An Exciting Week Together!
Week #16 December 17-21, 2018

We had a fun week celebrating together as all of second grade gathered for movies, a sing-a-long and board games on Monday, Wednesday and Friday afternoons.  We really enjoy our community time to be with other 2nd graders and create special memories.  Our class also had a chance to make spectacular paper snowflakes with Makenna's family.  Thank you Kristy and Jason for teaching us how to make them!  Here are a few pictures from our sing-a-long:

Our class also earned the distinction of "PE Class of the Week".  Congrats to our hard, focused work and thank you to Mr. Day!  Students came home today with a "If you had fun, you won!" bracelet.

We finished our non-fiction reading unit this week by becoming experts on a new topic.  Students read for important, interesting facts to help them be tour guides for other readers as they shared their new knowledge.  Here are pictures of us with our books:

Today students had a chance to think about a reading goal for their vacation time away from school.  I told students that they GET TO read next week (versus HAVE TO) and they made a plan for what, how and when they would like to read.  Also, there's a fun math challenge if your child would like to participate using the online games and books here:  https://gregtangmath.com/newyears .

Other things to ask your child about this week:

*Bridge Builder

*Writing Question & Answer Books

*Practicing high frequency spelling words

Have a wonderful early winter break and best wishes for a great start for a happy, healthy new year!

All my best!

Mrs. Hock

 

A Week to Remember!
Week #15 December 10-14, 2018

We will remember many things about this week.  Here are a few highlights:

Our winter concert Wednesday night was an exciting event and everyone did their best and had fun!  Thank you for attending and being part of this special evening.  Thank you to Mrs. Rito for her hard work teaching us and preparing us to perform so well!

As we are working hard to learn how to subtract two 2-digit numbers using base 10 pieces, an open number line and equations, we learned how to play PIG this week.  This is a fun, quick game where players try to be the first to total 50 points.  We add numbers quickly and take a risk rolling the die.  All students went home Friday with a die so you can enjoy PIG as a family.

We will remember weathering and eroding our "land" this week as we prepare to culminate our science unit on Earth Changes next week.  I look forward to seeing students apply their knowledge as they work together in teams to engineer solutions to scientific problems related to weathering and erosion.

Our Leonardo's pizza was delicious!  We enjoyed our PTO Fun Run celebration on Friday.  Thank you!

Other things to ask your child about this week:
*Our 6th Marky Mark celebration
*Writing an introduction and more specific details in our non-fiction chapter books
*Reading Gail Gibbons books and collecting multiple books on the same topic
*Watching grades 4/5 practice for their concert
*The Elevator Family

Enjoy the weekend with your family!
Mrs. Hock

Changes, Changes!
Week #14 December 3-7, 2018

Earth changes quickly or slowly, and we modeled that in science this week with our rock tumbler.  This was exciting work to see the changes in our rocks as the tumbler modeled weathering by the action of water, sand and gravel.

Our word study routine changed this week.  We worked on individualized list of high frequency words.  Our study each day also included activities to practice our hand writing and fine motor skills.  We will continue with the study of our own high frequency words for 2 more weeks.

We added a job to the duties of our "class president".  The president is now also our time keeper and wears an analog watch to report and update our schedule throughout the day. This watch has an elastic band with clear hands and the minutes labeled to assist in our time-telling skills.  So far our presidents have been very responsible!

Have I mentioned recently that we love our study of non-fiction?!  We are prolific writers generating multiple chapter books on our topics.  We are using information books to learn from authors who also wrote about the same topic.  We ask ourselves, "What non-fiction writing technique can I try?", "How can I share information with my readers like this author?", and "What can I learn from this author?".   In reading, we are learning from Gail Gibbons.  We learned this week that to convey a lot of information, she uses colorful, labeled pictures and diagrams along with a few meaningful sentences on each page.  She has written more than 120 non-fiction books and she lives in Vermont!

