May 25th Blog Post

Dear parents,

It was a fun and full week in 2CP! We continued working on powerful

poetry, were measuring all around the school and explored more

about Life Cycles.

The highlight of this week was our Wet and Wild celebration today!

Thank you so much for all the parents who came out, got wet and

muddy and had a blast! I think my class had a little too much fun

in the mud…..happy laundry. We finished our day with an afternoon

with our 5CC book buddies sharing poetry and helping them measure

their buildings. They taught the kids how to calculate volume, pretty

impressive! Please see weekly photos on our blog and via Seesaw.

Important Upcoming Dates:

Monday Day 2: Art/World Language

Tuesday: NO SCHOOL HOLIDAY

Wednesday: Day 3 PE

Thursday: Day 4 FIELD TRIP: students need to bring

own snack and wear school uniform

Friday: NO SCHOOL packing day for teachers

The last week of school we will be having theme

days, so stay tuned!

**Please note May 31st is our field trip. It is also free

dress but students are to wear their SCHOOL UNIFORMS

On field trips. They must also bring a hat, water bottle

and a snack as we will eat on the bus. Thank you to

parents who will be joining us and taking a group.

ELA:

Our students continued to learn about making powerful

poems. They have experimented with line breaks, powerful

words, comparisons and have had fun using different kinds

of punctuation to enhance meaning. Their poems are filled

with emotion and some interesting interpretations of ordinary

objects. They have studied the way authors use repeating

lines, rhyming words and word choice during reading time

to give their poems music. They are absolutely loving this

unit and are excited to read and share with you in a few weeks!

Math:

This week our mathematicians were measuring machines. We

had fun finding measurements around the playground and

school in centimeters. We paired up to measure and compare

body lengths and heights of different limbs. Then students

created their own measurement tasks and collected data to

display on line plots. We will continue our measurement unit

for the next few weeks and share with you when you come for

our celebration.   

Science:

This week we discovered some interesting facts about some unique

life cycles. We also worked on creating our Scratch Junior teaching

videos. The videos students created with coding and were quite

creative in their design to explain their animal’s life cycle to you.

April 23rd

Dear Parents –

Class News

This past week was a busy one in Grade 2!  The students took their Math

and Reading MAP tests, we celebrated Earth Week learning different ways

that we can help take care of the Earth, and ended our week with an

Earth Day assembly.

Thank you to all the parents who volunteered to lead our Mini Academies

on Friday.  The children had so much fun and came back to the classroom

excited to show their friends what they made or what they did.  It’s hard to

believe that this was our last Mini Academies for the year. The Mini

Academies have been a huge success because of your commitment

and dedication.  Thank you for your creativity, your time, and your

willingness to volunteer for our Mini Academies throughout the year.

This is an event that the kids love and and we couldn’t do it without

your help.  Thank you!

Field Trip

On May 11th the Grade 2 classes will take a field trip to visit the Butterfly

and Bird Parks as part of our science unit on life cycles.  A permission slip

was sent home last week. Please return the permission slip by

Friday, April 27 to help us with planning. We are looking for parent

volunteers to chaperone, so if you are interested, please indicate on

the permission slip.

Here’s a look at our week ahead:

Monday (Day 3) – PE

Tuesday (Day 4) – Art and WL

Wednesday (Day 5) – Music and PE

Thursday (Day 6) – LIBRARY and WL

Friday (Day 1) – Music and Swimming

Curriculum Connections

Reader’s Workshop

The children are really enjoying reading and discussing their books in their

Book Clubs.  As a class, we’ve been reading the Julian and Huey books

and learning about the main characters and really investigating their

actions, traits, the things they say and predicting what they will do next.

We also started looking at the language the author uses to make

his or her stories so powerful. We have been looking for examples of how

the author uses precise words and descriptive language to help readers

visualize the event and characters from the book. Our readers will also

look at the types of literary language, such as similes, metaphors,

onomatopoeia, and alliteration and how authors can use these to make

simple things seem extraordinary.

Writer’s Workshop

As writer’s our focus has been sharing our opinions about the books we

read for the March Picture Book Challenge. This week we’ll focus

on how to make our book reviews even better by retelling the important

parts of their books. We’ll practice retelling with partners and then the

students will write a brief summary of their book to help strengthen their

book review.  Throughout the week as students are writing, we will also

emphasize the importance of keeping the audience in mind. Picturing

their audience will help students write stronger book reviews.

Science

Students are excited to start our new science unit on life cycles this week!  

This past week we set up observation stations in our common area where

students could begin to observe the life cycle of beetles and butterflies.  

 We’ll start the week tuning in to life cycles by looking at some of the

vocabulary words for this unit and getting an idea of what students already

know about life cycles.  Throughout the week we will talk how scientists

make and record their observations. We’ll practice drawing scientific

diagrams, with details and labels, of the animals in our common area.

