Project Funded!!!

I am very excited to announce that my second Donor's Choose Project has been funded! With the generosity of 10 donors my classroom will have an expanded Listen to Reading station.  We will be receiving 4 new headphones, and two amazing sets of CD read-alongs! I can not wait to tell my students tomorrow.

December

December has been a busy month in 2nd grade.  Here is a recap of what the students have been learning:

Writing: The kids finished their letters to the soldiers and have been writing a complaint or compliment letter to a store of their choice.  Their letters are quite cute!  I hope to actually send these out to the stores this week or when we return from break.  

Grammar: Topics have included capitalization, punctuation, pronouns, nouns, and verbs. 

Reading: In December, we've focused on summarizing non-fiction texts, determining the importance of text features, monitoring our comprehension, and most recently identifying character traits. 

Social Studies: The students have learned about natural, capital, and human resources.  We also have learned about the importance of service jobs. Our next concept will be about spending and saving money. 

Math: My math class will take the Fractions Assessment on Wednesday. Our next units are probability and algebra/patterns. 

Have a wonderful Winter Break!!!!

What we are up to

The students are currently writing letters to soldiers.  They are doing an excellent job writing letters that will be greatly appreciated by the military men and women that receive these.

The reading strategy and skill I am focusing on with the kids this week is summarizing and story elements.

My math class is finishing up the Multiplication and Division Unit.  Our assessment will be on Friday.  

We started the next Social Studies Unit today with a theme of "Let's Go Shopping." The students are beginning to learn about the environment and how we use it for our needs.

American Education Week

This coming week is American Education Week.  We invite you to come in and see what your child's day is like! Tuesday is the day we are encouraging parents to come in. The students created their own invitation which went home earlier this week. On Tuesday, our schedule will be:

9:00-10:00- Quarterly Awards Ceremony
10:00-10:30- Author of the Week (2nd grade team award)
10:30-11:15- Recess and Lunch
11:20-12:15- Language Arts
12:25-1:10- P.E.
1:15-2:20- Math
2:25-3:10- Science


Look forward to seeing you there! Have an enjoyable weekend.

Quarter 2 has begun!

We started the Moon Unit this week.  The students have learned about the shape of the moon and it's size in relationship to the Sun. This unit will continue for 2 weeks.

We began a new writing unit today on friendly letters. The students will write various friendly letters over the next month.


In my math class, the students are finishing up the quarterly math assessments so there will be no homework again tomorrow. The Multiplication/Division unit begins on Thursday.  Parent Preview Sheets for all of the units in quarter 2 went home today.





 

What does a tarantula, turtle, skunk, and parrot have in common?

They were all visiting the 2nd grade on Friday! The students had a great time meeting the four animals the Maryland Zoo shared with us.  We learned lots of facts about the habitats of the animals and about the animals themselves.  I will post the video I took of the animals on Monday. As a follow-up activity, the kids wrote and illustrated about their favorite animal(s) the Zoo brought and why.  

The children will write a second personal narrative this week.  Both personal narratives will be shared at conferences and then can be taken home. 

The kids will be doing readers theater this coming week in their reading groups.  We will practice reading the play for fluency and then will present the plays to the class at the end of the week.

In math, we will have one more day of review before the students take the Place Value and Number Computation assessment on Tuesday.  We will then start Statistics which is the last unit of the quarter.  They will have to analyze bar graphs, tables, and pictographs.

The first quarter will end on November 3rd which is hard to believe! Time sure flies. With the end of the quarter comes reading conferences.  I am looking forward to them.

If you would like to come for the Halloween party you may arrive around 1:30.  The students will change into costumes before the parade at 2pm.  We would love help setting up food, serving the snacks, and cleaning up.  

Enjoy this lovely fall weekend!

 

Week in Review and Looking Ahead

My 2nd graders have been hard at work this week! 

Writing- The students finished up their Personal Narratives today which turned out wonderful! These will be shared at Parent/Teacher Conferences. We will be writing a second personal narrative in two weeks. 

Reading- The focus in reading group next week will be continuing to find the main-idea and find the most important points of the text.  We will continue to write in response to what we read. 

Math- We will continue to review addition and subtraction and money will introduced. 


Social Studies- The students used the flip cams this week to record "mock interviews" asking what it is like to live in either a urban, rural, or suburban community.  

Upcoming Events- 

The Zoo comes to the 2nd grade team on Thursday morning! We are very excited to see the animals.  

School is closed on Friday for the MD State Teacher Convention 

Information about the Halloween Celebration will be sent home soon 

The Latest...

Writing

The students began writing rough drafts of their personal narratives today.  They will continue to edit and revise their rough drafts before starting on their final copies next week. 

Social Studies

We began our Communities Unit and the students created their own communities with a group.  Today, they learned about urban, suburban, and rural communities.

Reading

The students will be starting non-fiction stories in reading groups and we will focus on finding the main-idea, as well as vocabulary strategies.

The students have been improving on buddy reading and independent reading. Next week, they will begin using the listening center materials to listen to books on tape.

As cold season begins, we are going through tissues very quickly.  If you would like to donate more tissues it will be appreciate by everyone in the class!

