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Mrs. Healey’s Classroom News (1/10/16)
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What We've Been Up To:
HAPPY NEW YEAR! How nice it was to be back together as a class. It sounds like everyone had a great holiday vacation week! When the Owls returned on Monday, they had grown by one! They did such a nice job welcoming our latest Owl, Mackenzie, into our classroom. Welcome, Mackenzie! We're so happy (and lucky!) to have you in our classroom.
*New Year's: On behalf of the Owl class, we would like to wish you a very happy & healthy 2016! We spent the beginning of our week talking about making resolutions. We read a great story by Pat Miller called Squirrel's New Year's Resolution. In this story, all of squirrel's friends have a New Year's resolution, but squirrel doesn't! As she was helping other's fulfill their resolutions, she realized she could make a resolution to always help others. Using this as inspiration, 2H created beautiful chains for a, "New Year, New Me!" While these are adorning our classroom now, they'll be headed your way soon!
In addition to our mobiles, following the giraffe class' lead, we made adorable "New Year's Toasts". Thinking of others, each student needed to choose one person and one wish for them. Here are a few of our "toasts"!
*Math: We wrapped up Unit #4: Place Value & Measurement this week. This was a jam-packed unit covering a TON of skills, but your second graders are doing fantastic! Students took a Unit #4 assessment, which will be sent home next week. Wasting no time at all, we launched right into Unit #5: Addition & Subtraction. Because Everyday Math is a spiral curriculum (revisiting topics continually and building upon them as you go), we spent the week adding & subtracting coins. We had a lot of fun using "choice boards" throughout the week, which allowed the Owls to make choices about how they wished to practice the skill we were working on. With such great success, we'll be doing many more choice boards in the future! Check out some of the choices made on our last day practicing measurement:
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| Using IXL to practice using a ruler. |
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| Playing the measuring game, "Roll for the Gold" with a partner). |
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| Moving around the classroom, hunting for inchworms to measure. |
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| Attempting to measure a very crooked path! |
We will be taking a midyear assessment soon, as we continue working our way through Unit #5.
For continued practice of important second grade math skills. check out some of these resources:
Measurement:
Base-10 Representation:
Comparing Values:
Telling Time:
*Reading: Reader's Workshop this week had us, "Amping Up Our Reading Power!" in our latest unit. Throughout this unit, we'll be revisiting good reading habits, learning new ways to improve our fluency (how we sound when we read), interpreting literary language, and setting personal reading goals.
Beginning with fluency, we learned a song to help us remember the importance of rereading.
Sung to the tune of, "The Wheels on the Bus"...
Read parts of our books again and again
Out loud and in our heads
Out loud and in our heads
Read parts of our books again and again
To make our reading smooooooooth!
In addition to rereading, students learned that they can improve their fluency by:
-scooping words into longer phrases
-talking like the characters
-making your voice match the mood
-reading with a just right pace
*Science/Writing: We conducted our final, major, states of matter experiment this past week. Building on past experiments, students were tasked to find out what happens when we mix liquids with liquids.
After testing out various, individual liquids, it was time to ask the ultimate questions, knowing what we know now (some liquids mixed, many layered), what would happen if we put them all together?
It was SO neat to see some of the liquids immediately sink to the bottom (like the honey!) while liquids like the oil stayed in globs at the top of our mixture.
Students are wrapping up this science unit by creating informational books about solids, liquids, and gases, We will celebrate these books, and all of their scientific knowledge, with a celebration later this week!
*Scholastic Book Orders: Looking to start the new year with some new books? January book order forms were sent home early last week, and Scholastic's full catalog is available online. Orders are due Tuesday, Jan. 19th.
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