Update from Second Grade!

Made You Think Box
Our class was fortunate to have Mrs. Herr, our enrichment teacher, visit today to introduce the Made You Think box!  This box will be in our classroom for three weeks and is filled with critical thinking games that are challenging, educational, and fun!  Our class was VERY excited to explore the games this afternoon and they will be choices for the next few weeks.  Ask your child to share about the games!

Parent-Teacher Conferences
Your child brought home a parent-teacher conference reminder and questionnaire on Monday.  Please complete the brief form and return it with your child by Friday.  Conferences are about 20 minutes long and will be an opportunity to share about your child at home and at school.  Report cards will go home with you at your conference as well.  I look forward to talking with you!

Our Learning This Week
This week we are learning about counting by and adding hundreds in math.  We are also working on doubles facts (9+9, 6+6, etc.) and strategies for addition.  We are including interesting beginnings and endings to stories in Writing Workshop and beginning a unit on Pilgrims and Native Americans!

Halloween Celebration
The Simonds School Halloween celebration is Thursday!  We'll begin with the costume parade at 1:30, followed by a special snack in our classroom.  It will be an exciting day for all!

An Eventful Monday!

We had a busy and productive day Monday in second grade!  We began our day observing the full moon in the morning sky with Mrs. Stanley's class and discussing our recent observations of October's full moon.  We also worked with Mrs. Hochstrasser, our reading and math specialist.  She will be coming in every other Monday to review math and literacy skills.  Yesterday she brought the Chromebook laptops and students played the math game Kakooma with a partner!

In writing workshop, we learned about rereading our writing and making plans to revise our work.  Writers added interesting punctuation, such as exclamation points ! and ellipsis ... to add excitement and suspense.

                        

Also, we read a story called Fairy Houses by Tracy Kane.  Some children were very eager to build their own fairy houses at recess yesterday! Your child might want to check out the author's website to see photographs of fairy houses that others have created.

In the afternoon, we read Scholastic News and learned about autumn in different communities (urban, suburban, and rural).  Here's the link to the digital copy and the video we watched about communities.

Have a great week!

The end of a great week in second grade!

This week our class worked making predictions to help us understand and think about books.  Our class especially enjoyed reading the story Pinduli together and predicting how the problem in the story would be solved.  Ask your second grader to share about this with you!

We also worked on strategies for adding 2-digit and 3-digit numbers, as addition is one of the main focuses in second grade!  Ask your child about the new math games called "Adding 9" and "BUMP."

Our sun, moon, and stars is coming to an end.  Next week second graders will choose a topic (sun, moon, or stars) to research more extensively.  After learning more information about the topic, each child will share their learning with the class.

Thank you for assisting with homework!  We're having a great turn-in rate!