Newsletter: Sunday, March 31, 2019

                                                                 Last Week

We spent a great deal of time working on rough drafts and revisions for our country books. Thank you so much for all of the support that you have provided at home.  We will continue to work on these in preparation for our Curriculum Night Share Fair this week. We cannot wait to share all of this hard work and new knowledge with you.

We have begun a new literature study with the text, Sarah Plain and Tall.  This isn't a lengthy text so the study will be completed in class. We are sure to grow as readers and writers through our interactions with this touching story so please ask your child about our reading each day. 

In math workshop, we began working with arrays and repeated addition through a game called Columns and Rows.  Each player rolls a die to determine the number of colums to draw and then rolls again to determine the number of rows to draw.  Then they write two repeated addition equations for their arrays. For example if there are 3 columns and 4 rows you would have 3+3+3+3=12 and 4+4+4=12.  You can see how this leads nicely into multiplication. The kids have already made this connection.

This Coming Week

We will complete our expert projects on countries of the world.  This week will also be filled with preparations for Curriculum Night and Gathering on Friday.  We hope you can join us for both celebrations.  Our science inquiry into the states of matter has barely begun so we will dive further into it this week. We will also spend a little time reviewing test taking strategies ahead of our MAP tests next week.

Important Dates

April 3-12   MAP testing, grades 2-5
April 4         Second Grade Curriculum Night 6:30-7:45
April 5       Our Gathering at 2:20
April 9       Our reading MAP test
April 10     Our math MAP test
April 11       SIC/PTP Meeting
April 11       Author Visit: Michael Shoulders
April 12       11:30 Dismissal
April 15-19  Spring Break

We enjoyed Mrs. Pender's class' new addition to our playground.  Thank you, third grade, for the awesome race track!

 Taffy, the hamster, came to visit for the day.

Exploring repeated addition in the game of Columns and Rows...

The kids discovered a fraction building game they decided to add to our exploration choices.

 Dr. Hass' gathering guest, A'ja Wilson, shared the most inspirational person in her life: her grandmother!

Newsletter: Sunday, March 24, 2019

Quick Check In

We have been hard at work on our country projects.  There are many challenges to this process.  The independent nature of these projects places the kids at very different points of progress at any one time.  We continue to stop, discuss, and regroup as we move through each part of the project.  I have posted a photo of our layout for research and emailed photos of a sample book to guide you in helping your child if work needed to be caught up at home.  Our goal is to complete all rough drafts by Tuesday so that we can begin editing Tuesday night for homework.

As mathematicians, we have been exploring the world of fractions.  The kids have been pleasantly surprised.  During some of our first explorations, comments included, " I thought fractions would he hard, but they are really fun!" and "I never thought math would be fun, but these are."  One of the highlights of our week was our first time playing a game called, Knockout.  In this game the kids broke into two teams to identify fractions as  quickly as possible.  They have been begging to play ever since. This week we will play a little more advanced version.

We will also begin a new literature study this week along with a science inquiry into The States of Matter.

Important Dates

March 25-29   Book Fair

April 3-12  MAP testing, grades 2-5
April 4   Second Grade Curriculum Night 6:30-7:45
April 5        Our Gathering
April 11     SIC/PTP Meeting
April 11     Author Visit: Michael Shoulders
April 12     11:30 Dismissal
April 15-19 Spring Break

Mr. O'Keefe shared the construction of his new guitar with us during a little jam session.

The kids enjoyed trying out the new turf under the climbing wall.

Research and writing...everyones moves at a different pace.

Pages from our sample book.....

Newsletter: Sunday, March 17, 2019

Country Research

The kids are so excited about their country research that I have had to restrain them from sharing everything with the class before we publish our books!  It has been a challenging experience for most of us.  Think back to when you were in second grade...imagine having access to the amount of information our kids do now.  I remember trying to sort through facts in the World Book Encyclopedia that was a few years old.  Even though names, boundaries, and figures were no longer accurate, it was all I had to use as a resource.  Your children show me how the figures they record sometimes change before we can complete a project.  Now imagine the limitless resources on the internet.  The kids are very conscious of the fact that when they are unhappy with one website, they can just go on to another.  So we have worked together using three main websites to help them focus on the information they are actually trying to find.  It can be very difficult for a seven or eight year old to decide if a fact is considered important, so we have worked through passages together to choose something that we think is interesting and that we understand.  Our next step is looking at each section of our notes to see which facts can be grouped together under subheaders to create logical paragraphs in our books.

MAP

 As the calendar reveals, MAP testing is in our near future.  We have spent time over the past couple of weeks reflecting and talking about any frustrations or questions the kids have based on their fall experience with MAP.  The consensus is that they felt unprepared to take the test (in the second week of second grade, for the first time ever).  They weren't sure about strategies and some were overwhelmed by the process.  We are working through sample reading and math questions together, all the while discussing strategies, confusing parts, and questions they have.  I can tell you they are visibly more comfortable with the process at this point.  We will continue to work some of these into our days.  You will see a few of these coming home in our homework packet so that you can share discussions at home.  Please let me know if any questions or frustrations come up at home that we can address at school.  Testing will never be our focus, but they need to have strategies and know what to expect.

Important Dates

March 22  Parents Night Out

March 25-29   Book Fair

April 3-12  MAP testing, grades 2-5
April 5        Our Gathering
April 11     SIC/PTP Meeting
April 11     Author Visit: Michael Shoulders
April 12     11:30 Dismissal
April 15-19 Spring Break

Each group of students that shared a common book from our homework discussions last week got together to have a book talk about their ideas the chart and their written conversations.

