• February 24, 2016
     
    It is important that the students realize that they are coming to school to get an education.  Please speak to your child about the importance of following school and classroom rules.  A big problem I am noticing in our classroom is that students think it is okay to talk when I am teaching or when others are speaking.  Please talk to your child about this.
     
    Here are a few reminders:
    • It is important that your child comes to school every day.  With the new curriculum, missing one day is like missing three.
    • Please discuss with your child the importance of following classroom and school rules.
    • Please read and sign your child's agenda.  You may also correspond with me through the agenda.
    • There is homework every night and it is written in your child's agenda on a daily basis.
    • Feel free to contact me with any questions or concerns.



    ELA Listening and Learning

    We finished Domain 6 of Listening and Learning which focused on the Cycles in Nature and Domain 7 which focused on Westward Expansion. Domain 8 introduces students to the largest group of animals on Earth.  Student with learn the characteristics of insects, the life cycles of insects, how insects can be categorized as solitary or social, and how insects are viewed as both helpful and harmful.


    ELA Skills Strand

    We have finished Units 3 and 4 and have started Unit 5.  Unit 5 will continue to introduce more spelling alternatives for vowel sounds. The Reader for this unit is Sir Gus. This fictional Reader details the serendipitous undertakings of Sir Gus, one of King Alfred’s knights.  Despite his title of “Sir Gus the Fearless”, Sir Gus has many different fears.  In this reader, Sir Gus faces a thief, a troll, pirates, an evil wizard, and an enemy king. We will also continue to work on being able to find evidence in the text to answer our questions.

     
    Math
     
    We are working in Module 5 in Math.  The students continue to work on place value and strategies for composing and decomposing one and tens. We are beginning to work on addition and subtraction within 1,000 with word problems to 100.


    Social Studies/Science
     
    We have finished our unit Animal Life Cycles and have been working on a unit about Food Chains.  That unit will be completed at the end of February.  In Social Studies, we have learned about communities and how they have changed over time. We compared things from long ago to things of today (i.e. clothing, cooking, writing, etc.).  In March, we will be starting a unit on Economics.  We will discuss how communities face different challenges in meeting their needs and wants and that a community requires the interdependence of many people performing a variety of jobs and services to provide basic needs and wants.
     
     
     
     
    December 2015 
     
    We've been in school for a little over 3 months and we have been learning a lot in Second Grade.  
     
    Here are a few reminders:
    • It is important that your child comes to school every day.  With the new curriculum, missing one day is like missing three.
    • Please discuss with your child the importance of following classroom and school rules.
    • Please read and sign your child's agenda.  You may also correspond with me through the agenda.
    • There is homework every night and it is written in your child's agenda on a daily basis.
    • Feel free to contact me with any questions or concerns.
    ELA Listening and Learning
     
    We will be finishing Domain 5 War of 1812 before Winter break. This domain will introduce students to an important period in the history of the United States—the time during the War of 1812. The War of 1812 is, perhaps, best remembered as the war that gave birth to “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Students will also learn why the War of 1812 is often called America’s second war for independence. Students will learn how the United States was affected by the Napoleonic Wars between France and Great Britain. They will learn about James and Dolley Madison, and their direct connection to the War of 1812. Students will learn about Great Britain’s three-part plan to win back the United States. This includes attacks on Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, and the Battle of New Orleans. This domain will build the foundation for learning about Westward Expansion, The U.S. Civil War, and Immigration later in Grade 2 as well as for learning about other periods of American history in future grades.  Previous to Domain 5 we listened to several different Greek Myths (Domain 4) and learned about Ancient Greek Civilizations in Domain 3.  In Domain 3, we were introduced to an ancient civilization whose contributions can be seen in many areas of our lives today. Students have learned about the gods and goddesses of the ancient Greeks, the city-states of Sparta and Athens, and the philosophers Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. They learned about the first Olympic Games held in honor of Zeus, the significance of the battles of Marathon and Thermopylae, and the conquests of Alexander the Great. Students also learned about the Greek contribution of democracy and how those ideas are used today in many governments, including our own.  The other domains we have done are Early Asian Civilizations and Fairy Tales and Tall Tales.  Early Asian Civilizations introduced students to the continent of Asia and its two most populous countries, India and China. They learned about the early civilizations in India and China and how they were both able to form because of mighty rivers. Students will once again hear about the important features of early civilizations, to which they were introduced in the Grade 1 Early World Civilizations domain. These features include the advent of farming, establishment of cities and government, and other practices such as writing and religion.  Students learned about early India and were introduced to the basics of Hinduism and Buddhism - two major religions from this area - as major forces shaping early Indian civilization.  Then, students learned about early China and the many contributions made by the early Chinese, including paper, silk, and the Great Wall of China. The Fairy Tales and Tall Tales domain introduced the students to classic fairy tales and tall tales and the well-known lessons they teach.  Learning about tall tales introduced the students to the setting of the American frontier and some of the occupations settlers had there.
     
