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

A Week Full of Good Things
Week #9 October 22-26, 2018

Science was a highlight this week as we concluded our investigation of Matter.  We finished our station work related to reversible and irreversible changes.  For our culminating activity, we changed 4 different examples of matter by making a solution of them and then changing this new solution's temperature.  After spending time in the chemical reaction chamber, our solution became new matter.  Do you have a guess for what we made?  We mixed milk, sugar, cream and vanilla, and viola...ice cream!  Delicious!

Welcome back to Mrs. Rito!  We were very excited to see Mrs. Rito in music class this week.  We wrote her letters to give her on her first day with us.  She already has us preparing for our evening Winter Music Program on December 12.

Our school pictures arrived!  Here's an out-take from our class photo. 

Our classroom technology projection system was installed recently.  We are lucky!  An enormous touchscreen monitor is now mounted and ready for use.  There are only 3 of these new devices in the district.  We can now easily project from Mrs. Hock's laptop, our chromebooks, and teacher & student masters, as well as generate & save documents right on the monitor.  It is a gigantic android.

We filled our Marky Mark bin AGAIN!  We voted on our celebration and Monday we'll spend a little time enjoying our top choices.  We work as a class on many things being R. M. C. S, and we enjoy having fun!

A note from our guidance educators:
Our school counselors, Carol Wheeler and Meaghan Rice are hosting a number of parent coffees this year. They will be here at school on Tuesday mornings, 8:05-8:45, and we hope you will join us for the first one, scheduled for November 6th . As parents, you play the primary role in promoting healthy relationships and preventing child abuse, and it serves our children well when the adults use similar vocabulary and approaches. There will be a short presentation by Lori Howe from Prevent Child Abuse Vermont about the contents of the Healthy Relationships Project we teach at RMCS. We’ll also have time for conversation to help us plan the contents of future get togethers. Young children are welcome, as this is very informal and relaxed time to learn together. Special take home bonus: there will be a free mindfulness tool for your family to add to your home peace corner.

Other things to ask your child about this week:
*Revising our narratives to try techniques for new beginnings and different endings
*Band-aid lesson
*Pathways to 100, Math Menu Teacher Station and adding multiples of 10
*Strategies to solve and think about the meaning of words
*Bubble gum brain and our personalized privacy shields
*Word Study groups

Have a wonderful weekend.
Mrs. Hock

Busy, Busy!
Week #8:  October 15-17, 2018
We may have had only 3 days together this week, but it was a busy few days!  Here are some highlights:

We enjoyed our first of four Hands On Nature lessons for the school year.  Thank you to Anna Clark, Erin Sutherland and Victoria Zaluski for teaching us about "Leaf Eaters and their Foes".  They held the attention of a captivated audience performing an informative puppet show.  Then, we investigated and classified leaves by evidence of different leaf eaters.  Lastly, we went outside to find our own evidence in leaves.   Here are a few pictures of our enjoyable time.

Not only were we scientists looking for evidence of Leaf Eaters, we were also scientists observing changes to matter once exposed to heat.  We also asked ourselves, "Is that change reversible or irreversible?".  Our matter that we tested this week included eggs and bread.  Next week we'll test chocolate and balloons as we attempt to change solids, liquids and gases in our own world.

Our unit 1 math assessment was sent home this week. You'll find a scoring  guide attached along with evidence of my initial corrections and your child's work to correct errors.  Before the assessment, students spent time choosing math work to review and refine their skills and understanding.  After the assessment, students were able to correct and practice content as needed.  This content in unit 1 (word problems within 20, odd/even numbers and addition/subtraction facts) will continue to appear in our independent work for review during Math Menu time.

Scholastic book orders were sent home Wednesday.  You are not required to purchase anything.  If you like to purchase any items, please complete the form(s) and return to me by Friday, October 26, 2018.  Please make checks payable to Rick Marcotte Central School.  Do NOT send cash.  If you prefer to order online, my class code is 121VT www.scholastic.com.  Thank you!

Other things to ask your child about this week:
*PebbleGo! with Mrs. Springer and Mrs. Hock
*Writing Thank You notes
*2nd grade craftivity afternoon
*"Believer"
*Counting beans

Enjoy the long weekend!
Mrs. Hock