2H Class Blog!: May 29th News

Happy Memorial Day Weekend, Owl Families!

What a busy week we had here in 2H! After many rehearsals, I'm sure each Owl is enjoying the long weekend :)

Sneak peek of our final rehearsal last week!

Trying out our bandannas!

As you know, it is almost time for the Second Grade Musical Production of Can’t Stop the Seedling! We will be having our dress rehearsal in front of a live, SMS, student audience on Tuesday, May 30th. Please have your child dressed for the rehearsal: brown tops and denim bottoms (shorts, skirts, jean pants, etc.). Our student performance will take place at 8:45 AM, so if students would like to bring a change of clothes for after the performance, that would be okay (and encouraged as we have P.E. later in the day!). On Wednesday, May 31st, we will be performing for family and friends at our 6:30 PM evening showing. Please have your child (dressed again in their "costume") meet me in our classroom at 6:15 PM. We’ll put on our bandannas and face paint and prepare to walk on stage. Immediately following the performance, I will be walking our entire class back to our classroom where you can meet them for a safe and easy pick up! We hope to see you there!

(Other!) Highlights from our week:

*Math: We enjoyed some more measuring this week (they're getting quite accurate with their use of tape measures!) and began to explore ways to share our measurements. Using graphing techniques, we looked closely at the measurements we collected from standing jump distances and arm spans.

Comparing shoe sizes!

Learning to graph our measurement data!

On Friday, we completely switched gears and started to explore FRACTIONS! While we will spend a lot of time reviewing all the wonderful math concepts we've worked on this year, fractions will be our last major unit of our school year. There is a lot of great IXL practice for fractions if you're looking to continue the fun at home. Unfortunately, our trial period of ReflexMath has ended, so we will be unable to use that resource. Thanks for your help reinforcing math fact practice! We received a lot of great information about the program and I have noticed a dramatic increase in student fact automaticity. Keep up the great work (third grader teachers will be SO impressed!)

*Science: Our plant discovery continues in full swing. We had a great time manipulating our root viewers throughout the week. By changing the direction of the viewer, after several days we were able to make the conclusion: roots will always grow down to find water and sprouts will always grow up to reach the sunlight! Root viewers were sent home midweek. I hope your second grader was able to tell you lots about it!

With the root viewers sent home, we decided we needed to do some more planting. Taking all we learned about roots and the growing direction of sprouts, we created some "grass heads" and, based on the direction we wanted their hair to grow, made predictions on how to place the heads to get the desired results! We had a blast making these heads and look forward to seeing the grass start to grow over the upcoming week.

*Writer's Workshop: We began our final major writing unit of the year: persuasive! We launched this unit by exploring restaurant reviews written on Yelp!. Each Owl Student then chose a restaurant and wrote an award-winning review to try and convince others to eat there. Our own Yelp! wall will be on display later this week. We will then move in to book reviews, followed by a culminating project of creating a travel brochure (this final project will feature an "at home" component, so be on the lookout for information being sent you way later this week! Thanks in advance for your help!)

*Field Trip: Second Grade is FINALLY headed onto another field trip! Permission slips for our upcoming field trip to Great Bay Discovery Center on Monday, June 12th will be sent home on Tuesday, May 31st.

Please have the permission slips signed and returned to school with $4 by Friday, June 2nd.

If you are interested in chaperoning this trip, we would love to have you! Please send in an additional $4 for each chaperon in your family when the permission slip is returned. Unfortunately, because we will be close to open bodies of water and taking part in several different scheduled activities, we ask that siblings remain at home for this field trip. This trip will take place from 8:45-11:55 am rain or shine, so make sure to wear appropriate clothing as well as sunscreen and bug spray! Reminders will be sent home as we get closer to our trip. Thank you for your support, we can't wait for our trip!