Have a nice weekend :)

Place Value Unit

We continue our place value unit this week and the topics the students will be learning are: 

• comparing and ordering numbers  
• number lines 
• expanded form 
• adding with regrouping

I am also starting Daily Number Talks with the students which is a 10-15 min classroom conversation around computation problems that are solved mentally. The students are doing a great job with this already!

Back to School Night Presentation

2nd grade btsn'10

View more presentations from lboggstrue

Recap of this week/Looking Ahead

 This Week

This week my students were busy bees learning elements of the Daily 5!  They have been practicing their stamina on reading to themselves and reading with a buddy.  I am impressed with how they are progressing.  We learned lots of new and great vocabulary words and I taught the students strategies to determine the meaning of unknown words. They did a lot of responding to reading in their response journals.  

In math, my students took an Algebra Test which went home today.  Please sign and return the test by Wednesday.  

Next Week

My math class will begin the Place Value and Number Computation Unit which will last for approximately 3 weeks.  If you need another copy of a Parent Preview Sheet for the upcoming math units (whether your child is in my math class or not) jus tclick the link on the right side of the blog to find them!

In writing, we are beginning our unit on Personal Narratives.  We will spend a lot of time immersing the students into this genre of writing and going through the steps of the writing process. 

The Soil Unit will end next Friday.  

Have a nice weekend!

Week of 9/19

Here is an outlook for next week:

 

Reading-

We will continue to work on the routines of reading group.  The comprehension focus will be summarizing. I am beginning to implement the "Daily-Five" which is a reading and writing program created by two teachers.  The structure is based on meaningful literacy tasks, which are 

• Read to Self
• Work on Writing
• Word Work (Words Their Way Spelling)
• Listen to Someone Read
• Read to Someone

Writing-

The writing focus for this week will be responding to reading. This will be on-going throughout the year and the students will be using their reading journals to respond to their guided reading group books as well as their own independent books.

Math- 

We will be finishing the Patterns Unit and the post-test will be given on Wednesday.  Our next unit is Place Value and Number Computation. 

Science-

We are about half way through the soil unit and we will continue to explore soil.  

I look forward to seeing everyone at Back to School Night on Tuesday! 

Donors Choose

I received 3 flip cams last week through an amazing program, Donors Choose. I will be introducing the flip cams to the class and I am excited about all the great activities we can use with the flip cams!

I have another project on Donors Choose asking for materials for my listening center. Please visit the link on the side of the page.

Words Their Way Update

Homework for Words Their Way will being NEXT week.  We are continuing to practice the word sorts so they are prepared for homework completion. The students are expected to take their Words Their Way journals home each night to complete their homework.  Details about the homework will be sent home this week.

Outlook for this week

Good Evening Parents!

This coming week we will begin guided reading groups and literacy centers.  I will be focusing on the routines of guided reading groups and transitions so that we start off with solid organization.  In reading group, we are reading realistic fiction books.  Our comprehension strategy will be summarizing.

In my math class, the students will now have homework.  We started the Algebra and Patterns Unit on Friday and will continue this unit for about a week or more.  A parent preview sheet went home on Friday.

Go Ravens!

Reading Homework

This is your child's first week of having reading homework.  They are to read a book of their choice for at least 15 minutes.  Please sign your  name in their agenda book to confirm that they indeed read.  If you have time, it's always a good idea to talk to your child about what they read.  You could ask them to summarize the story or part they read, tell you about their favorite part or favorite characters or make predictions if they didn't finish the book. Those are just a few ideas.  Thank you for your support at home in helping the students become great readers! Spelling homework will begin next week. 

Stay dry!

First Week of School

We had a wonderful first week in 2nd grade! I have enjoyed getting to know each and every one of my students.  I am excited about what this school year will bring.  I have a fabulous group of 2nd graders.

We spent a lot of time getting to know one another in many different ways.  This is helpful to me as a teacher so I can best meet each students' interests and needs.  After reading Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes the students wrote and decorated Acrostic Poems using their first names, which turned out very nice.  They also wrote and illustrated about their summer vacation after reading How I Spent My Summer Vacation by Mark Teague.

In addition to learning about one another we revisited school rules and created our own classroom rules.  The students created most of the rules on their own and did an excellent job with this. Throughout this week the students have been taught routines and they are adjusting well to the expectations of 2nd graders.

Each quarter the students will set a goal for themselves that they will always be working towards.  For 1st quarter, each 2nd grader chose a behavior goal.  These goals are posted on my classroom door and we will revisit the goals throughout the quarter to make sure the children are putting forth their best efforts in order to meet the goals.  

All week the students practiced chorally reading a poem titled, "Back to School." I recorded the students reading the poem but I am having difficulty uploading the file to the blog.  Hopefully you will soon be able to listen to 16 charming students reading the poem!

As a reminder, the students have a homework assignment to bring in a "Me-Bag" with a few items that express their interests and information about themselves.  I look forward to seeing what they all bring in.

I hope everyone has a wonderful Labor Day weekend and I look forward to seeing the children on Tuesday.

Welcome!

Welcome to a brand new school year! I am looking forward to getting to know your children.  My goal is to use this blog as another method of communication for parents to be kept aware of what is going on in the classroom!