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

Writing, Painting and Cheering, Oh My!
Week #24 February 18-22, 2019

Go Cats Go!  We had a great time Wednesday watching the UVM Women's Basketball Team defeat the UMBC Retrievers 58-50.  All of 2nd grade was a fantastic audience!  We enjoyed snacks from Mr. Coon, activity packets from the UVM team, our bag lunches, quick entertainment game shows during time outs, and a Zumba dance-along during halftime.

This week with our opinion writing, we focused on writing to appeal to the audience's perspective.  We used a few mentor texts to inspire our writing.  We enjoyed, The Big Bed, and Hey, Little Ant. We worked hard to consider someone else's point of view and to write them a counter argument.  We were all able to write drafts of 2 different opinion letters so we can continue the writing process with these pieces when we return to school in March.

Our geography unit will close with a state float parade!  We have painted our state floats and we are researching about our states.  We will complete our float creation and assembly during the three days we return from vacation.  Our parade will be on Monday, March 11th at approximately 10:15.  You are welcome to join us.  We will also video it and upload the link.

Other things to ask your child about this week:

• Measuring with yardsticks and measuring tapes
• Telling time to the nearest 5 minutes
• 2nd grade celebration movie afternoon
• Guidance lesson with Mrs. Wheeler reading The Invisible Boy
• Our final skiing session in PE

Enjoy this time with your family and I look forward to seeing everyone in March.

Mrs. Hock

Sweet Happenings!
Week #23 February 11-15,  2019

We had a wonderful start to our day on Valentine's Day!  The students were very sweet as they politely and excitedly exchanged valentines before enjoying breakfast together.  Thank you to all families who contributed items and thank you to our chefs:  Mrs. Pels, Mr. Goudey, Mrs. Trombley, Mrs. Olesky and Mrs. Januszczyk.  I really appreciate all the efforts to help it run so smoothly!  The students had no idea we blew a fuse!  They happily and quietly ate and also enjoyed valentine puzzles & coloring together.  The rest of our day was just as lovely too.

We had a Farm-to-School lesson with Miss Meg this week that culminated in us enjoying some sweetened (with Nurse Cannon's maple syrup) mint tea.  The focus was on spearmint and peppermint herbs.  We learned about herbal infusion versus decoction.  Miss Meg also led us through a relaxation exercise while the tea steeped.

Next week features a few fun events...

• MONDAY:  Whole-school celebration of "SPORTS DAY" and painting for the start of our final states project
• WEDNESDAY:  Field trip to UVM women's basketball game.  Every student will need a bag lunch.  Wear green & gold!

 Other things to ask your child about this week:

• writing opinion letters
• beginning our state research
• estimating and measuring
• a lesson on empathy with Mrs. Wheeler

Thank you for all you do!

Mrs. Hock

Measurements and Maps!
Week #22 February 4-8, 2019

This week we began our measurement unit by using non-standard tools to measure objects in our classroom and around the school.  Measurements were first determined using body parts and by using our own feet, we quickly learned that since everyone had different sized feet, we needed one standard foot to use.  We used "a teacher foot", "a yard" (using the approximate length from our nose to our out-stretched finger tip), and "an inch" (using our knuckles and tiles).  Next week, we'll move to standard tools using rulers and yardsticks.

Our map work has been exciting as we've been reading different types of maps of the United States to help us meet the following geography standards: 

1. Use maps to describe places, relationships & interactions.
2. Use maps to identify environmental characteristics of places.  

Students have analyzed and reasoned about political maps and physical maps, and connected them to maps of our 58 National Parks and Time Zones.

Thank you to Elvin for sharing Chinese New Year with us!  Elvin brought in a lucky red envelope filled with chocolate gold coins for each student.  What a fortunate way for us to begin the Year of the Pig!

Thank you also to Mrs. Clark, Henry's grandmother, who visited to share more of her knowledge of Japan.  This time we learned about a typical day for a Japanese student and how to write, and say, the numbers 1-10.

We are looking forward to our Valentine's Day celebration next week.  Thank you to families who are contributing items for our pancake breakfast Thursday morning.

Send in those boxes!  We are collecting the boxes (and lids) that hold reams of photocopy paper.  If you have any at home or work, please send them in.  We'll need one box for each student.

Other things to ask your child about this week:

• Writing letters about our favorite books or characters
• Fractional parts of flags on our calendar pieces
• Flat Stanley arrivals from New York, Indiana and Florida
• The 50 States Song, and The Fifty Nifty United States
• Four Corners during morning meeting

Have a wonderful weekend.

Mrs. Hock

We Are Writers!
Week #21 January 28-February 1, 2019

Writing was a highlight this week!  We finished our non-fiction unit with a Publishing Party on Monday.  We also completed a district-wide writing prompt, and started a unit on opinion writing by writing about our favorite characters and our favorite scenes in our favorite book.  On Friday, we celebrated Vermont Writes Day as part of The Young Writer's Project to "drop everything and write".  The Publishing Party was a wonderful celebration of our hard work and creativity.  We joined Mrs. Belisle's class and were able to read each other's books as well as write feedback to the author as a "Publishing Party Positive".  Our feedback was based on reviewing the author's lead, ending, organization, detail and spelling/punctuation.  Oh, and we had pops too.  What a treat!  Here are a few pictures of our event.

We've received mail!  Six Flat Stanleys have returned along with 3 postcards from 2nd grade classrooms in Pennsylvania, California and Arizona.  How exciting!  This is an amazing way to support our learning of US Geography as we learn about the states our Flat Stanleys have visited.  The postcards are part of a project where we exchange a post card with a 2nd grade classroom in each of the other 49 states.  We were busy this week writing our fun facts about Vermont to mail on post cards to our 2nd grade pen pals.  Here we are with our returned Flat Stanleys.

I have a fun culminating project planned for the end of our US geography unit.  We'll need a box for each student.  The box needed is the box that holds reams of photocopy paper like this:

If you have access to any, at home or work, please save them and send them in to school when you can.  Both the bottom and top of the box will be used.  Fun times ahead!

We will have a pancake breakfast to celebrate Valentine's Day together.  Thank you to families who have already signed up to contribute to this event.  A class list went home today in Take Home Folders for your child to reference for making Valentine cards.

Other things to ask your child about this week:
*decomposing (splitting) numbers to add
*Susan Laughs with Mrs. Wheeler
*Whole-school assembly led by Kindergarten
*GoNoodle exercise breaks and mindfulness
*Mercy Watson

Have a wonderful weekend.
Mrs. Hock