2H Class Blog!: Oct. 8th 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:

*Global Read Aloud: On Monday, we started The Global Read Aloud! Joining over TWO MILLION students worldwide, this project aims to connect students from around the world in a shared reading experience. Over the next 6 weeks, we will work with a different school from across the country to discuss a shared story while also learning a little bit about 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.

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

1. We are a smaller state.

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

3. We touch the Atlantic Ocean.

4. We border Vermont and Massachusetts.

5. Our state name is two words.

A view of SMS from Google Earth!

We had SO much fun "meeting" our Global Read Aloud connection this week over Skype and sharing with them our clues! After solving their clues, we learned that our Global Read Aloud connection is with a second grade class from Eastwood Elementary School in Irvine, California!

A view of Irvine, California! Eastwood Elementary was just built last year so it wasn't even on Google Earth yet! We were still able to compare the vast differences from our two communities--our class was shocked to see so many houses!

Our first Skype "meeting"!

Our clues really stumped them! We look forward to connecting with these great kiddos throughout the Global Read Aloud!

*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. 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 six 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 play 10+7-1 or 8+7+1.

-Math Playground: various math fact computer games

-Flashcards: the good "old-fashioned" way :)

-Door24Plus app: iReady app designed specifically for math fact practice

-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.
*Writer's Workshop: During our writer's workshop, we've been working hard on building our writing identitites. Students have been building a bank of writing topics, using various tools to stretch out an idea, and studying mentor authors and illustrations to learn about and try out their "moves." They've been working hard and their folders are filling up---we'll have lots to share at parent conferences!

Next week we will begin studying one mentor author in particular: Kevin Henkes! Students will then begin creating their very own, Kevin Henkes-inspired stories!

*5th Grade Buddies: Over the last two weeks, with our fifth grade buddies, students worked on several challenges encouraging them to work together and get to know each other. First, 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.