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.
