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