The Band Plays On

     Everyone is working hard on their biography projects.  Each student is writing a book on the person they have been studying.  They are including text features that one finds in informational books (Table of Contents, glossary, etc).  We also have a good start on the posters that go along with them.  The hope is to have these up on the walls before conferences next week.

     In math we continue work on measurement and have started working on line plots.  We watched a video of Thomas the Train doing stunts.  We categorized the stunts (jump, spin, etc.), tallied the number of each and then made a line plot to represent the data we collected.  Being able to solve simple addition and subtraction problems with the information in the chart is another goal of our work with line plots.

     I sent home reading comprehension fortune tellers (cootie catchers).  Hopefully you can figure out how to fold them if your child doesn't know (you do have to cut them out first).  I thought just in case there is "extra time at home" in the near future (I don't know anything, for now I'm just planning to be here), this is a helpful way to engage with your child with regard to what they are reading.
     I also wrote what fact strategies your child should be working on at home in their homework log (assuming your child handed theirs in this week).  Appropriate fact strategies and the games to learn them in the homework log are also a good use of time.
     I wish you all good health,
Caren

Happy Leap Year!

Language Arts/Social Studies  

This week the students worked hard on their biography research and writing.  They will each write a book about their person.  We have read lots of biographies in class and have noticed the different text features that authors use to teach others a lot about the person they are writing about.  Another skill required by this assignment is to determine important facts about the topic being studied.  We have used different graphic organizers to help us do that.  Talking about your writing can help make it even better.  Hopefully your child can teach you a lot about their person by telling you all about them.

Double Bubble Map

        Determining importance can be challenging for seven- and eight-year olds who don’t yet understand the historical context of the person they are studying.  This provides lots of opportunities for great discussions about what life was like in different time periods.

 Math

         We continue to work on our skills and knowledge associated with measurement.  We have covered U.S. Customary (inch, foot, yard) and Metric (centimeter, meter) and how to measure accurately.  We also worked on fact fluency this week.  At this point in the year we hope that second graders are fluent with all addition facts within 20 and the subtraction facts that are on the “easier” side.  I think most students have a good idea of what they need to be working on.  If you work on this at home, the best thing you can do is first work with ten-grid cards and listen to your child describe how they solve the problems.  For example, if the cards are 7 and 4 your child might say something like, “I thought about 7 + 3 = 10, and I knew it was one more, 11.”  Most students can also articulate what fact strategy the different combinations are (in the previous example, it is a “near friendly ten”).

         The goal with the math homework so far this year has been to have kids get lots of experience with the ten-grid cards so they have the visual in their brain as they become more fluent with the facts.  If your child cannot verbalize an efficient strategy, they should not be timed or be concerned about how automatic they are with the facts.  The “making meaning” and understanding the relationships between numbers are crucial.

I love talking about all of this, so if it doesn’t make sense please reach out.  If you

are unsure of the fact strategies, look for that information on the blog. https://2cwray.blogspot.com/   Similar to what I presented at the Parent Information meeting, I have an explanation of the fact strategies.

         I met individually with about two-thirds of the class this week to get a sense of where they are with fact fluency.  Some students said they didn’t know where their ten-grid cards were at home.  We made more copies and sent them home with those students.

         As is expected there is a wide range of fluency in second grade.  Some students are fluent with both addition and subtraction facts within 20, some are not fluent with either.  We can all only be where we are and move forward from there.  The work in second grade is foundational.  I appreciate anything you can do to make math fun with the ten-grid cards.  For students who are already fluent with math facts, whatever math is interesting to them is fine for homework.

        

In the folders

One paper you will find is a math word problem we did this past week.  As a class we are making great progress with showing our work two ways and making sure someone else can understand our math thinking.

         The “Make a Plate” form is also in the folder

         There is also a pamphlet about Lice.  As you may or may not know we have had an ongoing problem with lice in our classroom.  Yesterday, the nurse checked almost everyone in the class.  If she found anything, she emailed you.  If you have any questions please feel free to reach out.  If you want your child checked on Monday (because we didn’t get to them Friday), just let me know that as well.

I’m looking forward to meeting with you all for conferences.

        

From the Rays of Sunshine…HAVEN HELPERS!

For the month of March: Mrs. McCoy, Mrs. Monmaney, Mrs. Clarkson, Mrs. Whaley. Mrs. Vashel and Mrs. Wachsman will be our Buddy Classroom collectors.  The requested item are heart healthy BEANS!

Dates for your calendar…

3/9 – Monday: School Closed – Teacher In-service

3/10 – Tuesday:  Make A Plate @ 2:45pm

3/11 – International Pot Luck @ 5pm

3/11 – Math Night @ 5:30

3/11 – Hanover School Board meeting @ 7pm

3/17 – Noon Release/Conferences

This is possibly the link to the sign-up.  There is only one slot left, just email me if it doesn’t work for anyone not signed up yet.

https://signup.com/client/invitation2/fbc0f985f42bf26fc7212bffc5aae7d829de8113/3196685/false/#/invitation

3/18 - Conferences

3/19 – Noon Release/Conferences

5/29 – Friday, Colonial Day

Best,

Caren

This Newsletter is brought to you by the students in Room 207…

         Happy Valentines Day!  Thanks for all the contributions to the snack!