     

    ELA Skills Strand

     
    We have already completed Unit 1 and Unit 2.  Unit 1 was a review for students who completed the Grade 1 CKLA program. In Unit 1, students  reviewed: (1) a number of spellings from Grade1 with an emphasis on consonant sounds; (2) one- and two-syllable words; and (3) a number of high-frequency Tricky Words. They also read new decodable stories from the Unit 1 Read, The Cat Bandit.  Unit 2 is largely review for students who were taught the Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA) program last year.  In this unit, students reviewed a number of spellings they learned in Grade 1, with emphasis on spellings for vowel sounds; read contractions and provided their noncontracted equivalents; practiced recognizing a number of high-frequency Tricky Words; read decodable stories in the Unit 2 Reader, Bedtime Tales; began the Grammar strand, with instruction in the use of quotation marks; and began instruction in the writing process with a focus on writing narratives and opinions.  In Unit 3, This unit is devoted to introducing spelling alternatives for vowel sounds. Vowel sounds and their spellings are the most challenging part of the English writing system. There are only two vowel sounds that are almost always spelled one way.  One is /a/, which is almost always spelled 'a' as in at.  The other is /ar/, which is almost always spelled 'ar' as in car. The other sixteen vowel sounds have at least one significant spelling alternative. Several of them have many spelling alternatives. The Reader for this unit is Kids Excel. this fictional Reader consists of profiles of kids who excel at various activities - spelling, swimming, playing soccer, jumping rope, splashing, math, rock skipping.  Each profile progresses across several selections. The Grammar thread for Unit 3 has students continue to focus on capitalization, quotation marks, and ending punctuation.  In addition, the unit focuses on common and proper nouns, antonyms and synonyms, and verbs. 
     
    In addition to the writing that the Skills Strand includes, we have been doing additional writing, focusing on another graphic organizer called 4 Square, as well as working on completing drafts, writing paragraphs with indenting, capital letters, and punctuation.  We also take a few minutes a day to work on our handwriting and the proper formation of letters, spacing, and legibility.

     

    Math
     
    We are currently working on Module 4 in Math.  Module 1 set the foundation for students to master the sums and differences to 20 and to subsequently apply these skills to fluently add one-digit to two digit numbers at least through 100 using place value understandings, properties of operations and the relationship between addition and subtraction.  In Module 2, students engaged in activities designed to deepen their conceptual understanding of measurement and to relation addition and subtraction to length.  In this module the students work exclusively with metric units in order to support place value concepts.  The module culminated as students related addition and subtraction to length.  They applied their conceptual understanding to choose appropriate tools and strategies, such as the ruler as a number line, benchmarks for estimation, and tape diagrams for comparison, to solve word problems. The problems progressed from concrete (I.e., measuring objects and using the ruler as a number line to add and subtract) to abstract (i.e., representing lengths with tape diagrams to solve start unknown and two-step problems). In Module 3,  students expand their skill with and understanding of units by bundling ones, tens, and hundreds up to a thousand with straws. Unlike the length of 10 centimeters in Module 2, these bundles are discrete sets. One unit can be grabbed and counted just like a banana―1 hundred, 2 hundred, 3 hundred, etc.  A number in Grade 1 generally consisted of two different units, tens and ones. Now, in Grade 2, a number generally consists of three units: hundreds, tens, and ones The bundled units are organized by separating them largest to smallest, ordered from left to right. Over the course of the module, instruction moves from physical bundles that show the proportionality of the units to non-proportional place value disks and to numerals on the place value chart. Module 4 is devoted to three major areas of work. The first two are building fluency in two-digit addition and subtraction within 100 and applying that fluency to one- and two-step word problems of varying types within 100. The third major area of work is developing students’ conceptual understanding of addition and subtraction of multi-digit numbers within 200 as a foundation for work with addition and subtraction within 1,000 in Module 5.
     
     
    Social Studies/Science
     
    We started off our year in Science learning how to be Scientists by using our five senses: touch, see, hear, smell, and taste.  We then began studying the life processes of living things and discussing the difference between living and non-living things as well as the Life Cycle of a Plant.  After the Winter Break we will be studying the Life Cycle of Animals. In Social Studies we have studied Geography and are just finishing up a unit on Communities and Citizenship.