It's a Wrap!
Week #28 March 25-29, 2019

We wrapped up a few studies this week and enjoyed some culminating activities.  We finished:

• a 10 day residency with Paton Sensei and Taiko drumming,
• a mini residency with Miss Nancy and Math & Art, and
• our opinion writing by mailing our letters.

Taiko:

Our group performed with excitement and confidence Friday evening! What a terrific way to showcase our hard work and practice!  Thank you for your support and attendance, and thank you to the PTO for this memorable opportunity.  Thank you to Sensei for the patience and time to share his knowledge and skill of Taiko & Japanese culture.

Math & Art:

Our final project with Miss Nancy focused on different shaped halves of a rectangle with equal areas.  Students worked with different strategies to color half of a rectangle with a total area of 48 square units.  All four second grade classes completed this project so we created a display for our hallway.  

Opinion Writing:

Our letters are on their way!  We finished our final drafts, addressed envelopes and walked to the post office to officially wrap up our unit.    Thank you to Officer Bri for the safe escort as we crossed Williston Road.

We also enjoyed Hands-On-Nature this week learning about 3 different types of squirrels.  Thank you to Anna Clark, Erin Sutherland and Victoria Zaluski for leading this session.  The puppet play was complemented by our station work and we learned great information about gray squirrels, red squirrels and flying squirrels.  We learned about their different survival skills, their footprints and we were also able to view and touch skulls and pelts.  

Other things to ask your child about this week:
*Visiting 3rd grade to be their audience for their non-fiction writing share
*Paying attention to the special language author's use in our reading books
*Put It On the Line math game with Mrs. Hock versus students (the students always won!)
*Drawing 3D shapes
*Seeing treasures through the eyes of a poet

I'll see you at parent conferences next week!
Mrs. Hock

A Balance of Work & Special Events
Week #27 March 18-22, 2019

Our week included a balance of work and special events.  We hosted guests, enjoyed a whole-school celebration and worked hard to begin our math unit about money, and complete our letters for our opinion writing unit.  Please note that parent conference forms were sent home as well.  You can return the form to me in your child's Take Home Folder or you can email me with your time preferences.  Parent conferences are the afternoons of April 4 & 5.

We began our week on Monday with our first Math Through Art session with Ms. Nancy.  Our PTO generously funded 2 sessions for each second grade classroom.  The theme of our first session was "triangle party".  We explored 4 different activities to highlight the properties of triangles:  1) triangles everywhere, 2) triangle trees, 3) Sierpenski's Triangle and 4) triangle stacks.  What a creative way for us to engage in the mathematics of this amazing shape!  Our next session will be Monday, March 25.

Monday also featured our culminating guidance event on "Changing Perspectives".  We experienced four different stations to become aware of completing tasks with disabilities.  How could we button shirts, walk, draw or listen with different disabilities?  Thank you to Mrs. Wheeler, Miss Bedell, Mrs. D'Agostino and Erin Sutherland for leading our stations.

Our other special guest this week was Miss Meg with Farm-to-School.  She featured cacao!  We learned about its health benefits, how chocolate is made from it, and its cultural significance in many parts of the world.  We did enjoy a hot cacao drink made with VT maple syrup--yum!  Here's the video we watched showing the process from seed to chocolate bar:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Khdz2Stp2ZQ

In math we began a focused mini unit about money.  Second graders need to recognize coins by name, know their value and then use their value to compute, compare, make equivalent & minimal collections, make change and solve word problems.  We use real coins, plastic coins, and money value pieces as tools to facilitate our learning.  Do you have a coin jar?  We grab handfuls of coins and total the value and then answer questions.  Here are a few:  What's the "best" way to count a collection?  Which coin(s) should we start with first?  Is there another way to make a collection with the same value?

Our opinion letters are about ready to mail!  We've been working hard to not only write a clear opinion with 2 supporting reasons, but to also include an introduction, evidence that may be in the form of research, examples, quotes or stories, and a closing.  We will walk to the post office on White Street this week when we are officially ready to publish these pieces.  Students have written letters to me, family members, business leaders, friends and even the President of the United States.  I wonder if anyone will get a letter in return?

