News from Mrs. Rowlett

Hello Second Grade Families,

We got right back into the routine of reading groups last week.  It is fun to see what 2nd graders are able to read compared to 1st graders and the students are pretty excited with the new books they are being asked to read each day.  Please remember to support your child’s learning by having them complete their reading homework daily.  Often times students will be rereading what they read together with me in class.  They will have a paper to fill out comprehension questions or other reading related activities each night.  Students who do not complete their reading nightly will need to attend study hall during their P.E. or specials class time (which is currently Art) and it will impact their “work ethic” grade on their report card.

The kids continued reviewing closed syllables and open syllables and began learning about vowel-consonant-e syllables.  They practiced sorting a variety of words that fit are these syllable types.  This week we will begin to look at multisyllabic words and identifying these syllable types in each syllable of the words.  This knowledge will help students be able to better read longer words independently.

Happy reading,

Mrs. Rowlett

Week 5 -- September 12, 2016

                                                                                                                            September 11, 2016                                                                                   

Dear Second Grade Families,

The weather is getting cooler, soccer, football, and other fall activities are in full swing.  Mrs. Bloomfield and I are loving that our second graders are in their school routine.

Math

Last week in math our focus was to continue renaming 3-digit numbers.  This is challenging concept but the students of Room 17 are beginning to be pros.  It has taken a lot of work with manipulatives and working with partners but I believe we have it!!  Here is an example of a few of the combinations students could come up with.  We will continue to work on this skill daily just to be sure that all students have a firm understanding of it!

375
Hundreds	Tens	Ones
3	7	5
3	6	15
2	17	5
2	16	15

Along with renaming we continued to work with writing numbers in standard form, word form, and expanded form and comparing 3-digit numbers using <, >, and =.

HOMEWORK

Monday- IXL M.4 Identify a digit up to the hundreds place

Tuesday- IXL M.5 Place value 10’s and 1’s

  Wednesday- XL M.6 Place value up to 100

Thursday- IXL M.8 Convert to/from a number tens and ones

Language

We finished our Tree Maps to help us see the different ways to make singular nouns (names one person, place, or thing) into plural nouns (names more than one person, place, or thing).  As we make nouns plural, students are learning about the irregular forms of plural nouns, which include changing the “y” to an “i” and add “es” (cherry = cherries), adding “es” (lunch = lunches), and changing the “f” to a “ves” (scarf = scarves).  This week we will work with irregular nouns such as child-children, tooth-teeth, goose-geese etc.

Writing

We are hoping to have our “Who Am I?” writings finished by Tuesday.  The 2nd grade students have been working on their art piece to go with it.  They are drawing their self portraits to go with their writings.  Mrs. Bloomfield and I hope to have them hung up in the hallways be the end of the week.  Stop by to see how creative your kiddos are!

Projects

Second grade students have been working on our first project--Tribes in Action.  During the first 4 weeks of school we worked on learning about the Tribes Agreements--Attentive Listening, Mutual Respect, Appreciations/No Put-Downs, and Right to Pass.  Students ended the week with a clay activity that involved Attentive Listening and Mutual Respect.  They started out with “magic clay”.   After discovering their color, students divided their clay into 3 parts and traded with students that had a different color.  With trading completed students mixed clay colors together, ending up the activity with 6 different colors.

This past week students were broken into groups.  We will continue this week creating puppets and writing short puppet show scripts that shows each agreement.  We will have a firm date for the puppet show this week and will put that in the blog for next week (at this point it will more than likely be September 19th or the 20th at 2:30 pm).  Again, look for an exact date and time on next week’s blog.

Loving Learning,

Mrs. Bloomfield and Miss Garcia      

Week 4 -- September 5

                                                                                                                            September 6, 2016                                                                                   

Dear Second Grade Families,

Already done with the third week of school...these weeks are just flying by.  How can we be in September already???  

Math

In math we have been very busy learning about the hundreds place.  Students have been exploring up to 3-digit numbers with base ten blocks and place value charts.  As we work with 3-digit numbers, we are also reviewing ways to write a number (we worked on this with 2-digit numbers already).  Here are some of the ways your child is 3-digit numbers:

standard form = 274

word form = two hundred seventy-four

expanded form = 200 + 70 + 4,         

place value chart = hundreds    tens    ones

                                  2           7         4

Another math skill being worked on is writing number words up 3-digits.  Students are using resources in the room, an Interactive Writing that we created together.  This Interactive Writing piece has the numbers and the number words 1-20, the decade words (thirty, forty,...), and one hundred.  With this resource students are able to write the numbers from 1-999 correctly.

Here is this week's homework.  Please have your child work for 15 minutes on the following objectives.

Tuesday	IXL C.4 Writing Numbers Up to 1,000 in Words
Wednesday	IXL B.2 Comparing Numbers Up to 1,000
Thursday	IXL A.8 Number Line Up to 1,000

Language

We are adding on to our knowledge of nouns.  Students are now learning about singular and plural nouns.  As a class we are creating Tree Maps to help us see the different ways to make singular nouns (names one person, place, or thing) into plural nouns (names more than one person, place, or thing).  As we make nouns plural, students are learning about the irregular forms of plural nouns, which include changing the “y” to an “i” and add “es” (cherry = cherries), adding “es” (lunch = lunches), and changing the “f” to a “ves” (scarf = scarves).

Writing

Students are continuing to work through the writing process with our riddles about ourselves.  This writing project will not only create a great beginning writing piece for your child's writing portfolio, it is also taking the students through the complete Writing Process-- pre-writing, rough draft, editing and revising, and final draft.  Miss Garcia and myself are so proud of our 2nd grade writers.  They are doing an amazing job with this first piece, we can't wait to get them hung in the hallway.  We wonder if you will be able to guess which one is your child!?!

Projects

Second grade students have been working on our first project--Tribes in Action.  During the first 3 weeks of school we worked on learning about the Tribes Agreements--Attentive Listening, Mutual Respect, Appreciations/No Put-Downs, and Right to Pass.  While working on Appreciations, students picked a classmates name at random.  They observed this person for a day then created a “Campaign Button” for this person focusing on the secret person’s positive qualities.  Students then got to present the “Campaign Buttons” to their secret person.  The presentations were very heart warming.

This past week students were broken into groups (They selected their top 3 agreements that they wanted to work on.).  We will continue this week creating puppets and writing short puppet show scripts that shows each agreement.  We will have a firm date for the puppet show this week and will put that in the blog for next week (at this point it will more than likely be September 19th or the 20th at 2:30 pm).  Again, look for an exact date and time on next week’s blog.

Looking forward to another great week!!

Sincerely,

Anne Bloomfield and Miss Garcia