Math

Our unit on Developing Multiplication is coming to a close and this week

will be spent reviewing the skills and concepts that were covered in this

unit and having our assessment over the unit.  This will leave some more time

open for some rich tasks, math projects, 3 Act tasks which the kids love

and some review of their basic facts.

 

Dinner Questions

What are some ways that you can help take care of the Earth?

What are some of the words the author used in your book to help

you create a movie or picture in your mind?

Tell me about the book you’re reading. What is your opinion? What

are the important parts?

What are you excited about learning during your life cycles unit?

Week of March 12th

Dear parents,
Hope you all had a wonderful weekend and enjoyed some extra time with family on student led conference days. I am pretty happy we now have water again, as many of you also are. I wanted to say thank you again for taking the time and being wonderful listeners to our students as they share their work, ways they want to grow and set a goal to work on at home with you. I was very proud of how they communicated with only a little prep and being a bit nervous. Thank you again, we have had more wonderful readers come in to help us read and decide on our favorite Picture book for March Madness picture book challenge.

Run, jump throw is on Thursday if you would like to come and watch. The kids have a really fun time in the morning rotating stations on the field. 

Important Dates:
Monday day 3-PE
Tuesday day 4-WL
Wednesday day 5-PE
Thursday day 6-RUN JUMP THROW 8:15 AM, MUST bring hat and water bottle and be in comfortable running shoes. Library also today.
Friday day 1-Swimming

Language Arts
Students are researchers this week reading about their healthy choices topic and using that information to create their last nonfiction piece. This will be their On Demand piece, so the students will be doing this without teacher or peer help and it will be assessed at the end of the week. I will send it home for you to view and them to share with you what they learned.

Math
We are just getting into this unit that is primarily only number and operations and looking for patterns. The class has gotten more comfortable adding strings of 2 digit numbers and communicating their strategy. We are now focusing on adding and subtracting 3 digit numbers, showing different strategies, explaining our thinking clearly and learning from others. Our assessment will be just before Spring Break.

Science
Yucky germs and bacteria were the topics of discussion this week. We explored the different kinds of germs, how they enter your body and how your body protects itself. The students broke off into groups and did some of their own research on bacteria and presented to the class for Wondering Wednesday. We will finish up this unit before spring break and the class will be creating items for the refugee school to learn about healthy choices.

Happy March!

We had a super week celebrating book week with visiting author, Tad Hills, visiting singer, Courtney Campbell, book swap and book character dress-upday. We also had mini academy on Tuesday. Thank you to all the parents who volunteered to make this a successful event. Thank you to Mrs. Sara and Mrs. Kim for being wonderful guest readers this month as we move through

our March Madness book bracket.

Language Arts

Students have been busy preparing for their student led conferences. A lot of time was spent on reflecting on their glow (what they are good at) and grow(what they want to better at). Students got to do some fun activities for book week including reading BINGO, bringing in favorite books to share, nonfiction wonderings and research about germs and some fun partner reading tasks.

Math Workshop

Students refreshed their memories on place values and base ten blocks. This week, they also reviewed strategies to add two addends. Then they added 4 addends using transition words strategy such as first I added .....then I added....after that I added....finally I got.....Students also looked at the most efficient way to add multiple addends by making 10 and adding doubles. They then learned

to add and subtract multiples of 100.

Science

We just started learning about germs and the importance of good hygiene. Next few weeks we will discuss dental health and regular dentist check ups. Students are learning about different kinds of germs, and how our bodies protect and fight against them.

Important Dates
Tuesday 6 March - Day 1 SWIMMING Parent Reading Workshop at 8:30 a.m.

Wednesday 7 and 8 March - No School-Student Led Conferences. Please bring your child to school at the scheduled time you will have 45 minutes to conference and the last 15 minutes to visit specialist teachers.

Dinner Questions

1 - What healthy choices topic are you writing about? Why?

2 - What was your favorite thing about book week?

3 - What did you learn from the visiting author or song writer?

Week of February 25th

Upcoming Events the next few weeks:

MondayDay 1: PE swimming, start of book week and author visit-Tad Hills
Tuesday Day 2: Mini Academies 
Wednesday Day 3: PE
Thursday Day 4: CHARACTER DRESS UP DAY
Friday Day 5: PE, photos for new student 

Dear parents, I hope you had a wonderful weekend. We had a busy week in 2CP and next week is full of fun activities and sharing our love for books with book week. We will be doing a "March Madness" bracket of picture books. If you want to check it out can go here. http://marchbookmadness.weebly.com/picture-book-bracket.html


Language Arts:
This week in writing we focused on a few of the grammar standards and implementing those into our writing correctly. We investigated plurals and possessives and did some activities as well as looked for correcting these in writing. We learned about simple versus compound sentences and how similes/comparisons can really help readers picture our facts. Students are still writing topics they are experts on and will soon write about healthy choices.

