Weekly Update 1/30/17 - 2/3/17

Hello, Second Grade Families! Time for a few class updates as we're making a couple shifts within our units of study.

Storypath and Writer's Workshop are still heavily intertwined, and your children have now started the drafting process for their coral reef research books. Because we collected so much research, we have been focusing on how to take this research and reorganize it into meaningful paragraphs, and this is also giving students the opportunity to see where they might need need to do a bit more research. Students have been using both books and the iPads to collect information on their animals, and we've been pleased to see so many checking out books on the coral reef during our recent visits to ImaginOn! In the coming weeks, we'll be covering skills such as topic sentences, pronouns, juicy words, transition sentences and words, among a few other skills. It's a hefty project to undertake, but the result will be a collection of hard work and interesting information that your children will be excited to share with you come March!

In Reader's Workshop, we're transitioned from non-fiction to fluency work, which is a critical part of growing as readers. We are encouraging students to think and notice how they read, and also how an author might be encouraging them to read through their use of dialogue, tone, and literary language. We've recently learned about how to "scoop" our words, dialogue tags, and appropriate pace. As we continue this fluency work in class, it's important that your children are reading out loud at home so please encourage them to do so nightly.

Unit 3 of Math will wrap up this week and we'll take an End of Unit Assessment that will come home to be reviewed, signed and returned. Students are now working with 1s, 10s, and 100s and have begun encountering Story Problems that have unknown change in them, which can often be tricky. Next up will be Unit 4:, and we will send home more information on how to support your children as it becomes necessary.

In Word Study, we've been working as a class on contractions and there will be assessment this Friday.

We were fortunate enough last week to have a schedule packed with exciting events! As you know and celebrated well, The Jungle Book was an absolute hit! Many thanks to you all for coming to support and celebrate the hard work of Second Grade, and we could not be more proud of the effort and energy given to this performance. It was a true success! We were lucky enough to host our friends from InReach that morning for our dress rehearsal, and then had the opportunity the following day to play the roll of audience as they performed a puppet show, "Barnyard News," for us. The play celebrated differences, and aligned so perfectly with John Sharon's messages from the Freedom Fete event. See below for a few pictures from our time with InReach last Thursday!

We will visit InReach this Thursday, February 2nd, and are looking forward to getting back in the groove with Service Learning. Thanks, in advance, to our volunteer parent drivers!

Other reminders for the upcoming weeks: 

• On Friday, February 3rd we will go to our final play at the Children's Theater. We will be seeing Junie B. Jones is Not a Crook," which is sure to be a hit! The show is at 9:30 at ImaginOn and we will go with both Kindergarten and First Grade.
• Next Tuesday, February 7th is our field trip to the Concord Mills Aquarium. This will be our first time taking a trip here, and we're looking forward to seeing what it has to offer. Thank you to our parent drivers! 
• Tuesday and Wednesday, February 14-15th will be our designated times to paint the coral reef on our hallway windows. If you have not seen it in previous years, you're in for a treat! Stay tuned for information about how you can volunteer to help. 
• Friday, February 17 is a 1/2 day, and the following Monday, February 20th there will be no school. Enjoy a long weekend! 

That about covers it for now and we will let you know of any other happenings as they are brought to our attention. Routine has officially set back in, and we hope the same is true in your households! 

Enrichment Updates

See below for a few updates from our enrichment classes! We will share classroom updates next week.

Art: We are halfway through the school year and these students have earned the privilege to use hot glue guns. Even with our supervision they quickly learned that the glue was, well, actually HOT. With this tool they are able to use an infinite number of materials in their sculptures and this delightful benefit is worth the sore fingers. Soon they will get their hands in clay. They are busy painting, drawing on big  paper with friends, and caring for supplies and each other. Second graders are prolific artists and love to talk about their work. Ask your child what they have created. Students are excited about using the Artsonia app to store images of their work in their digital portfolios.

Faith Studies: We started the New Year reviewing our Faith Studies Covenant in second grade.  The covenant is a list of promises and guidelines we created at the beginning of the school year to guide our behavior during Faith Studies.  The guidelines include respecting others, listening to the teacher, and keeping our hands to ourselves.  I think the students took the conversation to heart, as both groups have been doing an excellent job in 2017.  We moved from the book of Joshua into the book of Judges during our Bible story time in January.  The students have learned that judges can be boys and girls, as we heard the story of Deborah and Barak.  Then  we heard the story of Gideon and the miracle of the fleece.  Ask your child about the “science experiment” we did during Faith Studies last week.  We also read the story, My Daddy, Martin Luther King Jr. this month, by Martin Luther King III.  Your students were very interested in this book and talking about the ways our world has changed since the Civil Rights movement, and the ways we can continue to help his dream today.  We will welcome Mrs. Williams to lead a hymn study next week and then we will continue with the book of Ruth.  Your students are a joy to teach and I enjoy seeing them each week.  

