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