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!