Here comes December, ready or not!!

                                                                                          November 30, 2015
Dear Big Horn Families,

I hope that everyone enjoyed a peaceful Thanksgiving, filled with family, friends, feasting, and fun!!  I thoroughly enjoyed celebrating the holiday with my family.  It was so nice to have both of my older boys home for Thanksgiving.  Just the time together was great!!

With the past week being so short this Blog Entry will be on the shorter side.  

Math
Last week we started some work in geometry.  Our focus was categorizing 3-dimensional shapes.  We worked on this in whole group as students suggested different ways to sort the solids.  Students came up with many different ideas such as color, shape, and size.  Eventually student sorted them by solids with curved faces and solids with flat faces.

During the week students also made 3-dimensional shapes.  We are focusing on identifying the 3-dimensional shapes by name (sphere, cube, cone, retangular solid, triangular solid, pyramid, and cylinder.  Students are describing the 3-dimensional shapes by talking about their edges,vertices, and faces.

We are also very busy with working with our "big number".  Students are working with their "big number" daily and  will be assessing 2 times per week.  The goal for students is to complete 50 mixed problems (addition and subtraction) correctly in 5 minutes.  Students will be graphing their progress weekly. 
Here's the homework for the upcoming week.

Monday	IXL T.6 Compare Sides and Angles
Tuesday	IXL T.5 Count Edges Vertices and Faces
Wednesday	pg. 155 & 156
Thursday	pg. 161 & 162

Writing
All students finished the final copies of their letter to Judge George trying to persuade Judge George to spare Tom Turkey's life.  Students were very creative with their reasons and explaining their reasons.  These letters will be out in the hall for everyone to enjoy for a couple of weeks.

Language
 We will finish up our work with capitalizing words this week.  Students have been practicing capitalizing the months of the year, days of the week, the word "I", names of important people, places, and things, titles of books, songs, and plays, and the start of every sentence.  Our main focus has been the names of places (geographic places) and the names of products (Snickers Bar).

Projects
Students will finish up their matter projects this week.  The scientists of Room 17 will be presenting their findings to Miss Garcia's class and a 1st Grade class.  

Enjoy your week!!

Sincerely,
Anne Bloomfield

Here is some information from Mrs. Loop...

Hello Second Grade Families,

I hope you all had a wonderful time with your family for Thanksgiving.  Last week we reviewed some report card assessments that some students had struggled with earlier in the quarter or at the beginning of the year.  Students also read short passages last week and had to determine what the author’s purpose of writing the passage was--to entertain, to inform, or to persuade.  We will continue discussing the author’s purpose when reading in class.  Last week students also practiced using the glossary, index, and table of contents to find information in a non-fiction text.  This week we will be discussing how to find the main idea of various reading passages.  Please encourage your child to read in their free time or before they go to bed.  Remember all 2nd graders should be reading 20 minutes each night.

Happy reading,

Katy Loop