This Week's Learning

Coming Up For This Week:  (April 29)

Word Work:  Review of all previous spelling patterns especially long a and long i vowel team words.  (Words such as light, high, chain, stray are some examples.)

Reading:  Unit:  Series Book Clubs
Lessons:  Series Book Readers Collect Information About the Main Characters, Readers Pay Attention to How Characters Respond to Problems, Notice Similarities in Characters Across a Series

Writing:  Poetry
Lessons:  Seeing With Poet's Eyes, Listening for Line Breaks, Putting Powerful Thoughts in Tiny Packages

Math:  Unit 4 - Geometry

Lessons:  Recognizing and Drawing Shapes, Understand Tiling in Rectangles

Social Sciences:  Finishing up Natural Resources, Renewable Resources and Non-Renewable Resources

• Thursday - Trip to the Big Hill in the afternoon.  This could be held at school if the weather is still rainy.  The Big Hill Facilitators will determine this for us on that day.

Upcoming Dates

• Wednesday, May 8 - Muffins for Mom
• Wednesday, May 8 - Visit to Dr. Trixie's Office.  More info to come on this.
• Monday, May 13 - iReady Reading spring testing
• Wednesday, May 15 - iReady Math spring testing
• Thursday, May 16 - Grandparent Lunch (last names A-L)
• Friday, May 17 - Grandparent Lunch (last names M-Z)

Earth Day

Today, the second graders went outside to pick up any trash or litter we could find in certain areas outside of the school.  We enjoyed the beautiful weather to do this!

The Water Cycle

We've been learning about the water cycle this past week.  The class practiced using the words precipitation, condensation, and evaporation.  Yesterday we made these bracelets to help us remember the stages in the water cycle.

Fossil Stations

Yesterday and today, the classroom worked in small groups on their Fossil Stations.  They got to be paleontologists and search for "fossils" in chocolate chip cookies, illustrate the steps on becoming a fossil, and assemble a dinosaur using the pieces that were found.

 Here, you see small groups looking at pictures of fossils to make a hypothesis of what animal or plant made that fossil, reading books about fossils, and also playing some iPad apps on dinosaurs and fossils.

This Week's Learning

Coming Up For This Week:  (April 8):

Word Work:  Words using igh and ight (right, light, high, and sigh are some examples.)

Reading:  Unit: Studying Characters and Their Stories
Lessons:  Summarize Important Information, Get to Know Their Personality!, Look For a Character's Motivations, Troubles, or Heart's Desire

Writing:  Unit:  Writing Gripping Fictional Stories
Lessons:  Reading Mentor Texts, Discuss How the Story is Gripping to the Reader, Identifying Character's Goals, Problems, and Obstacles

Math:  Telling and Writing Time, Practicing telling and writing time to the nearest 5 minutes

Social Sciences:  Fossils, How Fossils Are Formed, Rocks, Minerals

Upcoming Dates:

• April 10 - Ice Cream Social, 5-7 pm
• April 19 - Now a school day.
• May 8 - Muffins for Mom, 7:30-8:00
• May 16 - Grandparent Lunch (last names A-L)
• May 17 - Grandparent Lunch (last names M-Z)

Field Trip Info

This is the paper that came home last week in Take Home Folders regarding our 2nd grade field trip coming in June.  Money and signed slips are due back to the classroom on May 1st.  The cost for parent chaperones is $8.95.  Please let me know if you have any questions.

A Big Thanks!

Yay, a Humphrey book!  The class and I would like to give a big thanks to the Woolever Family.  They donated a second book for each student in our class.  All of us were really excited to see the book was a Humphrey story since we had another book from the series for a read-aloud earlier this year.