Thanks for coming to Parent-Teacher Conferences!

Many students in our class applied for the Wee Deliver program this week and the candidates have been hired!  Wee Deliver is a school-wide writing/mail program that is ran by teachers and students.  Many students applied and interviewed for the second grade job positions and we talked about congratulating our classmates that were chosen for the prestigious jobs!

It has been a pleasure to meet with parents for conferences this week.  I thank you for your time and appreciate your perspective!  Many parents asked for ways to help their child at home.  Continuing to read and talk about books each day will greatly benefit your second grader.  Also, encouraging your child to write at home is helpful as well (a letter to a family member or friend, the shopping list, a story about a special day you had, etc.).  In math, practicing basic facts (a 1-digit number added to a 1-digit number) through games or online activities would be great.  You could play "Addition War" with playing cards where each player flips two cards and the higher sum wins.  Have your child count up the money in a coin jar or tell you the time.  Also- try these fun, interactive games online!

Funbrain Tic Tac Toe Addition Game

Funbrain Addition Baseball

IXL Math  (dozens of 2nd grade math games with some free access before needing a subscription)

Penny Cup Game 

The latest news from second grade!

Halloween and the Simonds costume parade brought much excitement last week!  Thanks to our parent volunteers who helped with costumes and snacks!  In this week's news, today is the second Math League Day!   Second graders will be encouraged to use perseverance to complete the math problems in this optional event!

We also learned about Veteran's Day yesterday through Scholastic News and will continue to study Pilgrims this week in Social Studies.  Today our class will use the Chromebook laptops to go on a virtual tour of the Mayflower ship!

  In math workshop, we are exploring odd and even numbers in relation to dividing numbers into two equal groups.  For example, 20 is an even number because it can be divided into two groups of 10.  This begins to lay a foundation for multiplication!  Yesterday each child chose a material to sort into piles of odd and even numbers (playing cards, cuisenaire rods, or dominoes).    

Mrs. Cermak will also come in this week to talk about kindness with our class.  This is a topic we discuss often as we learn together in second grade.  Students have many wonderful ideas of ways to be kind to others and we have been talking about ways to problem solve issues with classmates in an appropriate way.  Ask your child how they have been kind lately!  :) 

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!