Other things to ask your child about this week:

*Mrs. Clark's visit to teach us about origami
*Whole-school assembly hosted by the Creative Arts Teachers
*Webinar with Jacqueline Woodson and video biography of Gail Gibbons





Have a wonderful weekend with your family!
Mrs. Hock

Non Fiction Immersion
Week #13 November 26-30, 2018

After our recent work studying landforms and bodies of water, we began to consider the effects of water and wind on land.  We follow an investigation procedure as we test questions we generate:  our question, our equipment, our method, our predictions and our results.  We will use this knowledge to help understand weathering and that earth can changes can occur fast and slow.

We are writing our first non fiction book!  We created lists in our "tiny topic notebooks" of subjects we know a lot about ("expert") and subjects we're interested in studying.  We brainstormed, created chapter titles and began our first drafts.  We also continue our non fiction reading and becoming experts learning and connecting information on one topic across different sources.

We began coding in library this week to celebrate Hour of Code which is the week of December 3 in honor of Computer Science Education Week.  We will have 3 more lessons with Mrs. Springer.  We used block coding to solve puzzles on the code.org website.  Students have access to this at home.

Other things to ask your child about this week:
*whole-school PBiS viewing of Frosty
*Chair Pockets
*Ellie and Henry's birthdays
*taking care of babies in guidance with Mrs. Wheeler
*2nd Grade Crafternoon (choice in craft: paper chain snowmen, jeweled snowflakes, painted snowglobes or peace pinwheels)

Thank you very much for attending parent conferences last week.  It was wonderful to meet and share information about your children.
Enjoy the busy month ahead and I will see you next week at our concert!
Mrs. Hock

Thankful
Week #12 November 12-16
I am thankful for my fun students.  Every morning I tell them, "be brave and be kind", and they are! They work hard to try new things and to take care of each other. This week we honored World Kindness Day by reading Each Kindness, writing appreciation notes to each other in our class and our school, and creating a turkey feather of what we're thankful for our 2nd grade bulletin board.

This week in math we finished a unit about adding 2-digit numbers.  The standard for 2nd grade is that students add with a place value strategy.  This means students use their understanding of the meaning of the digits, and their relationships, to put the quantities together.  Using the standard algorithm for addition is an expectation for 4th grade.  This strong conceptual foundation in 2nd grade will bring greater fluency and accuracy to the standard algorithm later in 4th grade.  In this unit, we:

1. added 10 and multiples of 10 using a 100 chart and showing our thinking on an open number line (54 + 20 = ____ ) .  
2. added single digit numbers by decomposing that number so we first add to the next decade and then add the leftover ones (54 + 8 = 54 + 6 + 2 = ____ ).  
3. added two 2-digit numbers by first adding the tens, then adding the ones (54 + 28 = 54 + 20 + 6 + 2 = _____ ).

Here is what that looks like in our work:

We worked to finalize our mini research project on our landform or body of water.  Students created either an info-book or postcard using their information.  Then, every student made a model using flour/salt dough.  We look forward to sharing these as a class after the Thanksgiving Break.  We'll present our facts while also looking at our actual landform or body of water using Google Earth.  Thank you to Zachary's Pizza for donating 64 cardboard pizza rounds for our models!  Here's a link to a slide show of us working on our models.

I look forward to meeting with you at parent conferences next week.  I told the students I was first going to talk about how amazing they are, then what they look like & sound like throughout the day in our class, and finally share their work.

Other things to ask your child about this week:

*being a cartographer creating maps of our classroom and our own location (real or make believe)

*advising Mrs. Hock on "How to Cook a Turkey"

*our 5th Marky Mark celebration

*our new meeting space rug

*facts from our non-fiction read alouds:  Knights in Shining Armour, Beavers, Frog, Tiger! 

Have a wonderful week with your families!