         This week in math we had a 100-day challenge.  In the challenge you had to guess how many times you could write your name in 100 seconds.  Also, how many centimeters are in 100 cards.  You also had to measure 100 pennies in meters.  As you can see it was very tiring.                                                                              By, Hugh

         Language Arts is fun!  We made Valentines bags.  We also got to decorate our bags.  Our class is going to have a little party for Valentines Day!  We are going to give out our Valentines cards in the afternoon.                                   By, Emerson & Gala

Teacher note:  Also wrote to our pen pals in Virginia and started our biography posters.

         In the 100 Day Hat Show all the 2^nd graders make a hat with 100 things on it.  You can put anything you want.  One student crunched their hat.  The 2^nd graders each wrote an informational paragraph.  As you can see the 100 Day Hat Show is fun for some people and, maybe a little scary for one or two people.                        By, Cora

Dates for your calendars:

Conferences will take place on March 17, 18, and 19.  The sign-up will be out soon, sometime this weekend.

Colonial Day, Friday, May 29

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day!

         We were able to give five performances of MLK’s “I have a Dream” speech.  The kids did an amazing job making sure their words were loud and clear.  They also showed that they understood what they were reading with the expression they used.  They have learned a lot about Martin Luther King, Jr.  They have all read another biography as well.  We will have book clubs meet to discuss these books next week.  Your child read about one of the following:  Rosa Parks, Betsy Ross, Johnny Appleseed, or Harriet Tubman (they may have read more than just the book for their book club, when I told them what groups they were in, they got right to work and then many wanted to read about other people as well).

        We finished our money unit in math.  The students made very good progress with knowing coins, recognizing pictures of coins, adding coins together, and doing word problems with money.  Almost everyone even spelled “nickel” correctly!  Our last activity with this unit was to set up stores in the classroom.  One partner was a store keeper while the other was a shopper, then they switched.

 

We're working on our listening skills by having
one partner talk for a minute, then the other
partner has a minute to repeat everything
they can remember.

         Our “Shares” are now to a time when your second grader can teach the class about something.  Shares have been very informal in the class so far, there’s been no schedule or expectation that students bring something in for Share.  It will remain informal unless we start having so many Shares that I need to assign days.  They can still bring in something like Pokemon cards, but they should be prepared to share using the guidelines we have for informational writing (interesting lead, 3 facts, stretch one fact, and a conclusion).  We did “quick writes” of informational paragraphs this week.  This is building toward the research they will do for the biography project.

         As a reminder, I will be here on Monday, January 27, but then I will be gone from Tuesday, January 28-Friday, February 7^th—on a work trip with my husband.  Mr. Peter Officer is the sub for all nine days.  He can be reached during that time at peter.officer@rayschool.org.  Also, during that time our Technology Coordinator, Ruth Arjona, has agreed to teach the coding lessons that are usually taught once a week.  I am thankful for her flexibility.

         February 10 (Monday) is our current 100^th day of school.  If we have any snow days, it gets pushed back a day for each one.  I will send out more information next week, but I just wanted to give you a head’s up that in second grade we have a 100^th Day Hat Show.  The kids make a hat with 100 things on it at home, then bring it to school.  Please have your child bring their hat to school by Monday, February.  At school they write an informational paragraph about their hat, the paragraph will be read during the hat show.

         Valentine’s Day is the Friday before vacation this year.  Your child is welcome to bring in valentines.  If they choose to bring them in, we ask that they have a valentine for each student in the class (20 students).  I’ll include a class list at the end of the newsletter.

         We will also have a special snack that day.  It is just for the students.  The room parents will be in touch about snack items.

Dates for your calendar:

Tuesday, January 28-Friday, February 7:  Peter Officer subbing in classroom

         peter.officer@rayschool.org

Monday, February 3 :  100-Day hats due to school

Monday, February 10^th:  Current 100^th day of school

Friday, February 14:  Valentines exchange and special snack

Adrian          Audrey           Avelyn

Cali              Cora               Dafna

Emerson       Gala               Hao

Hugh            Bella               Iver

Jano              Joe                 Myra

Nora             Saya               Sebastian

Sophia          Xavier

Happy New Year!

Today was a S.T.E.M. Friday.  We did a repeat of the building with spaghetti and tape with a marshmallow on top.  In general there were taller buildings and we had more structures that were stable and strong enough to hold the marshmallow.  The kids are doing a good job of working together on these projects.

         We started our biography unit by reading about Martin Luther King, Jr.

We are using this book to practice the skills we use when we read non-fiction.  We are also reading parts of MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech.  Next Friday I hope we have opportunity to go around the school and recite the speech to any willing audiences we can find.  Eventually each child will pick a person to study, they will write about the person and create a poster about that person.  There is a lot of learning about Social Studies, Reading, and Writing that goes on with this unit.

We will be finishing up with money this week.  Your child should have a paper or two of math in their folder.

Upcoming dates:

MLK Day, No School, Monday, January 20^th

Colonial Day, Friday, May 29^th (you will want to come to at least some:  if you only have an hour come around lunch, if you can take a half a day—join us for the morning).        

Best,

Caren