ImaginOcean Creatures

We started off the week with a wonderful trip to the Flynn Theater to see John Tartaglia's ImaginOcean musical. The students really enjoyed the use of black light puppetry and the entertaining songs stuck in our heads for the entire week. When we returned to school we had a great discussion about the play. The main character, Dorsal had to overcome a lot of fears to solve a problem. We all shared about a time that we had to overcome a fear to do something that we wanted to do. Then we used our own imaginations to create a new ocean character for the play. After making our characters we all thought about the different characteristics that our creature would have. What do they like to do? What are they afraid of? What words describe the character? I used the iPad to take photographs of the student's creatures and then we used Voice Thread to narrate our writing pieces. This was such a fun way to connect our field trip with art, writing, and technology.
When you view the Voice Thread you can make a comment by recording your own voice or typing in a comment that will appear on the side. I'm sure that your child would love to hear from you about their piece.

In Readers Workshop we began working on writing a book review to culminate our unit of study on books in a series. On Tuesday, we will be heading down to share our books and recommendations with the students in Mrs. Dyer's class. I know that the second graders will get those new readers excited about the many different books that they have become experts on.

In Readers Workshop the students had another opportunity to practice the steps to writing a constructed response. This time they worked more independently to answer the question, what makes Allen Brook a great school? Using the hamburger paragraph format they constructed a response that included a topic sentence, supporting detail sentences, and a concluding sentence.

This week in math we began a new unit in Bridges Math. We will be investigating geometry by observing and describe shapes, measuring the area of shapes, and using reasoning skills to pull apart and put together shapes using different tools.

Super Scientists

This week we began a new physical science theme unit. Over the next four weeks Synergy students will be learning about forces of motion, push and pull, gravity, magnetism, and sound energy. The students are mixed together with their first and second grade teammates to participate in hands on investigations and inquiry based workshops for two days each week. The kids love being able to think like scientists and it is amazing to see the scientific process at work in these curious young minds.

As we head into the second half of the year in Fundations, we are looking at multisyllablic words and more complex patterns like vowel teams and r-controlled syllables. Please remember that you have access to the words of the week on the Parent Information Wiki located on the Synergy web page. Practicing these words at home will help to reinforce the concepts that are being taught in school. The more comfortable your child is with these concepts, the more he/she will be able to transfer that knowledge into their decoding (reading) and encoding (spelling) with automaticity.

Now that it (finally) looks like winter has arrived, please remember that your child must have boots and snow pants everyday if they want to be able to go off of the blacktop at recess time.

Think Snow!

Get The Facts

During Unit 3 in the Bridges In Mathematics program, the second grade mathematicians have been learning different strategies for solving facts for addition and subtraction. Research shows that even though students may think that they, "just know the facts", if they are taught to use strategies to think about computation, then they will be quicker with fact fluency and will be able to solve multi-digit problems more efficiently.

Fact Fluency is something that comes at different rates for all different learners. So, if your child is not able to whip off 20 addition facts is 2 minutes, you need not worry. It is important that he/she understands the mathematical concepts behind those numbers before trying to do them quickly. At the same time, if you child is able to do the facts quickly, it does not mean that they have a complete understanding of the relationships addition and subtraction in all areas. So, they might not be ready to move on to multiplication and division just yet.

This is an area that we will continue to focus on in Number Corner and will come back to throughout the remainder of the school year and in third and fourth grade. For more information on math with your second grader, check out this link. It has background information on the program, as well as online resources that you can access from home for additional practice with some of these concepts.

Next week we will be headed into a study of geometry in Unit 4.

Stay Warm!

Happy New Year

We ended the year on a high note with a fantastic Polar Express Day. After a nice long break we returned from the holidays rested and relaxed 2nd and 1/2 graders ready to work hard for the rest of the school year.

In our new unit of study in Writers Workshop we are taking another look at our hopes and dreams and writing about them in a constructed response. A constructed response involves answering a question in a structured way using a graphic organizer to plan out your idea, then a topic sentence, detail/supporting sentences and a closing sentence. This is the first time that the students have experimented with this type of challenging writing and they are doing a great job. They also came up with some very thoughtful hopes and dreams to try and accomplish before the end of the school year.

In our new unit of study in Reader's Workshop each student has chosen a series to become an expert on. This week was the kickoff of the unit and we headed to the library, where Mrs. Wentz gave us an introduction to all types of fiction series. The students chose two or three books that they will use to investigate the character, identify the story elements, and eventually create a reccommendation about the series that they will share at the end of the unit celebration.

In Math we are starting our new round of workplaces. We are putting to use all of the addition and subtraction strategies that we have learned throughout Unit 3. In Number Corner, the students have been thinking about fractions in a fun way using probability and have started to make deposits into a base ten bank. This activity helps them to use the strategies that they have learned for basic facts and begin to apply them to computing double and triple digits numbers quickly and efficiently.

I am proud to announce that during the two weeks that the students participated in our Chores for Change fundraiser, they were able to raise $350.00. Yesterday we took a vote on what animals we wanted to purchase for Heifer International with the money and the winners were: 1 goat, 1 llama, 1 trio of rabbits, and 1 flock of chicks. The hard work that your children put in will help to benefit many families in need.

I hope that you all had a restful holiday and wish you a very happy new year.