Mrs. Hock

Time Together
Week #11 November 5-9
This week we enjoyed a variety of school activities together.  We began theme-work as researchers starting non-fiction reading and writing units as well as a study of Landforms and Bodies of Water. We worked together to pay attention to details, wonder, ask questions, anticipate key words and use text features to grow new knowledge.  We created paper or google posters of our topics with partners and began our individual research mini project on a specific Landform or Body of Water.  Next week, we'll make a model and an info-book with information we gathered from our research.

Our sharing during morning meeting this month connects with our non-fiction academic work.  Students wrote 3 sentences about themselves; 2 fact and 1 fiction.  We share one student's 3 sentences each morning to discover their fiction sentence.  This has been a fun way to get to know more about each other.  These were Mrs. Hock's 3 sentences:
1. I was born in New Jersey.
2. I love winter.
3. My favorite food is raspberries.

We had a delicious Harvest Feast.  Here are some pictures of that special event.

 Miss Meg visited this week for a lesson about kale with Farm-to-School.  Kale is a power food with vitamins A, C and K.  We tried kale smoothie that we made from bananas, blueberries, cider, ginger and kale.  It was fantastic, and fabulous way to eat such healthy foods.

Please look for a parent conference confirmation note that was sent home in the red Take Home folders today.  It is a bright orange half sheet of paper.

Other things to ask your child about this week:
*Adding multiples of 10 and 2 digit numbers on the open number line
*Writing thank you notes
*Using Info Bits
*Our new November calendar Number Corner topics:  measuring length, telling time, doubles facts and rows & columns

Have a wonderful weekend!
Mrs. Hock

Our class is featured in a tweet by RMCS Library on Twitter.  Thank you Mrs. Springer!

RMCS Library (@LibraryRmcs)

Mrs. Hockenbury's class working together to decode the clues needed to find one student's library card hidden among 20,000 books. Well done! pic.twitter.com/d5e2HYCscF

Celebrations
Week #10 October 29-November 2
Well, we began the week celebrating our R. M. C behavior and we ended the week celebrating first grade's work at assembly and enjoying time with Henry's grandmother, Mrs. Clark.  In between, we celebrated our first finished writing piece with an Author's Tea and Halloween with a Harvest Party.

Here are a few pictures of the crafts we made to celebrate our hard work as a class.  Students chose to make a critter corner bookmark or a friendship bracelet and then were able to spend a small amount of time on their chromebooks visiting www.abcya.com.

We finished our first writing unit about narratives by enjoying an Author's Tea; a nice connection to National Author's Day on November 2.  As authors sat in our "comfy chair" and read their narratives out loud, the audience enjoyed some Sleepytime tea with biscuits.  The narratives were drafted over several weeks and were published recently by having the students dictate their work into their googledoc, and by also working with a 5th grader who helped them type their stories.  Authors then added a few illustrations and a cover.  These will be shared with you at parent conferences later this month.

H-day was great fun as the students appreciated time in the afternoon to have a blast together.  Thank you to our room parents, and all families, for organizing and donating goodies for this event.  It all went very smoothly and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.  First, teams of students created the largest tower they could using toothpicks and gummy pumpkins.  All the adults were impressed with how well the teams worked!  Next, the students turned Mrs. Hockenbury into Mrs. Hocken-mummy!  See the video and picture evidence below.  Lastly, we happily ate pumpkin bread, fruit and cheese & crackers while sipping lemonade or cider. We'll take away good memories for sure!

Parent conferences are scheduled for later this month.  Please look for, complete and return your parent conference form from your children's Take Home folder.  As a staff, we'll meet early next week to coordinate conferences for siblings in our school.  I'm looking forward to meeting with families to share our fall information and set goals for our next block of learning time.

Other things to ask your child about this week:
*101 and Out
*Reading other forms of text "grow knowledge" and thinking to ourselves I'm noticing, I'm learning and I'm wondering.
*Quick write about our paper pumpkins
*3rd grade UNICEF presentation
*Stuart Little
*A visit from Mrs. Clark, Henry's grandmother

Have a wonderful weekend!
Mrs. Hock