Wednesday

Thank you to all who provided feedback on homework. I'm still waiting for a few more replies and will let you know the outcome.

We read a book, Crickwing, yesterday about cockroaches and ants. We learned some interesting things today about ants. I love how curious second graders are!  It's fun to have discussions with them. Yesterday, our discussion was about endangered animals.

We are singing patriotic songs after the Pledge of Allegiance each morning. So far, we've done This Land is Your Land and the National Anthem. It's a nice start to our day.

In math, Mrs. Jones did some mental addition with us. We also worked on some papers about money.
We learned how to do an activity called, Look Say Cover Write Check in word work. During writing, we are writing an opinion piece with a clear introduction, an opinion, and reasons with details. We are writing it step by step to ensure understanding.

We ended our day with keyboarding.

Tuesday

I hope all of you had a nice, restful break.  I surely did! We are back in full swing now. Today was a great day. We've started something new during work jobs. Each work job has a timer attached so students have a certain amount of time to complete the job. If they finish early, they read to themselves. This seems to be more productive today! Everyone knows what to expect and it is working well.

We are also doing something new for word work. Yesterday I sent home personal spelling lists where students picked their own 10 words to focus on for the week. We will do lots of activities with these words this week. I will test them on the words on Friday. If you can help your child learn their words, that would be fabulous.  These words come from their writing, old spelling tests, etc.

In science, our next unit is insects. We will learn a lot about insects and our unit ends with a trip to the Montshire Museum.  If you would like to chaperone, the date is June 11.  Let me know.

Please send water bottles in with your children. With the water fountains only downstairs working, it takes a lot of time away from class when students need to constantly go get a drink.

In math, we are learning about coins and dollars. Students are enjoying this unit so far.

We continue to study opinion writing. Today, we looked at a piece of writing and identified the parts of opinion writing: introduction, opinion, reasons, details, and the conclusion.

May is a busy week.  Let me know if I can help in any way.

Tuesday

We went to the computer lab today and discussed Digital Citizenship. A paper went home about it as well. In math, we took a test on fractions. In word work, we are working on homophones. We read about the danger of plastic bags in Scholastic News. We also put things into our portfolios and had fun looking at them.

Tomorrow we have an assembly first thing in the morning.

Monday

We brushed up on some fraction skills in math today. I will test this concept tomorrow and we will move into some review of multiplication for the rest of the week. I hope you can join us at Math Night on Thursday from 5 to 6PM. We went to keyboarding during computer lab time. We are making good progress in this area!  In writing, we read I Wanna New Room and students wrote letters to people at home (get ready!) about something they wanted. The letters are pretty convincing! We read a Langston Hughes poem about April rain (how fitting!) and talked about personification. After work jobs, we read a book about how we have days and nights on earth.  Great discussion there!

Our Fun Fair basket is birthday items.  It would be great to have more contributions. Thank you!

Wednesday

We had fun watching the video of us on TV!  Kevin Skarupa's visit was fun. In math, we reviewed fractions from yesterday. We are working quarters, halves and thirds. Mrs. Jones did some problem solving with us.  In writing, we wrote opinion pieces about Rainy Days vs. Sunny Days. This afternoon, we did some keyboarding and then we did work jobs.