Oct. 16th News

For a short week---it sure was a BUSY one!

Highlights from our week:
*Columbus Day: On Tuesday, we learned a little bit about Christopher Columbus and put our engineering skills to the test! Each child, working alone or in pairs, set off to build the strongest boat possible out of just one sheet of aluminum foil.  After the trial and error of building was complete, we had a "sail-off" to test just how many pennies each boat could hold. Five boats made it past 30 pennies, and one even held a whopping 132 pennies! As your child what their boat design looked like and how many pennies they were able to hold. This was just the first of MANY engineering challenges we will face this year!

*Word Study: We continue to move forward with our spelling word sorts. These second graders have been doing a fantastic job following the many routines and procedures of our word study program. Thank you in advance for your efforts at home! Word sorts will be sent home tomorrow. Accompanying your child's words will be a list of activities as well as log-in information for the online resource: Spelling City. Please have your child practice their word sort in the way that works best for them. In addition to the activities associated with our word sorts, our word study time is also spent on grammar concepts. While studying the parts of speech, students had a great time creating jack-o-lanterns representing different adjectives!! Take a look at their clever creations!

 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 facts (working towards automaticity) would be greatly helpful as we move forward through our year. We've been talking about a TON of strategies that can help us learn our facts, such as:

     -Doubles (4+4 = 8)

     -Doubles +1, and Doubles -1 (4+4=8, so 4+3=7 and 4+5=9)

     -Combinations of 10 (4+6=10)

     -Making 10 First (4+6=10, so 4+8=12...make your 10 first, how many left over? add that to your ten)

     -Turn Around Facts (6+3=9 so 3+6=9)

To help with fact fluency, encourage your child to try some of these activities at home:

-Math Playground (scroll down to the addition and subtraction section)

-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 use 8+7+1=16 or 10+7-1=16

-Fact Dash

-IXL (Any E or F skills have a math fact focus; E.12 would be great addition practice for number stories (word problems) which were also practiced this week!)

*Writing: After reading numerous Kevin Henkes stories this week, 2H began crafting their own Kevin Henkes inspired stories. We noticed that most of his stories have mice characters (with human-like qualities!), they take place at school or at home, and they have everyday problems that all kids can relate to. Students began creating their main characters, decided upon a problem and solution, and began drafting their stories! It'll be fun watching these stories take shape next week.

Have a great weekend!

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Important Dates (always available at the top of the blog page for convenience) :

Monday, Oct. 17th: Fall Leaves Due

Wednesday, Oct. 20th: Picture Retake Day

Wednesday, Oct. 26th: Early Release (Parent Conferences)

Friday, Oct. 28th, 1:30-2pm: "Holey" Pumpkin Celebration (more information to come!)

Wednesday, Nov. 2nd: Early Release (Parent Conferences)

October 10th News

Happy Columbus Day Weekend!

Highlights from our week:

*Global Read Aloud (GRA): 2H is participating in The Global Read Aloud! Joining over 850,000 students worldwide, our Owl Class will be reading and studying author & illustrator Lauren Castillo. The Global Read Aloud project encourages classes to participate by reading the shared books and connecting with other students throughout the world! Our class connection is with the first grade students of Bermudian Springs Elementary School in York Springs, Pennsylvania! We had SO much fun "meeting" them this week and learning about their school and typical school day! 

Our first Skype Meet-and-Greet with Miss K's first grade class!

An aerial view of SMS from Google Earth

Bermudian Springs Elementary School----is that a football field? We had a lot of questions for our Pennsylvania friends!

 We spent the week emailing back and forth to learn about our new friends. We learned that they are working hard on creating a movie to show us what their school looks like and we can't wait to see it! Inspired by their work, we'll begin photographing some of the special spots of SMS to create our own video clip this week.

Our first book for the GRA was Nana in the City. As this was our first introduction to Lauren Castillo's work, we enjoyed trying out one of her illustration techniques: bold outlines.

 *Words Their Way: We've completed our first unit in Words Their Way! Units run in two-week cycles. On the first day of the cycle, the sort is introduced. Students explore and analyze the words to discover patterns and consistencies and to establish rules. The first week of the unit is done completely in class to build independence. The second week of the cycle is when you will see the word sort come home (words did not come home for our first unit, but will be coming home in the future). Practice will now happen in both the classroom and at home and students will be given a "spelling review" on the spelling pattern on Friday. On these reviews, students will be given five words chosen randomly from their sort list, as well as three "challenge" words that were not on the sort list, but do follow the same pattern. The purpose for Friday's review is to determine if students have mastered the spelling pattern and are ready for a new pattern, or if they need some more time on the current pattern. I will share their spelling review booklets with you at parent conferences.
*Science: Science was pure magic this week! Using another Mystery Science as our guide, students set out to culminate our unit on magnets by exploring the question: "What can magnets do?" Boy, were they amazed!

Magnets work THROUGH other objects!

The paperclip chain held its magnetism after being pulled from the magnet!

A very successful science talk in which we shared our findings.

