2H Class Blog!: October 1st News

Happy October! It's hard to believe we've already been in school for over one whole month together! Time flies when you're having fun!

Highlights from our week:

*Writing: The young authors of 2H have been HARD at work over the past month writing, writing, and writing! As they've been writing, they've been challenged to look and see how published authors and illustrators use different "moves" to convey their stories and then try out those moves in their own writing! Next time you're reading with your child, have them point out "what they notice" about the writing and illustrations---you'll be amazed! Not only can they notice moves such as dialogue, ellipses, bold words, onomatopoeia, speech bubbles, and dashes, BUT they can even tell you why an author is using them. Quite impressive! To celebrate all of this hard work, each student selected one story to share with our class as we enjoyed our first writing celebration. Hopefully your child has already shared with you their wonderful piece, but if they haven't...ask to see it! Their shared story was sent home either Wednesday or Thursday of last week.

*Global Read Aloud: On Monday, we will start The Global Read Aloud! This project aims to connect students from around the world in a shared reading experience. Over the next 6 weeks, we will work with 6 different schools to discuss shared stories while also learning about a little bit out each other's communities! To help us prepare for this great experience, we worked on creating a slideshow to teach about our school. 2H went around photographing our school and worked hard to write captions that would inform others. You can view their finished product next week!!

We also studied a U.S. map and drafted 5 clues about our state to read to others when we have them try and guess our location. The clues we will share are:

1. We are a smaller state.

2. We are across the country from the state of Washington.

3. We touch the Atlantic Ocean.

4. We border Vermont.

5. Our state name is two words.

We can't wait to receive some clues as we connect with other schools! Stay tuned for all the excitement!

*Math: During our math workshop, we continue to learn and practice our math facts. ANY help you can give with encouraging your child to practice their addition and subtraction facts (working towards automaticity) would be greatly helpful as we move forward through our year. This week we focused on turn around facts (6+3=9 and 3+6=9) and how each fact is part of a fact family (9-3=6 and 9-6=3), so when you know one fact, you really know four! To help with fact fluency, encourage your child to try some of these activities at home:

-Name that Number (a class favorite!): a game that can be played individually or with partners, students draw one card to be their "target" number and flip five additional cards over. Using any combination of operations, students are challenged to make a number model that equals their target number. An app version of the game is available in the iTunes App Store.

The student could sue 8+7+1=16 or 10+7-1=16

-Math Playground: various math fact computer games

-Flashcards: the good "old-fashioned" way :) (a set of Fact Triangles will be sent home, once we have reviewed how to use them as a math fact tool)

-IXL: E and F skills have a math fact focus---E.12 would be great addition practice for number stories (word problems), which we've also been working on.

*5th Grade Buddies: This week, with our fifth grade buddies, students worked to complete a STEM challenge. Given just one piece of paper, tape, and scissors, they had just 10 minutes to build the longest chain possible. Mrs. Loh and I were SO impressed by the creativity, thinking, and teamwork that went into this challenge. We can't wait to work with our buddies again next week!