Hello Parents!

It has been a busy last couple of weeks in second grade, topped off with Field Day! Thanks to everyone who sent in cookies for our second grade contributions and sent their children in the correct color per classroom! We appreciate the continued support of our parents.  Field trip permission slip is coming home today, please return ASAP.

Reader’s Workshop

In Workshop the past few weeks we have spent a great deal of time looking at books that are a combination of fiction and non-fiction. The students finally named our genre and we now know these books are part of the Informational Fiction genre. Then we spent several days talking about how to approach a new non-fiction text: what’s our purpose for reading, what questions/wonderings do we have, how is the book set up, if it was a “dip in and dip out” book or a book we would read “cover to cover” and more. Now we are beginning an Author’s Study of Gail Gibbons texts, another informational fiction collection of books! Next week we will begin doing our end of the year (gulp) Reading Assessments with each individual child. We will be striving for your child to do their personal best in reading and retelling (whether oral or written) the book(s) we have pre-selected for them.

Writer’s Workshop

Birds, birds, more birds… the birds are the word!! Our ornithologists (people who study birds) have been learning all sorts of things about writing about birds. They have learned about bird books: field guides, species specific and general bird books. They have spent time exploring these books and looking specifically at Michigan birds. Last week we generated a class list of Michigan birds and then the kids each voted on which 3 birds they would be interested in researching. With their input, we narrowed our students down into partnerships of two or three writers to research each bird. We practiced taking facts from books and putting them into our own words so that we were not plagiarizing! We learned about the parts of a bird and some key bird vocabulary! Our writers are now moving on to gathering their own research. Thank you for sending in info from home; keep it coming!

Enjoy our classroom fairy tale that we wrote...

Little Red Riding Hood Saves the Day

By Room 202    April 2014

Once upon a time there was a little girl named Red Riding Hood.  She had two friends, their names are Hansel and Gretel.  All three friends went to grandma’s house, but on the way they stopped to have a picnic lunch.  As they were having their peaceful picnic lunch under an apple tree with chicken, potato chips and strawberries.  They then spotted a hidden cave behind the grove of apple trees.  The cave looked camouflage with the branches from the apple tree.   Suddenly they dropped their food to investigate the cave, but they realized the cave was locked.  They spied a piece of paper on top of a pile of mud with a secret code to open the cave. The code was 9166.  They looked for the keypad, but they found a dial.  Little Red dialed the code and then they heard from the speaker a tremendous ROAR!!!!!  It was from the fire breathing dragon.  The cave door opened as fog seeped through, they walked inside to investigate. As they were exploring the cave, the dragon suddenly snatched Hansel and Gretel out of the fog.  So….. Little red Riding hood saw a long rope, she grabbed it thinking it may help. Little Red ran after the dragon.  Little Red made a lasso to go around the dragon’s neck.  She had the lasso around the neck, but the dragon started pulling her toward him.  As he was pulling her back, the dragon slipped into a mud puddle, he was STUCK!  So Little Red took the rope and tied the dragons hands together.  Hansel and Gretel were able to escape with Little Red out of the cave.  They were safe and forgot all about the code!  They walked to grandmothers house and told her all about their adventure, she laughed, like she didn’t believe them.  They all knew the truth, but did not speak of their adventure again. No one in Dubland has even spotted the dragon, thank goodness!  They lived happily ever after.

Math Workshop

Pennies… Nickels… Dimes… Quarters… Oh my! We have spent a LOT of time working with money the last few weeks. We have counted coin combinations, we have added coins, we have learned to use a calculator to show money, we have learned about the decimal point and we have played several different money games during Workshop. Please be sure to use your child’s help to count out coins at restaurants, stores and anywhere else money is exchanged. Making change is now our focus and this can be tricky! Please be sure you are helping your child with their homelink, not simply signing the bottom. It becomes very obvious when we see countless errors on a homelink with a parent signature.

Word Study

In Word Study we have been doing a lot of practice lately with consonant clusters. We have practice sorting words based on the cluster of consonants. We practiced high frequency words this week and we also took a look at words that have multiple meanings.

Social Studies

In Social Studies our kids completed a persuasive piece where they had to use data from two pie charts to decide if they would rather be a kid in the present or a kid in the past. They had to give a good opening, supporting details from the data and their own prior knowledge, and then an ending that wrapped up their piece. Next the kids were asked to score their own work on a four point rubric scoring: content and ideas, organization, style/voice and conventions. It will be interesting to see how their written work scores compared to how a teacher scores their work!

Important Info:

Spirit Week is NEXT WEEK:

The schedule is as followed:

·       Monday, May 12th– Sports Team Day (Either wear clothes of your favorite team or a team you are on)

·       Tuesday, May 13th – Crazy Hair Day (How tall can you make your hair? What color will it be? Have fun, go crazy!)

·       Wednesday, May 14th  – Dublin Spirit Wear (Wear your Dublin spirit wear or Student Council shirts)

·       Thursday, May 15th – Color Day (Kindergarten = red, First Grade = orange, Second Grade = Green, Third Grade = Blue, Fourth Grade = Yellow, Fifth Grade = Purple)

• Friday, May 16th – Hat Day (Show us your best hat!)

Please be aware, if your child’s behavior is out of control due to any of the Spirit Week festivities, parents will be called (building policy).

Monday, May 12^th:    Volunteer Tea: 2:30pm Old Gym