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