The FLOATING magnet!

Feeling the REPELLING force!

What a great unit to explore the magic of science! We'll begin our earth science unit next week!

*Writing: On Friday, we held our very first AUTHOR CELEBRATION! All of the Owls have been working on numerous pieces in writing workshop, so this week they selected one piece to polish up and "publish" for our celebration. Sharing their great writing boosted each writer's confidence as they absolutely loved receiving compliments and praise for all of their hard work! Nice work, writers!

Next week, we'll begin writing narrative stories in the style of Kevin Henkes.

Hope you've had a wonderful, holiday weekend!

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Important Dates (always available at the top of the blog page for convenience) :

Monday, Oct. 10th: No School (Columbus Day)

Tuesday, Oct. 11th: Scholastic Reading Club Orders Due

Monday, Oct. 17th: Fall Leaves Due

Wednesday, Oct. 26th: Early Release (Parent Conferences)

Friday, Oct. 28th, 1:30-2pm: "Holey" Pumpkin Celebration (more information to come!)

Wednesday, Nov. 2nd: Early Release (Parent Conferences)

October 2nd 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:

*Stratham Parade: I had such a wonderful time at the Stratham 300th Anniversary Parade! It was great to see some Owl faces marching with us and cheering along the way!

To top it all off, our flotilla depicting all of the schools that have been Stratham over the last 300 years won FIRST PLACE in the float contest! Way to go, SMS students! 

*Math: We finished up our first math unit this week and students took their first assessment. After students have made corrections (in colored pencils!), tests will be sent home. Let me know if you have any questions regarding your child's assessment. We'll jump right into our second unit which focus on addition and subtraction fact strategies. The parent letter for the unit will be sent home on Monday. To help keep skills sharp, students can visit these sites:

Counting Money

IXL (P.1 Names and values of common coins; P.3 Count money- pennies, nickels, and dimes only; P.4 Count money - up to $1)

*Speech/OT: We're very fortunate to be joined every Wednesday by Mrs. Snow and Mrs. Dukeman. This year they'll give us the skills to help us be successful in our day-to-day learning! During their first visit, they read the story My Mouth is a Volcano to practice strategies for whole group listening. This week, it was a trip into the FUTURE! Equipped with future glasses, Mrs. Snow and Mrs. Dukeman taught us how envisioning our end goal can help us create a plan and see something through to completion.

By using, "Get ready, Do, Done, Get done!", students can see what materials they'll need, what the steps are, what it looks like when they're done, and what to do when they are done. What a helpful tool! We'll be using this wonderful planning tool throughout the year

*Reading Workshop: This week in reading, we were all about the words! Students knew SO many strategies for tackling tricky words. We explored common word beginnings and endings, vowel teams, and multiple meaning words. Most importantly, we remembered to ask, "Does it make sense?" quickly followed by "Does it LOOK right?" and "Does it SOUND right?" They especially enjoyed practicing this with their reading partner playing "word detective". Ask your child about this fun game.

*Writing Workshop: This week in writing, we've been looking to see how published authors and illustrators use different "moves" to convey their stories and then trying out those "moves" in our own writing!!! We started studying and trying out illustration techniques, but have moved seamlessly into trying "moves" in our written work. Next time you're reading with your child, have them point out "what they notice" about the writing and illustrations---you'll be amazed!!

After scouring our classroom library, some (and really these are just some!) of the "moves" we found were:

• dialogue
• parentheses
• dashes
• detailed descriptions
• bold words, slanted words, changes in size
• motion lines
• speech bubbles, thinking bubbles
• sound effects

  

  Over the next several weeks, we'll be starting two author studies to really dig deep and learn from the masters. We'll be studying Lauren Castillo and Kevin Henkes. Stay tuned!

*Read Aloud: Earlier in the week, we finished our second novel, The World According to Humphrey by Betty G. Birney. It was a HUGE hit! Read aloud is one of the students’ favorite times of day (and mine as well!) . They come in from lunch and listen intently as each day we get further and further into a wonderful novel. The World According to Humphrey is a story about a hamster who is the classroom pet of room 26. Each weekend he travels home with one of his classmates and learns a little bit about them along the way. Turns out Humphrey is pretty good at problem solving! Humphrey is the main character of many other stories. Friendship According to Humphrey and Surprises According to Humphrey are some of the great books in this series if you’re looking for a read aloud for at home! Many of the Humphrey books are available through Scholastic (October book orders will be sent home on Monday and will be due Tuesday, Oct. 11th!)

 *Fall Leaf Project: Information about a fall leaf project will be coming home next week. Students will be asked to gather 20-30 dried leaves to bring into school. While the leaves are not due for a couple of weeks, it’s a good idea to start keeping an eye out for interesting, unique, bright, or bold leaves as they start to fall.

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Important Dates (always available at the top of the blog page for convenience) :

Monday, Oct. 10th: No School (Columbus Day)

Wednesday, Oct. 26th: Early Release (Parent Conferences)

Wednesday, Nov. 2nd: Early Release (Parent Conferences)