We hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving with your family.  A special thank you to all the parents who sent in donations this past month! I will post some photos next week!

Readers Workshop

These are just a few objectives we covered over the past few weeks in our workshop, focusing mostly on the main character of the story.  Pinky and Rex stories were used throughout the week.

·       Readers keep track of our characters actions to make sure that we follow what is happening in the story.

·       Readers confirm or revise their predictions as they continue to read.

·       Readers are on the lookout for scenes or details in the story that don’t fit with what they are expecting.  We might say “huh?” and reread to make sense.

·       Readers don’t guess about a character, they need to find evidence or details to prove that a character acts a certain way.

·       In our reading partnerships, readers try to figure out why characters do this?  Asking questions- why did? would you?

 We began looking at different series of books.  Many students are familiar with several series like Henry and Mudge.  As readers, we carry everything we know about the series with us as we read and are on the lookout for patterns in these books.

Writing-

Writers are continuing to work on their personal narrative, students picked their best lead (sound, wondering, or setting) then continued to write their piece.  Students are rereading their piece to fill in the gaps using revision.  Several students have even started another personal narrative.  This past week students choose their best story that they wanted to publish using an editing check list and then worked with a partner to help edit before they begin to rewrite the piece. 

The week of Thanksgiving students wrote a persuasive essay titled “Don’t Eat Me” they had to pretend they were a turkey.  The turkey writers had to come up with several reasons why they should not be eaten for Thanksgiving.   We hope you enjoyed reading these stories.

Math-

Our mathematicians are working on story problems and different ways to solve them.  They have learned Change-to-More diagrams and Parts-and-Total diagrams to help them organize and solve the story problems.  Many of our story problems have temperature changes, students need to figure out if they need to add or subtract to solve the problem.  Your child has learned about degrees Fahrenheit, degrees Celsius, and degree marks.  We have also discussed that thermometers count many ways, some count by 1’s, 2’s, or even 5’s.   Another math strategy we have been working on is using estimation to solve problems. We have done this by using Ballpark Estimation (nearest 10).  Students learned a rounding chant during these lessons.  Second graders have spent a great deal of time learning different strategies to solve addition problems, these strategies include using base ten blocks pictures, and using a 100’s chart.  We have just learned about partial-sum algorithms to solve a math problem.  Our unit 4 test will be coming up quickly, so please continue to do Home Links with your child to practice these skills.

We continue to work hard this year on basic math facts, please help your child with math facts up to 20.

Phonics-

We started off the week be learning the rule of the silent e.  The vowel sound changes when you add a silent e, like can to cane and hop to hope.  Then we shorted words with sound of ame, ate, and ake.  Our students talked about seeing and using high frequency words.  These words are important because they help us read and write.  Students also played Follow the Path with all the high frequency words.  We learned about antonyms and synonyms.  The students read two poems- Pease Porridge and Jack Sprat, these are excellent examples of antonyms and synonyms.  They played Lotto to practice antonyms and synonyms.  Students also sorted plural words with the different ending of s or es. I’m beginning to see many students use the skills that have been taught in our phonics lessons in their writing!

Social Studies

We continue to work on map skills and noticed that maps include many features.  Mapping Penny’s World used several different types of maps in the story.  We are using relative location to identify places- Michigan is north of Ohio and New York is east of Michigan.  Students had a homework assignment of making a map of their bedroom.   They had to include a title, map key, compass rose, and symbols.  We read Letting Swift River Go and learned how the environment changes.  In this story, trees, houses, and buildings were moved to make way for a water system/dam to supply water to a big city.  We wondered if change is good or bad?         

Science

We are off and running with our first unit in science- Plants.  Plant cuttings were put in water, slowly they are beginning to grow roots.  Students are making observations in their science/plant notebook.  Students are also observing garlic cloves.  They noticed the garlic is beginning to have white roots coming from the bottom of the garlic clove.  We’ll continue to observe these over time.  A big thank you to the parents who sent in the plant cuttings!

Students planted their own brassica seeds, and are waiting to see what happens… sprout, stem and leaves, buds, flowers, and pods- this plant will go through the whole life cycle of a plant.  Then we planted grass and alfalfa. Students will spend time observing and recording growth of their plants.  

We’re looking for old potatoes or sweet potatoes that have eyes.   If you have some, please send in ASAP.

Up Coming Events

·       Please send in Gift of Reading book by December 15^th.

·       Holiday Party, Friday, December 19^th   

·       Vacation December 20 - January 4^th

·       School starts Monday, January 5^th  

·       2^nd Grade Field Trip to the Walled Lake Outdoor Center – January 28^th  - more details to follow