Hello everyone! We had a great first week back from spring break… the kids were all eager to get back to learning, and readjusted quickly to classroom routines.
Literacy: Our new sight words this week were “one” and “where.” In Writer’s Workshop many of the students started working on stories about their spring break adventures, and during our library time with Ms. Zupancic we read several examples of “real life” type stories.
This week we also started a new round of literacy workstations… they include:
· Reading or comprehension practice with Ms. Louderback, based on each child’s level of comfort
· Handwriting and spelling practice with Mrs. K, tailored to each child’s needs
· A spinner game, creating words from different possible onsets and rimes and then sorting whether those words were real or nonsense. (ex: “r” or “p” as the onset and “at” or “ug” as the rime, combing to create the words “rat,” “pat,” “rug,” and “pug”)
· A science cut-and-paste activity, sorting rainforest animals by what level of the rainforest they inhabit
· Creating a crown craft to remind us of the “king of ing” spelling rule
· A fine motor “pinning” activity, creating a snowman suncatcher while building pincer grip dexterity
· Using games to practice basic computer skills like navigating browser windows, handling a mouse, and click / drag
· A syllable counting activity, using the topic of rainforest animals
· “Read-along” books using the Storia iPad app
· Spelling practice at each child’s level of skill, using stamps and ink
· Literacy games to practice spelling and reading skills, at each child’s level
· Listening to the audiobook Give Me Back My Dad! and completing a response sheet
· Working on Writer’s Workshop pieces independently
· Checking out books from the library
Math: We had lots of fun this week learning about odd and even introducing it through a great song, Odd Todd and Even Steven. It was so much fun the kids asked to see it twice! We learnt that odd numbers end in 1,3,5,7,9 and even ones end in 0,2,4,6,8. We related the even numbers back to the skip counting we have been doing and figured out if our cubby numbers were odd or even! We will be consolidating our knowledge of odd and even with some fun odd and even Math Stations next week.
Over the last few weeks we have been learning lots about place value. We know that numbers with two digits have a tens place and ones place and numbers with three digits have a hundreds, tens place and ones place. This week we focused on making exchanges, exchanging ten ones for a ten’s rod. We carried consolidated our learning through our Math Stations.
We also made comparison number stories, where you compare two groups of numbers and identify which has more or less. Our clever kiddos were able to tell which groups had more or less every time!
Our Math Stations over the last week include:
This week Mrs K decided to work at all the Math Stations for added fun!
Science: This week we began exploring our new unit of study, the Solar System! This is always one of our most popular units, and we are impressed by how much the kids already know, and by the questions they have generated to help direct our study. We have begun to use NASA’s “photo of the day” as a source of daily inspiration and wonder, discussing what we see and how it connects to what we already know. We will continue to delve deep into this topic in the weeks to come! As always, if your child has items or books at home that relate to our topic of study, they are welcome to bring them into class! We will do our best to incorporate them into our lessons.
In other news: We had a great time of community this Friday at our monthly EL Assembly honoring March birthdays and “spotlighting” 2nd grade. Big thanks to Beckett Poole's dad Jeff for being a hilarious Mystery Reader, and to Max's mom Sheri for being our academic helper! She did a great job with an activity that focused on practicing reading contractions. Also, huge thanks to Naviyd's dad Usher for sending the class lots of souvenirs and cultural items from his travels in Europe! We started with "Paris" and will keep exploring Europe one day at a time over the next week or two... super fun!
See below for photos of our literacy workstations this week, and be sure to check out Shutterfly for even more!
Literacy: Our new sight words this week were “one” and “where.” In Writer’s Workshop many of the students started working on stories about their spring break adventures, and during our library time with Ms. Zupancic we read several examples of “real life” type stories.
