This Week in Grade 2 Dear Parents – We have a few special events happening to make for another exciting week at school.   Thank you to the parents who are coming in this week to help students make their Christmas tree ornaments.  This is a wonderful way to kick off the holiday season at Melawati. We have our Mini Academies scheduled for Thursday, November 23.  Thank you to the parents who volunteered to lead an activity.  These are always special events and the kids love learning from our very talented parent community. Just as a reminder, our Home Learning is posted on our blog.  While these activities are optional, students are encouraged to complete one activity of their choice each week.  Students have an opportunity to share their activities each week and we’ve really enjoyed looking at some of the projects students have brought in to class.   Learning Celebration Mark your calendars!  Our Grade 2 Learning Celebration is scheduled for Friday, December 8 from 10:10 – 10:45.  Students will have the opportunity to share with you some math games, addition and subtraction strategies, and problem solving strategies that they’ve been learning this semester.  An invitation with an RSVP will be sent closer to the date so we can determine how many parents will attend. Language Arts In our Reader’s Workshop students will continue practicing reading and discussing books with their partner. We’ll work on strategies to help students hold onto their thinking when reading longer books. Students will practice writing their ideas, questions, and thinking on sticky notes throughout the book and at the end of chapters.  These notes form the basis of collaborative conversations with their reading partner. We continue our work writing like scientists this week. With a new experiment this week, students will have an opportunity to continue to develop their skills writing the procedures.  We’ll emphasize the importance of using exact measurements, science vocabulary and detailed steps as we write our procedures. Math This week we reviewed all three forms of story problems: change unknown, start unknown and result unknown. Students are now experts on setting up the right equation, showing their work and writing answers with units. They draw base ten blocks, write number lines and equations to show  thinking. We continue to review our addition and subtraction facts through games, quick images, times tests and sharing tricks. Please continue practicing at home. Next week we will move into subtraction with regrouping and subtraction word problems. Science This week we continue learning about the differences between physical and chemical changes.  Through our readings and experiments, we’ll explore how chemical changes are irreversible and create a new substance.  During our experiments this week, students will have an opportunity to see matter go through both physical and chemical changes.   Important Dates Here’s a peek at our week ahead: Monday (Day 5) – PE Tuesday (Day 6) – Library and Ornament decoration Wednesday (Day 1) – Swimming Thursday (Day 2) – World Language Friday (Day 3) – PE Dinner Questions What are the 3 R’s to being safe?  What do they mean? What are some chemical changes that you might see at home?  How do you know? Practice a reading partnership with your parents.  What are some questions you can ask them about the book you read?