Weekly Update

Hello Second Grade Families,

We had a successful and hardworking Monday.  When you looked in your child’s blue folder, you may have noticed a list of words.  Those are the spelling words your child is working on in school this week.   The students are working at a range of levels from identifying beginning consonants B, R, S, in picture sorts as well as sorting word families of at, an, ad, ap, and sorting “short a” and “long a” vowel words.   The students will be practicing different sorts and activities throughout the week to learn the words.  On Friday there will be a spelling quiz.  The spelling words are not something your child must do for homework.  However, if they choose to practice the words with you, please initial the paper.  The students can earn extra points for homework or make up points if they forgot to read at one time or another.

The students have been practicing writing a five sentence paragraph.  We have discussed making the writing interesting for the reader and using different starting words and phrases for each sentence. We are still practicing using capitals, finger spaces, correct letter formation, and punctuation.

We are focusing on identifying and comparing greater and less than numbers this week in Math.  We introduced the game “Count and Compare Greater and Less Than” which will be added to our regular math centers later this week.  Students are working at different places in their math skills.  We will be continuing to count by 1’s, 2’s, 5’s, 10’s and later in the year by 25’s and 100’s.  The students have also been introduced to our yellow clocks for telling time on an analog clock.  We have also been identifying the value of pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters in our math learning.

The students practiced logging into their school accounts on the classroom laptops last week. The class was also able to start typing club, which is a program to teach efficient hand placement on home row keys to ensure successful typing skills.   We will be using this program all year.  We want the students to understand that we are not looking for speed, but accuracy.   Typing is a great skill and it will be very beneficial to each child throughout their education. 

The class has been learning about the importance of the Monarch Butterfly and how we can save them.  This week the class will be doing crafts and activities to learn about the life cycle of the butterfly.  The students will use this knowledge to then write a narrative writing piece as if they were a butterfly in all the stages of their life.

If you have any questions or concerns please feel free to email me at MacCallumt@hartfordschools.net

I hope everyone has a great night!

Sincerely,

Ms. Mac :) 

Pollination Problem Solving

Ms. Michelle from VINS came to our classroom three days in a row last week to teach us about the process of pollination.  The students then participated in the "flower pollination experiment".  Students in the class had to design a pollinator that was small and thin enough to fit in the flower but sticky enough pick up pollen from one flower and bring it to the next.  The class did a great job!

Outstanding Otters

We are Caring, Safe, and Responsible DBS Otters!  We are hardworkers and we always make sure to balance our work with some friend time to build our social detective skills. Currently, we have been participating in the Second Step Program.  This program teaches students to be a whole body listener and to have their ears, eyes, and shoulders facing the speaker with a calm and quiet body.  These lessons also give the students tools to solve their disagreements respectfully and when to get an adult for help.  They have learned that they must STEP in order to solve a conflict.

S-Say the Problem

T-Think of Solutions

E-Explore the consequences

P-Pick the best solution

Beautiful Butterflies

The students created colorful butterflies at the start of our Project Based Learning Monarch Butterfly Unit. We hung the butterflies up and to our surprise they started disapearing.  Why would the Monarch butterflies be disappearing in VT and what can we do to protect them?  This was the driving question for the launch of our learning.

Water Color Wonder

The students are creating some water color artwork to go along with their "What I did over the Summer" narrative writing pieces.

All About Us Owls

The class created colorful owls that have fun and interesting details inlcuded in them, that we may not have known about the peers in our class.  Here are some pictures while they were making them.