This week we also started a new round of literacy workstations… they include:
· Reading or comprehension practice with Ms. Louderback, based on each child’s level of comfort
· Handwriting and spelling practice with Mrs. K, tailored to each child’s needs
· A spinner game, creating words from different possible onsets and rimes and then sorting whether those words were real or nonsense. (ex: “r” or “p” as the onset and “at” or “ug” as the rime, combing to create the words “rat,” “pat,” “rug,” and “pug”)
· A science cut-and-paste activity, sorting rainforest animals by what level of the rainforest they inhabit
· Creating a crown craft to remind us of the “king of ing” spelling rule
· A fine motor “pinning” activity, creating a snowman suncatcher while building pincer grip dexterity
· Using games to practice basic computer skills like navigating browser windows, handling a mouse, and click / drag
· A syllable counting activity, using the topic of rainforest animals
· “Read-along” books using the Storia iPad app
· Spelling practice at each child’s level of skill, using stamps and ink
· Literacy games to practice spelling and reading skills, at each child’s level
· Listening to the audiobook Give Me Back My Dad! and completing a response sheet
· Working on Writer’s Workshop pieces independently
· Checking out books from the library
Math: We had lots of fun this week learning about odd and even introducing it through a great song, Odd Todd and Even Steven. It was so much fun the kids asked to see it twice! We learnt that odd numbers end in 1,3,5,7,9 and even ones end in 0,2,4,6,8. We related the even numbers back to the skip counting we have been doing and figured out if our cubby numbers were odd or even! We will be consolidating our knowledge of odd and even with some fun odd and even Math Stations next week.
Over the last few weeks we have been learning lots about place value. We know that numbers with two digits have a tens place and ones place and numbers with three digits have a hundreds, tens place and ones place. This week we focused on making exchanges, exchanging ten ones for a ten’s rod. We carried consolidated our learning through our Math Stations.
We also made comparison number stories, where you compare two groups of numbers and identify which has more or less. Our clever kiddos were able to tell which groups had more or less every time!
Our Math Stations over the last week include:
This week Mrs K decided to work at all the Math Stations for added fun!
- Space Rocket game - a fun English game where you spin the rocket spinner and see who can make their rocket go the highest
- Base Ten Exchange- where you use a spinner to pick up one cubes and exchange your cubes once you get 10. The first one to 100 wins!
- Geoboard Number Formation- where you use elastic bands to make numbers on a geoboard
- Roll an addition story- where each child rolls a die and uses their number to create an addition number story together
- Measuring Station- where the children measured objects from the class finding things that are shorter, longer or the same size
- Slap a 3d shape- where the children play a 3d shape memory game and slap the floor every time they get a match
- Domino addition top it- where the children pick up two dominoes each and add their dots together, the one with the most dots wins all of the dominoes!
- Computers- this week we decided to give the ipads a well earned rest and practice our mouse skills along with our Math skills! The children played a base ten game, making the numbers given with base ten blocks on the website www.abcya.com
Science: This week we began exploring our new unit of study, the Solar System! This is always one of our most popular units, and we are impressed by how much the kids already know, and by the questions they have generated to help direct our study. We have begun to use NASA’s “photo of the day” as a source of daily inspiration and wonder, discussing what we see and how it connects to what we already know. We will continue to delve deep into this topic in the weeks to come! As always, if your child has items or books at home that relate to our topic of study, they are welcome to bring them into class! We will do our best to incorporate them into our lessons.
In other news: We had a great time of community this Friday at our monthly EL Assembly honoring March birthdays and “spotlighting” 2nd grade. Big thanks to Beckett Poole's dad Jeff for being a hilarious Mystery Reader, and to Max's mom Sheri for being our academic helper! She did a great job with an activity that focused on practicing reading contractions. Also, huge thanks to Naviyd's dad Usher for sending the class lots of souvenirs and cultural items from his travels in Europe! We started with "Paris" and will keep exploring Europe one day at a time over the next week or two... super fun!
See below for photos of our literacy workstations this week, and be sure to check out Shutterfly for even more!