphic organizer to put our sentences into paragraph form. We will take our writing through the writing process to create a persuasive letter to our parents about our bedroom.

Reading

We've wrapped up researching our class topic on sharks. This week we will work on presenting our research as a class. Students will work in pairs and groups of three to organize the information we collected by category, such as habitat, food, characteristics, life cycle, etc. Towards the end of the week, each group will present their part to the class.

Math

This week we are putting our regrouping skills to work as we practice both addition and subtraction problems along with games, word problems and a fun a project! Our project is called “Figure Me Out” and students will need to come up with math problems to match numbers in their lives, such as shoe size, age, numbers of siblings, etc. We will learn more about our classmates as we try to figure them out!

Math enrichment:

Here are a few fun games that will put kids’ addition and subtraction skills to work:

Weight the wangdoodles- focuses on beginning algebra skills: http://www.mathplayground.com/mathgames/SL_WeighWangdoodles_secure.swf

Puzzle Pics Subtraction: http://www.mathplayground.com/puzzle_pics_subtraction.html

Puzzle Pics Addition: http://www.mathplayground.com/puzzle_pics_addition.html

Grand slam math- focuses on word problems: http://www.mathplayground.com/GrandSlamMath1.html

Science

This week in Science we will be observing objects in the sky and looking for patterns.  Students will learn that there are recognizable patterns in the natural world and among objects in the sky. We will observe, describe, and record patterns of objects in the sky, including the appearance of the Moon. Students will know objects in the sky include the Moon, the Sun and the clouds.  We will discuss how the appearance of objects in the sky change over time.

Reminders

January 19th: No school- Martin Luther King day

January 21st: Science Fair

January 29th: International festival

January 12-16

Writing:  

We will begin our unit on persuasive writing this week.  We will be incorporating some project-based learning into this unit.  Our guiding question will be “How can we persuade our parents to have our own dream bedroom?”   We will use OREO (opinions, reason, examples, opinions) to generate ideas for our writing.   We will take our writing through the writing process.  

Reading

This week the class will be researching all about sharks! We’ll come up with some questions that we have about ducks and then develop a plan for answering them. We will decide what sources of information might help us answer our questions. Throughout the week, we’ll read nonfiction and fiction books, explore PebbleGo on the library website, etc. to research our topic.

Math

Subtraction is our focus this week as we learn how to borrow from our tens place. We will practice with base-ten blocks before moving into the traditional algorithm. After a few days of practice, we will put our skills to work with word problems.

Science

We are continuing to talk about the water cycle in Science this week.  We will have several fun experiments early in the week and then review and test over patterns in weather and water cycle.  At the end of the week we will have a fun visit from Dowser Dan over water conservation and the water cycle.

Reminders

January 19th: No school- Martin Luther King day

January 21st: Science Fair

January 29th: International festival

January 6-9

Writing

This week we are working on setting goals for 2015!  We will discuss goals at school, home, and with our friends.  We will pick one that we want to achieve and focus on writing about it.  We will include examples of what we could do to reach our goal and we’ll use complete sentences and punctuation.   

There is no spelling this first week back. We will start the following week!

Reading

This week we will identify certain prefixes and suffixes in texts that we read as a class and independently. We will continue to practice these skills in our guided reading groups.

Math

We are coming back to addition this week as we learn about regrouping! This week we will focus on what happens when our one’s place is too high and we need to put a ten next door. We will practice the computation part before putting our skills to work with word problems.  

Science

We continue with science this first week in January.  We will go review weather patterns and the choices we make due to the pattern in the weather for clothing, travel and leisure.  Then we will start begin discussing the water cycle and the pattern of the water cycle.  We will discuss water and it uses as well as water conservation.  This week we will have the first of several water cycle experiments to help us understand how the cycle occurs.

In order to make our experiments work, we need a few items. Please let me know if you can send in any of the following:

• Food coloring
• Shaving cream