We did also write thank you letters to our Flat Stanley hosts.  A Flat Stanley was returned to every student and we were so thrilled with these gifts.  Thank you to your family and friends who participated to make this special for everyone.  We learned many interesting facts and our hosts were very generous with their packages.  We got cookies, accessories, shells, shark teeth, pictures and confetti to name a few of the treats we received.  Here we are in front of our Flat Stanley map.

Other things to ask your child about this week:
*Houndsley and Catina
*Reading dialogue based on the mood of the situation
*Reading at a just right pace to improve our comprehension
*Bee Bot challenges with Mrs. Courcelle
*Mystery Doug:  What causes earthquakes?  Is Pluto a planet?

Think Spring!
Mrs. Hock

A Full, Fast and Fun Four Days!
Week #26 March 11-14, 2019

We are a happy and tired bunch!  What a week we've had full of wonderful events.  Here's a recap:

Float Parade & Bee Bots
Our two culminating events of our study of US Geography were the Float Parade and coding Bee Bots to travel across a map of the United States.  We did our best as we proudly marched through the school showcasing our floats.  The crowed cheered in support, and we received many, many compliments!  Our floats are now on display in the library for all to enjoy a little more closely.  Then, we used our mapping skills in an application to program bee robots (Bee Bots) to "travel" around the US.

Taiko
Our Taiko Artist-in-Residency began this week with Paton Sensei.  Our piece is entitled "Matsuri Taiko".  We have learned not only about Taiko (learning music by listening, copying and saying the language), we have also learned about Japanese culture and how children are expected to be students.  Ask your child about two ways to sit with straight backs, raising hands, saying, "Hai!" and saying, "-san" at the end of our names.  We will attempt to practice in class next week as we have a short hiatus before Sensei returns, and we prepare for our performance on March 29 at 6:30 pm at SBHS.

Math & Art
We enjoyed math extension activities this week on top of completing our measurement assessment.
First, we explored fractals as an amazing example of mathematics being the study of patterns. Students then tried to either replicate Sierpinski Triangle using pennies or color a master of it noticing the repeated, growing shape.

Here's a link to a quick video defining fractals:
https://www.deviantart.com/tararoys/art/What-is-a-Fractal-255112322
Second, we celebrated Pi Day on March 14.  We read Sir Cumference and the Dragon of Pi as we learned about the circumference of all circles being just over 3 times the length of its diameter.  So, on 3-14 at 1:59 (3.14159), we were all engaged in math art related to Pi!

Writing
We chose our topic for our final opinion letter.  We then drew inspiration from real kids (Riley Morrison and Simon Link) who wrote letters and affected change.  We learned from them to help plan our drafts to create appropriate, interesting introductions, and to include research, quotes and stories as evidence of our arguments.  We'll continue this next week as we use writing from another 8 year old whose letter got a big response from Hasbro.

Other things to ask your child about this week:
*3-D shapes on our calendar markers
*money value pieces
*Re-reading aloud and singing to improve our silent reading voice
*using the Singing Drums during mindfulness
*Mystery Doug

Thank you for your support!
Mrs. Hock

Floats and Fun!
Week #25 March 6-8, 2019

Welcome back!  The focus of our 3 day week was the completion of our floats in preparation for this coming Monday's parade.  Students worked diligently and collaboratively to finalize all the details needed to make their float parade-ready.  Students needed a lot of information to represent on their float including their state's:  flag, region, time zone, border states, capital, major cities, a body of water, a landform, 5 state symbols, interesting places to visit and fun facts.  Wow!  They are certainly experts about their states!  We also practiced singing and marching to "Fifty Nifty United States".  Here are our floats on display awaiting our parade on Monday. 

On Friday, we enjoyed 2 live performances.  We watched a musical at The Flynn Theater entitled "Rosie Revere, Engineer and Her Friends".  This musical was based on 3 picture books about the main characters that we read before viewing the show.  Thank you to Ingrid Pels for the shout out to "Molly and her friends at RMCS"; the students all felt like celebrities!  Here we are in our seats (wearing our patient pants) ready to be an awesome audience for the fun musical.

The second live performance we enjoyed was a kick-off assembly to our artist-in-residence that begins next week.  The Burlington Taiko Group performed for the entire school.  Sensei Stuart and 3 other musicians wowed us with their skill and artistry.  Thank you to the PTO for funding this opportunity.  We'll spend 10 half hour sessions with Sensei before our culminating evening performance on Friday, March 29.

Enjoy the weekend with your family!

Mrs. Hock