Week of September 18th

NEWS:

In reading our focus this week was "word attack" strategies. Basically this entails first cross-checking ourselves to see whether what we are reading makes sense and if it doesn't then using strategies to solve words successfully by looking at the beginning, middle, and ending of words. We are also continuing to jot down notes on our reading about things we find interesting, puzzling, or want to explore further as a means to aid our comprehension.

In writing our focus this week remained on developing our small moment personal narratives and extending them further by elaborating on details using the senses to make our writing more interesting. We acted out parts of our story to really be able to show and not just tell what our bodies and faces were doing and what we said and to show emotion rather than just write-I was sad. We will continue our work last week noticing powerful things master authors are doing in our mentor texts and trying them out such as: an ellipse..., or a repeating line or some onomatopoeia(sound word).

In math our focus remains on work with base ten relationships and modelling. This week we learned about modelling numbers in expanded form with the value of each digit, as well as standard and word form. We will continue this as there are a lot of new vocabulary words. We did some extension activities and it was good for students to practice growth mindset and use resources when faced with challenging tasks.

In social studies we started building our own ideal communities, discussing what kinds of features our particular kind of community has. We learned about good and services and started planning the goods and services we want in our community.

Home learning has started. Just a reminder you can click here This page can also be accessed through the Home learning tab on our page above. .

IMPORTANT

Please subscribe to this blog via email to receive notifications of blog posts. New posts for the upcoming week will go out every Sunday around 4pm.

UPCOMING

ES Parent Teacher conferences will be held on Monday,  October 9th and Tuesday, October 10th. We will send more information regarding specific dates and times for appointments soon.

Subscribe to the ISKL ES Google Calendar and also our Grade 2 rotation calendar to stay up to date with any last minute changes (on the right hand side of your screen).

DINNER QUESTIONS
*What was your favorite Hari Raya station?
*What strategies have you learned to solve tricky words?
*What kind of laws will you have in your community?

Three day week!

           We had a full week even though it was only 3 days! Students had fun with their new after school activities and yet again added some pretty creative dance moves to their morning dance on Wednesday. They reflected on what a respectful student looks like during counselling time with Mrs. Wright. I am now starting to have students reflect weekly on our school's SLRs and which ones they think they were glowing, and which they are still growing. They will upload to Seesaw

What an enthusiastic group of learners! They earned another star party and wanted to do science experiments, so next week we will spend some time in the lab. The class was very techie this week learning how to use 2 new applications to create projects about communities, make toolkits to help them with writing and they also are getting more familiar with sharing work on Seesaw. I have shown all student the Home Learning document on our Home Learning tab. PLEASE email me if you have any difficulties. We spend time each week to celebrate any work students chose to do. 

Upcoming Events:

-Swimming this week is on Thursday, Library is Wednesday

-Hari Raya Cultural day is Friday, students may dress in local dress and we will have our hallway activities at 10:00, assembly will be at 11:00. Mrs. Pike will be gone as I have IASAS tournament for coaching this weekend.
-Parent MAP workshop is 10:00 Thursday. MAP scores will be going home this year for all students, so it is a good workshop to just get informed about how to interpret scores and how the assessments work.
-Friday 22nd no school
-I will be sending a letter to you soon to ask if you have parent conference preferences for time slots. We always book siblings in different grades together. 

All About Seesaw

Thank you all for signing up to view your child's account. I apologize if you have gotten many notifications lately. Sometimes I share things with all students to edit and manipulate, you receive those updates, so you can ignore those. The kids often decide what they want to put into Seesaw, and often reflect on how teaching points in our units are going. This will turn into a digital portfolio, so that is why they use it often to upload videos, images or it is for me to see if they are understanding a recent lesson. Thee are not rehearsed and many are not necessarily final products, so there may be errors, it may sometimes be misspelled or confusing. I spend time commenting or talking with students about their posts, but wanted you to know that it is an ongoing, working process that they are doing not their final products. Sometimes I send announcements via Seesaw, you can reply if you would like. Students will learn about comments and Imojis this week and how to be ethical when using them.

Math
We continue to work with Base Ten relationships and modelling. This week we played games and solved riddles based on clues about each place as well as discussed the VALUE of digits and where that comes from. This will stem into expanded form and standard form of numbers and comparing numbers in coming weeks. We are practicing addition facts each week and still working on effectively skip counting from various points up and down by 5s, 2s and 10s.