Our readers have finished reading about their expert topic and used their very large compilation of notes to create a project. They used Explain Everything to share some interesting facts and important Lingo words with the rest of the class.

Math:
We have started our new unit this week and have dipped our toes into various strategies for adding larger numbers. Our focus is on using multiple strategies, showing our work and being able to teach and explain to others. We did a lot of problem solving tasks, mental math challenges and a few 3Act Tasks as a whole class which they loved! We also worked on strategies for solving story problems with multiple steps and added information.

Science:
Getting adequate sleep and why that is important and drinking enough water in our hot climate with active kids were the topics of focus this week. We created a sleep chart and tracked our nightly sleep and set goals for better bed times, bed time routines and less technology at night. We are also trying to make sure our water intake fits how active we are. Next week is all about good hygiene and dental health. Floss and Brush and Wash, oh goody! Check out their exercise videos via Touchcast App posted on Seesaw.


Dinner Questions: 
What is your favorite book and why?
What are some healthy meals we can make together?
What are you writing about right now?
What is a wondering you have you will explore on Wondering Wednesdays?

February 5-9th

Dear Parents –

We had another busy week in grade 2, and next week will be short but
full. Our class has had multiple birthdays and has really enjoyed
learning all about making healthy choices with exercise and healthy eating.

Valentine's Day

We will not be doing official parties on Wednesday, but 
will be having some fun with fractions and baking! Students 
are more than welcome to bring in Friendship cards to share
 as long as there are enough for the whole class(17).

Here’s a look at our week ahead:

Monday (Day 5) PE

Tuesday (Day 6) Library

Wednesday (Day 1) SWIMMING

Thursday (NO SCHOOL)

Friday (NO SCHOOL)

 

Reader’s Workshop

We’ve been busy becoming experts on a topic by reading across books.
Students have looked at information in multiple texts and put them
together to learn about big ideas authors are trying to teach on their
topic. We will continue to focus on comparing and contrasting information
that is similar and different across books on a similar topic. Also, how to
ask and answer questions and share facts with each other to show that
we are experts.

Writer’s Workshop

Our writers continue to polish up their writing making it more 
readable for their audience. They are still working on elaborating
 all they know with key words, facts and details and organize 
chapters with good leads and wrap ups. They are excited to get 
to share them with you soon. 

Math Workshop
Mathematicians have been learning about partitioning shapes equally and
exploring equal shares. They are becoming experts on fractions and how to
describe them using thirds, halves and fourths. We will be finishing up our
fractions and geometry unit with our post assessment on content and
vocabulary this week.

Science
We are now learning about healthy eating and having balanced meals. We
explored different food pyramids around the world, studied food labels,
learned about calories and different nutrients each food group provides.

Dinner Questions

Do you have a balanced meal on your plate tonight, how do you know?
What nutrients does each food group provide?
What is an act of kindness you have done for others this week?
What is one thing this week you did that was challenging? How did
you overcome the challenge?

February 3rd

It was nice to have a mid week off day. Thank you to all the parents
who came to lead the mini academy on Monday. As always kids
had a lot of fun learning something from other than their teachers.
The hat parade on the hundredth day of school was a nice
experience for second graders. Thank you for helping your child
with their creative hats!

Language Arts

In reading, students practiced rereading like an expert when they
come across words that are not familiar with as yet another strategy
in their toolbox to help solve unknown words. Rereading not only
reinforces fluency but it also supports understanding. Summarising
continues with looking at the big topic, heading and key details
about the heading and giving a summary statement.

In writing, we are working on setting goals to elaborate our facts to

make our reader more informed. This includes twin facts, giving

examples, comparisons and using text features and mini glossaries

to help explain topic words. We will soon finish these up and start

our Healthy Choices research books.

Math

Students reviewed shape attributes this week including 3D attributes. We then learned about arrays and how to describe arrays using addition sentences as well as beginning multiplication. We studied and created rectangular arrays and how to partition rectangles equally. I am amazed at this class's ability to make connections, remember all of the geometry vocabulary and continually be enthusiastic about math class.

Science

This week, we finished up our portion of the unit on exercise. Students recorded their exercise videos and started using a new Application that will help them to create a news show about what they learned about exercise. Stay tuned for samples and a personal fitness goal via Seesaw. We will start discussing nutrition next week.

Important dates

Monday 5th January - Library and After school activities start

Tuesday6th- SWIMMING PE today

Dinner Questions

1 - What plane shapes do you see at the dinner table? Can you

describe the shapes using their attributes?

2 -Tell me some facts that you are writing about and some text

features in your nonfiction book?

3 - What strength activities are difficult for you that you could

practice as a family?