Ms. Mottaz's Class: April 2017

I cannot believe that we are on our last month together! This year has flown by!!!

Field Trip on Tuesday
As a reminder, we have our Runge Nature Center field trip on Tuesday, May 2. If you did not pre-order your child a lunch from the cafeteria, please make sure that your pack a lunch for your child. Below are the requirements for your child's lunch:

Please pack your child's lunch in a sack (plastic bag or Ziploc) with your child's name clearly marked on the outside.
Please make sure that all food items are in containers that are disposable. Everything will be thrown away after lunch.
Please only send enough food for your child to eat during lunch. Everything will be thrown away after lunch.
Please make sure that your child has a drink with his/her lunch that is thirst quenching (water, Gatorade, etc.). We will be doing lots of walking outdoors and we want to make sure that everyone stays hydrated.

This week we have had the opportunity to do some different things!

Nutrition Class
Mrs. Zapata, from University of Missouri Extension office, will be visiting our classroom every Wednesday! This week we learned the four rules about working in the kitchen. 1) Clean - It is important to wash our hands, wash dishes, and clean up after ourselves in the kitchen. 2) Separate - When working with meat, it is important to keep uncooked meat separate from other food. 3) Cook - We have to make sure that all food is thoroughly cooked to the correct temperature to kill the bacteria. 4) Chill - Food that needs to be cold needs to be kept in the refrigerator or freezer, and once a food has been cooked it needs to be chilled within two hours. We also reviewed the 5 different food groups and played a sorting game with foods. She also reminded us about the importance of exercise and for every mistake that we made when we sorted we had to do jumping jacks or squats.

Outdoor Classroom Mulching
On Thursday afternoon, we enjoyed the sunshine (yay!!) as we beautified the Outdoor Classroom Garden by laying down mulch. The teachers got their workout by pitchforking mulch into buckets, and the second graders loved carrying the buckets of mulch to the garden and spreading it!!

Outdoor Classroom Tour
On Friday, we went on a virtual tour of the Outdoor Classroom, due to the rain we did not go outside for our tour. People from the Missouri Department of Conservation came and spoke to us. Did you know that there are five sections of our garden? Our Outdoor Classroom is mad up of an amphitheater, garden, prairie, butterfly garden, and pond. Ask your child about what we learned today! :)

Litter Bugs
On Wednesday, we reused all the the trash that you sent in to make "litter bugs." They turned out so cute! They are displayed in the hallway...so the next time that you are at school, be sure to check them out! A huge thank you for the families who sent in materials for our bugs - we wouldn't have been able to make them without you! :)

Special Readers
Vivian wrote a book and shared it with the class today & Lexi read to us a funny story!

Lots of Learning in 2nd Grade!

Math
This week, we worked on analyzing and making graphs. We learned about 3 different type of graphs: bar, line and pictographs. A bar and pictograph can be used to record quantity of different items; however, a line graph shows how something changes over time. On Friday, the students developed their own survey question, and surveyed their classmates. Next week, we will use the data collected to make a bar and a pictograph., and continue to work on analyzing graphs.

Reading
This week, we continued to practice predicting questions that would be answered in a book, pulling out two facts that were learned in each chapter, and identifying the most important thing that was learned and explaining why. Next week, we will be working on comparing and contrasting characters and events within a book or within different books.

Grammar
This week, we focused on contractions. We talked about that a contraction is two words that are smooshed into each other and form one word. As the words crash into each other letters pop out and where the letters would have been you put an apostrophe. However, we discovered that even contractions have an oddball. Ask your child what the contraction oddball is! :) Next week, we will continue to work on this skill.

Word Study
This week, we continued working on r control vowel words with the vowel i. Next week, we will still be working with r control vowel but with words that have the vowel o. Next week's words are: more, worse, boar, wore, wore, world, horse, storm, soar, core, worry, roar and chord.

Writing
We finished up publishing out "Which is Better" writing. I am so impressed with the class on how hard they are working on this! On Friday, we started making a project that will accompany our for the "Which is Better" Writing Show Case (7:45-8:30 next Friday, May 5). We hope to see everyone there because your child has worked SO incredibly hard on this piece of writing! :)