Reading and Writing Workshop
We are in revising stages right now, using mentor authors and narrative rubrics and checklists to see how our writing can become even better. Students have spend a few days setting goals and trying to reach those goals by improving their writing so that is is more detailed or more readable. We have learned about powerful leads and endings and how to add actions, talking and setting details. We will work more next week on powerful words and creating a intended mood with our stories. In reading we are done with our strategies from Bend 1 which you will see in Seesaw. The class used a sticky note application to record thinking jots and will continue to practice reading more fluently, setting goals for number of pages and minutes read and taking time to stop, think and jot it down. Next week, word attack strategies!

Social Studies
We are now studying how communities are organized and learning about urban, suburban and rural. Students shared their home communities and some similarities and differences we have in our class. We read about them on Big Universe, watched Brainpop and created posters and Ibooks about the three different types. Next week we will start learning about producers, consumers, goods and services and what jobs are most important in a community. We will have some class debates and do some school tours and interviews to see what kinds of services are in our school community.

Word Study
Initial word assessments have been done. Next week we sill start looking at long vowel teams and reviewing prefix, suffix and base words. We will explore some adjectives and start using our handwriting booklets. Each group of students will be given individual words to sort, explore and learn how to spell. Then at the end of coming weeks I will send them home for your use.

At Home
See if your child would like to do any of the Home Learning activities. Continue reading each night. Please know reading with and to your child is still wonderful and students can also use: Tumblebooks, Big Universe and RAZ kids as they have loggins for each. RAZ kids they can record their voice, and I can listen and comment. Continue finding opportunities to have them skip count, count groups of objects around the house and practice math facts while passing or kicking a ball. Ask them to point out buildings, parks, jobs, shops etc. in their community. Also, have them orally retell a story in the car about something that happened over the weekend with details. Oral storytelling is a great starting place for crafting a story and planning before writing on paper.

NOTEWORTHY EVENTS 
This is a great Science Festival that would be so fun to take kids to next week=)
http://www.sciencefestival.my/

Last week of August weekly post

Happy September already! We had a short but full week and it looks like another short week will be in order next week as well. I have had to alter the calendar a bit under our class documents to make up for our lost day next week=) We will have to skip Monday after school activities and also move library day to FRIDAY. That means that we will start the week with PE swimming oh boy! Please send some sort of small bag with your child, it makes it easier for them to transport clothes with lunches and water bottles.

This week we start our Home Learning, so you will now be able to access this document on the Home Learning Tab. This will be open until our next Home Learning menu which will start the first week of October. Please remember your child only needs to do a few tasks as they choose in addition to always reading 20 minutes every night. We will take time on Fridays to review any work sent in via folders, email or even Seesaw. Feel free to email with any clarifying questions.

Here's what was going on last week in 2CP:
Math:
We continued with our place value unit and talked about how digits can change their place and it changes the value of the number making it greater or smaller. Students created different numbers by organizing digits in certain ways. We worked on building and drawing numbers with Place Value blocks and how to model a number in different ways with different blocks. We also started to practice our fact fluency using the application Hooda math. Students are still a bit weak with counting up and down by 5s and 10s at different points: 180, 210, 60. This would make a good car ride game.

ELA:
In writing we continue to look to the masters for ideas and inspiration to help add more details in our stories. The kinds of detail we have focused on to start our stories and be woven within them are: dialogue, actions and setting where they use their senses. Stretching one idea across pages and helping the reader picture how they felt were other areas of focus. In reading we have been working on changing our voice to match the story and reading more smoothly. This week we added in pausing to make sure we were actually thinking and not just reading. So we put sticky notes on our books on different pages to remind ourselves to often: pause, think and retell what we have read. You can do this with them at home as well to check in on understanding.

Social Studies:
Last week on the island and our island rescue. Students made maps of their island with landforms, a map key and a compass. They reflected on what they learned about communities on their island, what went well and what was hard. By the end of the island time they have built shelters, created jobs for each person, set up food markets and used wood chips as currency. They said they did not need a leader and were just starting to see the importance and need of rules. They will now choose 1 of the 3: urban, suburban or rural communities and will create their own community in the coming weeks.