We explored fractions by examining how we could make larger shapes from smaller shapes using pattern blocks.

Here is the plan for collecting our research facts that shared with you in my last email. 

Newsletter: Sunday, March 10, 2019

Around the World....

We wrapped up our study of China this week and the kids shared their learning with each other in the form of a mini-sharefair.  Throughout this research process the kids have been collecting facts from scdiscus.org. We have been reviewing note-taking  and organizational skills.  This includes practice with using headers, sub-headers, and reviewing facts for understanding so that we can write them in our own words rather than copying them.  The side menus on our research site have been very helpful in creating categories for our headers and sub-headers when organizing our information.  The groups for our China posters were based on research categories such as government, geography/land/climate, and food/culture.

As we have begun planning and researching our independent countries, the kids have reflected on the China research experience and realized some helpful tips.  First, they pointed out neat handwriting is important when you have to go back and use your facts to create a product.  They also decided that important words (names, places, events) should be copied accurately to be used later.  Finally, they discussed the difficulties in transferring the author's words into our own words.  This is pretty challenging for second graders as you can imagine.  I have modeled this for them, and then we talked through the struggles.  The best strategy we have found is to read a section.  Choose the fact. Reread the fact. Then turn away from the screen and say the fact to ourselves (aloud helps sometimes) the way we understand it.  If we are still stuck, saying it to a friend helps.

These are the three main takeaways they are focusing on from our China research.  We have started collecting facts on the lifestyle section for each of our countries.  Many kids were able to get books from the library on their countries.  I would love for these to stay at school as resources. The research will be done at school unless someone is falling behind. Our final product will be an information book created about each country.  We have examples at school that the kids have already reviewed.  This is in conjunction with our non-fiction writing unit.  I will update you as we move through the sections of our research.

Country Project Topics

     Van    Switzerland

Jadon      India

Daniel     Mexico

Jayden     Japan

Gabbie     Australia

Jennifer   France

Carter      Egypt

Paige       Ecuador

Abigail        Italy

Amie       Germany

J.D.         Togo

Lydia      Malaysia

Leah       Bahamas

Scarlett   Madagascar

Kaleb     Canada

Greher        Israel

Sally     South Africa

Jake W.      Norway

Kaden        Jamaica

Maddie    Scotland

Important Dates

 March 11  Spring Pictures 

March 14  Curriculum Night #4 

March 15  Student Holiday 

March 22  Parents Night Out

March 25-29   Book Fair

Our friend, Ms. Audrey, wrote each member of the class a nice, laminated thank you letter for all of our work in collecting donations for Wanna Buddy.  We will continue to collect and send items to her throughout this school year.

Mr. Derek Saxby gifted a book on behalf of the Rotary Club and shared it with us.  We enjoyed interviewing him about his life growing up and living in England.

 

We had a mini-share fair in the classroom to share our learning from our current China project.

During our trip to Sandhills library, we were able to check out some of our friends' artwork on display at the District Office.

Newsletter: Sunday, March 3, 2019

"Different, Not Deficient"

During our recent inquiry into normalcy and transition into world cultures we have read many books that describe the mistreatment of people based on some difference to the established norm at that time.  These struggles included segregation during the civil rights movement, the fight for education for females in Pakistan,  the exclusion of a child because of their socioeconomic status,  schools created to "civilize" Native American children by taking away their culture, and teasing a child because of their Korean name.   As our chart demonstrates below, we identified what was being made to seem normal, who had the power to do this, what problems resulted, who fought back against this and the outcome.  Throughout this process, I have been touched by the kids compassion for the mistreated and their resolve to stand up for others' rights.

On Friday we watched a video from the show "What Would You Do?"  where a Muslim woman is refused service at a bakery in Texas.  The bakery employee and the woman were actors, but others in the bakery were unaware of the set up.  I was amazed at how our class paid attention to the details of this video.  The hateful attitudes and speech really tugged at their heartstrings.  Classmates were ready to defend this woman and became frustrated with the six people who supported the employee.  Most interesting to me though was the fact that one of our classmates pointed out the fact that 22 people stood by and did nothing. This led to a discussion of why they did nothing.  Possible reasons the kids gave included fear that something violent might happen, they didn't want to get in trouble,  and they didn't want to make someone angry.  In the end, the kids agreed in this situation it would have been best to stand up and help this woman because this is the only way to move towards change and fair treatment for all.  

We have now begun our study of China.  The kids are working to collect facts of their choice right now.  We will gather these together and sort them to see what categories are represented.  This will help us to create our class expert project and provide the structure for the kids to complete their independent research projects of their chosen countries.  

We have also been publishing our fiction stories this week and working to learn about multi-digit subtraction with regrouping.  With the use of base ten blocks, the kids are becoming more comfortable with this process. If you get a moment ask, them to demonstrate for you how to illustrate this process.

This Week

Please talk with your child about their choice of country.  I would like to know their top 3 choices by Wednesday.  Please make sure they choose something that will have plentiful research.  We hope to have no more than 2 students do the same country and begin researching by Friday.

                                                            Important Dates

March 7    SIC/PTP Meeting

March 8    Sandhills Library (Shealy/ Hass 11:30)

March 11  Spring Pictures 

March 14  Curriculum Night #4 

March 15  Student Holiday 

March 22  Parents Night Out

March 25-29   Book Fair

Below are some of the books we have enjoyed and analyzed during our inquiry into normalcy followed by our chart so that you can see the ideas we were pulling out of each.

A lesson on China from one our expert grandparents.

Here are some examples of Chinese money and how it has changed over time.

                                                             Pajama Day.....at last!

         

We have a new addition to our room: Legos!