Measuring Up!!

Dear Parents,

Room 5 has had another BUSY week!!  This short week was filled with lots of learning.  

Math
In math we continued our work in measuring.  We moved from measuring in metric units (meters and centimeters) to using the English units of measure.  These units included yards, feet, and inches.  Throughout the week we spent time estimating, measuring, and drawing lines to specific measurements.  Measurement was also the focus of our word problems this week.

Drawing lines in inches.

Yes, students did draw the lines on their tables!

Homework
Monday--Word Problem Worksheet
Tuesday--IXL U.2 Halves, Thirds, and Fourths
Wednesday--IXL U.3 Identify the Fraction
Thursday--No homework (Assessment)

Writing
In writing the authors of Room 5 continued our focus on the writing trait of Ideas.  Students reviewed their narrowed and focused idea.  We discussed the importance of bringing our idea to life with interesting details that are related to our topic.  Students listened to the story, All the Places to Love by Patricia Mac Lachlan.  This story was read to students the first time with me just reading the main story line.  I then read it again, this time reading the entire book with all it's rich details.  The power of interesting, related details was very evident from this activity.  With all this information, students finally started writing on their chosen topic with a focus on ideas.  I can't wait to start conferencing with students on this writing!

Language
Our work with adverbs continued.  Students are getting better at identifying and classifying adverbs by if they are telling when, how, or where.  Over the week students practiced through a whole class physical sort.  Students were given a card with an adverb.  They then went to a designated place in the classroom based on whether their adverb told when, how, or where.  Students then completed the sort on paper.  Students will be testing on adverbs this coming week.

Projects
Our work in projects continued this week with reviewing information on gas and exploring the properties of liquid.  Students are working on a matter book, which will be completed this coming week.

The Scientists in Room 5 exploring the the properties of liquids.

Students have enjoyed the switch to projects focused on Science.  The week ahead will be filled with more matter investigations.

Community Service
Our Community Service Teacher, Mrs. Sheldon is amazing.  The students have been creating art for the Senior Center. They have also been making projects that go along with the Meals on Wheels delivery.  Each project focuses on a fun, silly holiday.  This week students were preparing goodies for National Puzzle Day which is on January 29th!

Students putting together "Winter" artwork for the Senior Center!

Puzzle Piece creations!!

Here's wishing everyone a great week, I know I'm looking forward to it!!

Sincerely,
Anne Bloomfield

Here is the reading information from Mrs. Jackson.

Hello to all my second grade parents!

This weekend I attended a wonderful training with Mrs. Loop and Mrs. Marsh.  I learned strategies to use with informational text and different ways to organize informative writing.  Did you know that when we read on the internet, over 90% of what we read iis informational text?  Also, as we all know, most middle, high school and college texts are all informative.  Research says that we need to spend 50% of our time in the classroom with informative text and 50% with fiction text.  This will enable our young learners to be ready for the reading they will be required to do in the future.  Our classroom includes both types of literature.  I have noticed that during independent reading time, most students choose to read informative text versus narrative text.  

I also learned about the use of visual literacy in the classroom!  Visual literacy includes examining, discussing, critically analyzing and learning through the use of visual images.  It turn out that we have 1,000,000 optical nerves attached to our brains and only 30,000 auditory ones.  This shows the importance of images as well as text in our learning and cognitive growth. This ties right into what we have been doing. We have been reviewing the way that pictures, captions and headings to understand that each feature gives us new information.  This week we will learn from diagrams (within this, I will include some of my new learning about visual features in general).  All of this learning has been while utilizing informative texts on animals.  Our small group animal research will continue this Thursday.  

We will also be discussing and utilizing different strategies to find out the meanings of unknown words.  We will learn how to reread text, how to read ahead and reviewing the use of the glossary.  

We will continue reviewing prefixes and suffixes and our Word Family this week will contain words using “old”.  

It is hard to believe that it is the end of January.  Where is that snow?  

I am looking forward to a fun week full of learning and growing this week.

Sincerely,

Kristen Jackson