Grace and peace,

Rev. Lindsey Wells Peery

        

PE: We have been really focusing on our fitness this trimester. We are using our yoga mats on a regular basis, practicing yoga poses, pilates exercises, and strengthening our core. We are moving into a short unit on basic volleyball skills, focusing on proper positioning (“ready”, hand position, proper bump form) and movement. We will finish the trimester with an introduction to kickball.

Spanish: Second graders are working on unit 2 of level B in the Descubre program. In this unit, children are learning culture and exploring some places in Nicaragua. We have been using the student books every week, following and practicing short conversations about types of homes, such as casa (house), apartamento (apartment), and a few vocabulary words related to animal homes such as nido (nest), and telaraña (spiderweb).  Students are also studying clothing and foods at the market. We do quick reviews of the practice done in unit 1 about greeting and good byes. Children continue practicing some family members in the conversations such as abuelos (grandparents), and niños (children). Your child's online account is a great tool to repeat the dialogs, vocabulary words, reading, comprehension and pronunciation.

Wellness: This month, the 2nd graders will learn about the difference between tattling and telling/reporting. We will begin with a discussion around the difference between “child-sized” problems and “adult-sized” problems. We will then read a book called “Don’t Squeal Unless It’s a Big Deal” by Jeanie Franz Ransom. This book tells the story of a teacher teaching her students when it is important to tell or report to a teacher what is going on and when it is OK to try and solve the problem on your own first. The teacher in this book really focuses on the point that it is important to let an adult know what is going on when someone is hurt or in danger, hurting you, hurting a pet, or hurting something that does not belong to them. In addition, I will reinforce that if you try and solve the problem on your own first and the student that you asked to stop bothering you keeps bothering you over and over again then this becomes a situation where it is also important to tell an adult. The teacher in the book also discusses that sometimes it can be hard to learn the difference between tattling and telling and that is why it is important for adults to remind children of the difference as well as important for children to practice, practice, practice this new skill! Try talking to your children at home about the difference between tattling and telling.

Weekly Update 1/9/17 - 1/13/17

Happy New Year! 2017! We hope your families enjoyed the holiday break and were able to squeeze in as much as possible. It certainly flew by, but we treasure the time spent with family and friends and are excited to be back in the routine of school. It was so wonderful to be in the classroom last Wednesday morning as your children came through the doors -- full of stories from the break and eager to catch up with us and their friends. We've heard many stories about your family traditions and travels and hope to hear more stories as we settle back in.

Storypath has raised great excitement in our classroom! Last week, our class "took a trip" to the Great Barrier Reef to kick start our study of coral reefs and its inhabitants. Storypath will blend with Reader's Workshop and Writer's Workshop as students begin research on a specific animal alongside a classmate from the Austin/Gardner class. By learning how to read a non fiction text carefully, students will collect information on their given animal and work with their partner to record this information on a graphic organizer. Students will learn important skills like paraphrasing, note taking, and how to use nonfiction text features such as captions, labels, and diagrams. All of this work will transform into a research book that students will share with you during our Coral Reef Museum in March.

In Math, we continue working through Unit 3 of Investigations. Lately we have been focusing on the number 100 -- in particular, how to make it using multiples of five as well as with coins. Story Problems now include both addition and subtraction, and we are encouraging students to use number lines as a problem solving strategy. Please encourage your children at home to always, always show their work as it helps us understand their thought process! This is a life long skill that will serve all students well as math concepts grow more complex.

In Word Study, we will be focusing on the use of adjectives, adverbs, nouns and verbs during the next few weeks. This will be an all-class sort and we will have an assessment following MLK weekend after several weeks of practice identifying, using, and naming these important parts of speech. This work will also work to strengthen students writing skills within Writer's Workshop.

Aside from academics, 2nd graders are hard at work for their production of The Jungle Book later this month. Over the next two weeks we will have several additional practices as a grade level to make sure we're in tip top shape for our performance!

And finally, we will hopefully be making a trip to ImaginOn this Thursday, January 12th, so please be sure you do not have any fines so that your children can check out some new books! Our partnership with InReach will pick back up later in the month, so please stay tuned for volunteer driving opportunities. Thank you in advance for your willingness to help!

Reminders for the Upcoming Month:

• Monday/Tuesday, January 16-17th -- MLK Holiday, school closed. 
• Wednesday/Thursday, January 18/19th -- All Trinity Builds. Materials are being collected at the front desk should you have any to donate. 
• Wednesday, January 25th at 2:30 -- The Jungle Book! Students will perform and we'll have a celebration afterwards. We hope you'll join us to celebrate their hard work! 

Stay warm out there -- and we hope to see you soon!