Dear Families,
Here is our week in review:
Social-Emotional Learning:
We enjoyed going outside with our reading buddies in Mr. Deyo’s class. The students brought books to a special place called “Tree Island” next to our school where they read books and played together. Here are some pictures:
The students continued to practice mindfulness with positive self-talk this week. Your child has another HomeLink from Second Step inside the Home Folder this week. While we encourage families to complete this assignment at home, it is completely voluntary. Thank you.
Reading:
We finished reading the first book in the series called Mouse Scouts. As you may recall, the students had requested that we create our own woodland habitats to reflect the setting in the book. Thank you for donating the materials we needed for this project! We had more than enough. In fact, we received so many pine cones, sticks, rocks and pieces of bark that we decided to save them for another project. Thank you. Here are some pictures from our classroom when the students created their habitats. I hope they shared them with you at home.
Writing:
The students continued to add more pages to their personal narratives this week. They created interesting starting sentences to set the stage and added details about who was there, what they did and where the story took place. They also worked in small groups with me and Ms. Bassett to add adjectives to make their writing more detailed. They did a great job! Ask your child to explain how we used our senses to help us frame this type of writing.
This week, the students also shared their writing with their peers in class. They learned different techniques from each other and were encouraged to try new approaches. For example, they learned that writers sometimes embed questions into their writing to engage the reader. What a great idea!
Lastly, the students created detailed pictures to match their words. They also added labels as a way to add even more clarity.
Math:
Second grade mathematicians continued to build a deeper understanding of number paths and number lines this week. They were encouraged to show their thinking in different ways. They were also encouraged to anchor their calculations to friendlier numbers to simplify their solutions. They were solving equations that involved adding two 2-digit numbers together, such as 34+29. Some students feel most comfortable adding the tens together first and then the ones. They add the two groups together at the end. We call this strategy partial sums. There are many other strategies to use as well, but counting all, or counting on will not provide efficient and accurate strategies in second grade math. We have practiced looking at the addends and thinking about what we already know about these numbers. Hence, 29 will help us because it is just one away from 30. Adding 30 to 34 is efficient and fast. Mathematicians choosing this strategy will simply subtract one at the very end. Ask your child how they would solve the following equations: 57+19, 38+65 and 29+47.
Second grade mathematicians also continued to build a deeper understanding of telling time to the nearest five minutes. Since second graders are expected to understand digital and analog clocks, we strongly encourage parents to engage in this conversation at home. It can be difficult for young learners to see the difference between the long hand and the short hand, thus leading to misconceptions about what time it is.
Second grade mathematicians also used Dreambox, our online math platform. Thank you for supporting this at home too.
Science:
This week, Harmony House started our new science unit. We launched into earth landform changes by having a pretend flight over the Grand Canyon. Next week, we will start our science workshop rotations.
News and Reminders:
There is no school 11/21-11/25 (Thanksgiving Break)
Have a great weekend,
Maria
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