Wonderful Week

We had a wonderful week!  We have been working hard and have learned so much!  As a reminder, Monday is a teacher collaboration day, and school will not be session.

Curriculum Chat

We had a wonderful turn out for Curriculum Chat.  Thank you to everyone who was able to come.  I understand that it can be difficult to get off work.  If you were unable to make it, your child should have brought home his/her Day in the Life of a 2nd Grader book.  During Curriculum Chat we talked through our day and the students shared their book and different materials that they use throughout the day.  Here are all the pictures that I took on Tuesday.

Maker Space

This week in Maker Space the students built with Keva Planks.  I was so impressed on what the kiddos came up with! :)  A small group of kiddos were trying to build a big castle, other students were trying to make the tallest sculpture that they could, and some made a marble maze for a ping pong ball to go through.

Counselor

Mr. Smith came in to do his bi-monthly counselor lesson this week.  His focus this week was on mean moments versus bullying.  A mean moment is a time when a person (or group) is being mean to another.  When a person is being bullied s/he is the target of mean acts that are happening over several occasions throughout several days.  Below is the slide that Mr. Smith talk over with the kids today.

Junior Achievement

Mrs. Dent came for our second Junior Achievement lesson.  The students pretended to be employees at a doughnut shop and "made" doughnuts.  We talked about what was successful in the production of the product and what they would change next time.  At the end they each group counted how many doughnuts were successfully made and how many defective doughnuts were made. To celebrate all of our hard work, Mrs. Dent brought in a doughnut hole for each of the kids - they sure were yummy! :)

What's Been Happening in 2nd Grade?

Math

• This week in math we finished up Unit 1.  On Monday (pictures below) the students designed a house out of place value blocks and then had to figure out how much their house was worth by adding up all the place value blocks.  The students took their Unit 1 assessment on Wednesday & Thursday.  Today we started Unit 2 - addition fact strategies.  Today we counted $1, $10 & $100 bills.  We discussed how many $1 bills are in $10 and in $100.  Also, how many $10 bills are in $100.  We learned a fun new Money Exchange game.  The students will have this game coming home in their homework folder.  If you would like to play this game at home you can print the money (click here to print the money), you could also use Monopoly money, or the student can make their own money.

• Next week, we will be focusing on fact strategies and solving word problems.  Some of the strategies will be be looking at are double facts and making combinations of 10.

Writing

• This week in writing we finished the rough draft of our middle in our first personal narrative.  Each student stretched their middle across three paragraphs!  They picked out 3 BIG events that happened in their story and added details about each of these events.  We talked about adding sensory details so that the reader can make a picture in their mind of what happened in the story.
• Next week, we will writing the beginning of our personal narrative and editing/revising our stories. 

Reading

• This week our reading comprehension skill was asking questions.  As readers, we ask questions before we read, while we reading and after we read to help us make sure that we are thinking about the words  that we are reading.  It is important as readers to come back and answer the questions we ask (if we can).  Sometimes the author might not answer all of our questions and leaves us still wondering.
• Next week, we will continue to talk about asking questions, but this time in nonfiction books.

Social Studies

• This week we started our geography and culture unit.  We learned that geography is the study of different places on Earth and what happens there.  We talked about the arctic and the desert and the adaptations that animals and plants have to survive in those environments.  We also discussed, as humans, how living in those environments are different than in Missouri.  Today, we started a fun writing prompt about pretending that we moved to either the arctic or the desert.  In the writing the students wrote about what they would need if they moved there and explained why.  
• Next week, we be finishing up our arctic and desert writing.  Also, we will be talking about rural versus urban.

Word Study 

• This week we had another 6 trick words that we were practicing on spelling.
• Next week, we will be focusing on question words since we will be asking (and writing) questions during reading.  Next week's words are: who, what, when, why, where, how.

Have a wonderful weekend and enjoy these summer like temperatures!