Other:
We started our first of many Wondering Wednesdays. I firmly believe in carving out time for authentic inquiry and allowing students to pursue their own interests. We discussed all the many ways people can answer questions besides simply typing the question into Google. The students had some questions from their wondering journals and our wonder wall. They broke into groups to help one another answer their questions about Singapore, Greenland, Queen ants, Chinese calendar, and snake venom. We used National Geographic and online encyclopedia, books from the library and next week we will ask the experts. I told them you were also experts and that we also make observations to answer our wonderings. We will use the website below as well on Wednesdays. It has a new wondering everyday kids get to learn about.

https://wonderopolis.org/

August 28-30th

         We had a full week last week with school and class photos, diving into new reading and writing units,  and a new place value unit. Wait till you see the photos, talk about little movie stars and the class photos were done in groups with fun poses, pretty cute!!

*****This week is a three day week, hope you all will take some much needed family time.
 We have PE on Monday and Wednesday and swimming will start September 15th.

Students learned about being master authors by studying the masters themselves with mentor texts. They continue to use idea notebooks to collect ideas about their lives to write about and have planned out and started writing some very thoughtful stories. This year we really focus on revising with details, writing across and down pages with dialogue, interesting words and details that help the reader picture the story as well as rereading to make our stories clear.

In reading the students have been informed they are graduating into reading like adults. Lesson focuses this week we're previewing a book and deciding how to read- what voices to try out. We are also working on building reading muscles by setting stamina goals for minutes, books, pages and chapters read each day. We finished up the week working on reading in longer phrases- no more robot reading=)

Our mathematicians are just starting to explore place value concepts and how to make 100 using Base Ten manipulatives. They are learning that 13 tens would equal 130 and that they can draw pictures of base ten blocks to help them model numbers.

Support at home:
Help your child see they live writerly lives- "wow that would make a great story, or let's pretend we are turning what just happened into a story, how would it go-let's tell it across our fingers". Have your child read out loud describing to you the kind of voice they will try to read in and setting a time or number of pages goal that they could try to reach. Have them reread often to practice reading smoother and with more expression. Also, have them count large piles of things around the house and watch how they organise it. How did you do it, is there a faster way?

Sorry we missed you

Here is the presentation we gave tonight. Thank you all for coming and please email with any further questions.

Click here for presentation

Week of August 21st

NEWS: 
      In reading we will be launching Reader’s workshop and getting students working with fluency, stamina and comprehension. Lessons are focused on getting students to think about which strategies they will use as they read, how much they will read and self-monitoring their reading. 
       In writing the unit focuses on students seeing the experiences in their lives worthy of writing about.
 Students will learn to craft stories from their lives using detail in a step by step order and from studying mentor texts extensively. The writing process is highlighted as students learn how to cycle through collecting, choosing a seed idea, nurturing the idea, drafting, revising, editing, publishing, celebrating. Over the course of the next couple of weeks the students will stretch out and magnify their small moments, writing these with great attention to detail and craft powerful beginnings and endings. 
       In math we will be focusing on the number system in base ten. Understanding how to represent a hundred as a group of tens, representing three digit numbers based on the properties of the digits in the ones, tens, and hundreds place, and understanding the concept of "0" as a place holder of no intrinsic value. 
      In social studies we will begin with a review of the concept of family and explore the question, "Why do families live in communities?" Students will then investigate common characteristics of a community including location, physical characteristics, history, government, people, and businesses. IMPORTANT Here is a great link to the Parent Learning Connection page where there are some resources for how you can support your child's learning at home. 
https://sites.google.com/a/iskl.edu.my/eslearningconnect/home/lc-literacy/grade-2-ela


****Thank you to all of those who have already signed up to your child's SeeSaw account. If you haven't already please click here to do so. We will use the SeeSaw platform to document our learning throughout the year. Please feel free to comment on your child's account, they love it! 

 Home reading is very important. In grade 2 the expectation is that students ready a minimum of 20 minutes daily of a "just right" book - meaning at their current reading level. Your child should know what this looks like in a book and how to choose appropriately. The expectation is that 2 out of the 4 library books are at your child's "just right" level. When your child finishes a library book they are strongly encouraged to bring them back to school so they can return them and check out different ones so they can grow their reading muscles.

Want to see some pictures? Navigate to the "Photos" tab at the top of this page. Please subscribe to this blog via email to receive notifications of blog posts. New posts for the upcoming week will go out every weekend.


UPCOMING:
Free dress on Friday and Star party with their stuffed animal. NO SCHOOL next Thursday and Friday. 

DINNER QUESTIONS These questions are meant to stimulate conversation so that you avoid scenarios like the cartoon below. *Who do you think will be a good friend for you this year and why? *What is the proudest moment you had in your class? *Tell me about a book you read? *What story are you working on now?

Welcome to our class