IMPORTANT DATES:
December 7th: Recycle Material Due for Force and Motion toy project
December 18th: Wrapped book for Book Exchange Due
December 20th: Holiday Party @ 12:00-1:00 p.m.
December 21st: NO SCHOOL
December 22nd: Progress Reports available for viewing
December 21st-January 6th: WINTER BREAK!
Students return to school on Monday January 7th. Have a wonderful winter break!
THANK YOU!
Thank you for your generous contribution to our classroom library through the purchase of a new book at the Scholastic Book Fair. The books you purchased have added more great books for our students to enjoy! Thank you!
HOLIDAY PARTY
We will have our class holiday party on Thursday, December 20th. We will be having a simple celebration and a book exchange. A letter regarding our holiday party will be sent home in your child’s Homework Folder.
ELEMENTARY PROGRESS REPORTS-FIRST SEMESTER
Progress reports are available for parent viewing on Saturday, December 22rd. Log on to your parent portal to view your child’s progress report. You will also find a first semester wrap up of your child’s academic learning in second grade. Please take the time to read all the learning, growth and success we have had thus far in second grade. The following rating system is used to determine your child's level of performance:
Exceeds
Indicates a high level of achievement. It indicates a student has a strong understanding of the content/concepts/skills taught and it implies a student can demonstrate understanding independently and with very few errors.
Meets
Indicates that a student demonstrates an understanding of content/concepts/skills most of the time and with limited support. Students who are meeting standards make few major errors or omissions when demonstrating a concepts or skill.
Approaching
Indicates that a student requires moderate support to demonstrate an understanding of concepts/skills. Students' ability to demonstrate their understanding of a concept or skill is inconsistent or infrequent, which indicates a partial understanding of the content, concept or skill. Students demonstrate more frequent errors or omissions.
Does Not Meet
Students who do not meet standards seldom demonstrate an understanding of concepts and skills taught. The student requires considerable support to demonstrate learning and makes frequent major errors when demonstrating his/her understanding.
CURRICULUM UPDATE
READING:
During Reader’s Workshop we have been deeply emerged into Non-fiction texts. We began digging into our non-fiction texts with understanding how our books go, what we notice, what we can earn and asking questions about our books. We then very diligently study keywords and began talking the lingo of our topic. We used strategies such as, using context to build knowledge around unknown words and learning to be flexible thinkers to discover tricky keywords. We read our books like the experts we became with our non-fiction knowledge. The last part of our non-fiction unit was centered around reading across a topic. We used several non-fiction books about the same topic to deepen and grow our knowledge around our topic. We worked on being able to retell topics not just retelling books. Lastly, we celebrated our learning by preparing a simple presentation of all the knowledge we gained on our topic. Students shared their learning with reading partners and shared with family members through Seesaw. In addition to our non-fiction reading skills we continue to work on reading fluency, building stamina as a reader, and making sure that we are working with a book that we can read with 98% accuracy.
WRITING:
We are continuing our work with writing scientifically, writing lab reports and ending with “how to” writing. Below are important parts of writing that we are working on:
- Writing as scientists do
- Procedural writing
- Designing and writing about an experiment(s)
- Constructing question(s), writing a hypothesis, writing explicit procedures, sharing results and writing a conclusion that refers back to our hypothesis.
- Plan informational books
- Integrating scientific information into our writing
- Using checklist/rubrics to self assess and plan for next parts
MATH:
Our study of attributes of shapes and fractions is coming to a close and we will be moving into Unit 3: How Many Stickers? How Many Cents? before winter break.
During the first session of this unit, students will focus on the following:
- Introduced to Sticker Station, a store that sells stickers singly, in strips of 10, and in sheet of 100. The Sticker Station provides a model for representing and making sense of place value.
- Using a place value model to represent a 2-digit number as tens and ones
- Finding as many combinations of a 2-digit number as possible, using only tens and ones
- Recognizing that different combinations of tens and ones for the same number are equivalent ie. 4 tens and 6 ones, are equivalent to 3 tens and 16 ones
- Identifying and using coin equivalencies to compose 2- digit numbers
- Determining the difference between a number and multiple of 10 up to 100
Helping your child with math: Click Here
Math Words and Ideas: Click Here
Investigations Game Center: Math Games
WORD WORK/SPELLING:
It is so exciting to see the progress students are making in their spelling. Students were given a spelling inventory the last week in November and some students moved into different groups based on the results of their assessment, weekly spelling test scores, and spelling quizzes. Spelling groups were formed based on their understanding of spelling patterns. Newly formed groups will start the week of December 3rd. Please continue to support your child by making sure that their word sorts are practiced daily along with the 5 “No Excuse Words” and challenge word of the week. Using the sorts throughout the week helps your child develop, concretely, the spelling pattern they are working on for the week.
SCIENCE:
In science, we are continuing our work with Force and Motion. We have been conducting some experiments and building our background knowledge about friction, gravity, force and motion. Students have done some work with catapults and understanding the way in which it changes a force or a motion. We will also be working with Mrs. Fleet before Winter break on lego building and how force, motion, pushes and pulls all affect the way objects move. To wrap up our understanding of force and motion, students will be creating their own toy that moves.
