Happy Leap Day

      

                                                                                               February 29, 2016
Dear Parents,

Now this is something that doesn't happen every year...Monday is Leap Day!  The students and I have been talking about the extra day in our calendar this year.  A regular year is 365.25 days, every 4 years the extra .25 (quarter) add up to a whole extra day!  Questions to ask your child if Leap Day happens every 4 years...

When was the last Leap Day?
When will be the next Leap Day?

It is just a week of special days as Tuesday, March 1st is the 100th Day of School and March 2nd is Dr. Seuss' Birthday!

Don't forget the students of Room 17 will be presenting their Reader's Theater for drama on Wednesday, March 9 th at 2:00 P.M. in the "High School Hangout".  The students have been working very hard on this.  You will not want to miss this performance!!

Here's all the Room 17 happenings from last week...

Math
Second grade students are working on their time unit.  In second grade are standard is to tell time to the nearest 5 minutes.  We have been very busy reviewing the parts of the clock--minute hand (the longer one) and hour hand (the shorter one).  Students have been practicing the ways to say the time different ways.

For example:
3:15 can be said...
...three fifteen
...fifteen minutes past three
...fifteen minutes after three
...quarter past three
...quarter after three

Week 27 Homework...

Playing a "Time Game".

Monday	Test review pg. 128
Tuesday	IXL G.14 Add 3 digits up to two numbers in a word problem
Wednesday	IXL P.10 Word Problems - Adding up money up to $1
Thursday	IXL P.12 Word Problems-Subtracting $

Do you have 3:00?

Language
Students have been working on rearranging sentences that have a when, subject, predicate, and where.  They have really enjoyed creating complex sentences.  Students have also been using the conjunctions (and, but, so, or) to combine simple sentences.  It's been a lot of fun hearing some of the silly sentences that students have created.

Writing
I have continued to meet with students to go over the rough drafts of their animal reports.  This a very time consuming process to meet, revise, and edit with each student.  At this point some students are working on their final copy of their animal report and others are still waiting to revise and edit with me.  We are hoping to be ready to share our reports with parents on March 10th.  More details about animal reports will be forthcoming.

Projects
Continuing with our work in geography, students have traced the continent of where the animal they are researching is from.  Within their partnership one student will be creating a polictical map and the other partner will be creating a physical map.  Students will be sharing their map with their animal report on March 10th.

This week will be busy with Leap Day, the 100th Day of School, and Dr. Seuss' Birthday!  Wishing you a wonderful week!

Sincerely,
Anne Bloomfield

Another Busy Week in 2nd Grade!!

                                                                                                February 22, 2016

Dear Parents,

Well...we are back to a full work week AND we should be finished with homework sheets for the MOST part!  We will begin the week with telling time!  The second grade standard is to: tell and write time from analog and digital clocks to the nearest 5 minutes, differentiating between a.m and p.m.

Last week we focused on Partial Sums and Differences with Renaming a number.  The students did a great job working together and coaching their partner! We will review these concepts and also work on a new concept called “Arrow Diagrams.”  We will mainly focus on this concept in class.

Arrow Diagram-

Example:

51 + 34 =

              +30     +4

51 ➜81  ➜85

Basically you add the tens together to find a sum, then add the ones, and find the sum by drawing an arrow to each new sum.

Writing - Students have been working hard to complete their rough copies of their animal reports. Throughout the week, I have been working with students to edit and revise their reports. This week students will complete their final copies.  Their reports will include a cover page, an introduction, a report that focuses on 6 different topics about their animal, and a resource page. Students will also include map a physical or political map of the location of their animal.

Projects - Our class continues to focus on Geography.  We have been discussing political vs. physical maps.  We also pulled in some geography into our writing projects by adding a physical and political map to which area each animal was native to.  

Homework for the week of February 22nd...

Monday	IXL - Q.1 Match analog clocks and times
Tuesday	IXL - Q.2  Match digital clocks and times
Wednesday	IXL - Q.3 Match analog and digital clocks
Thursday	Q.4 Read clocks: hour and half hour/half past

On Wednesday February 17th, the students of Room 17 went to Maverick for their treat from the Oasis Student Council.  They were awarded this treat for bringing in the most money for Money for Maverick.  The money collected is going to a local veteran's organization.

Student Council Members and the Students of Room 17.

Waiting to pick a treat at Maverick.

Another highlight for the week was going to see the middle school Rube Goldberg Projects.  These were amazing projects.  The students were very attentive and got to visit a variety of projects.

Mark Your Calendar
The 3rd quarter is quickly winding down.  You will be getting information soon about our 3rd Quarter Parent/Teacher Conferences via Sign-Up Genius.   Conferences will start Friday, March 18th.

Students will be presenting their Reader's Theater from their work in Drama on March 9th at 2:00 PM.  The performance will take place in the High School Hangout.  They have been working hard on this performance, it is an event you will not want to miss!!

Looking forward to another amazing week with these amazing 2nd graders.

Sincerely,
Anne Bloomfield

Fabulous February Continues

                                                                                                             February 15, 2016

Dear Parents,

I sure hope that everyone had a wonderful long weekend.  Mine was very packed with visits from my older sons, Valentine's Day, and my husband's birthday.  It was certainly very SWEET!

Math

Waiting to solve the equation.

Students working on solving equations. 

Calling in a "coach".

Students have continued to work on adding and subtracting with renaming within 1,000.  This past week students focused on the branch method.  Students picked up on this strategy quickly.  Above are pictures of part of our review on Thursday--we did a Branch Method Relay.  Students had a fantastic time racing against eachother to complete their equation.  After each team completed their equation we went back into the classroom to correct the work.  We were able to identify errors and celebrate correct answers.

This week we are focusing on Partial Sums and Differences.  The students should be familiar with this strategy and have applied it previously with addition and subtraction.  Here are some examples of homework this week.

Partial Sums with Renaming

Example:

     2 6 4                           1.  Add the hundreds place.

    +  3 7                           2.  Add the tens place.

   2 0 0 + 0 =     2 0 0       3.  Add the ones place.

      6 0 + 3 0 =     9 0       4.  Add all partial sums.

         4 + 7 =     + 1 1      

                       200 + 100 + 1 = 301

Partial Differences With Renaming

Example:

     2 6 4                           1.  Subtract the hundreds place.

    -   3 7                           2.  Subtract the tens place.

   2 0 0 - 0 =     2 0 0        3.  Subtract the ones place (watch out for negative numbers).

      6 0 - 3 0 =  + 3 0        4.  Add partial differences but subtract any negative numbers.

                        2 3 0

         4 - 7 =     -    3       

                       2 2  7                    200 + 30 - 3 = 227

Here is what we will be working on for homework this week:

Tuesday	Worksheet: Partial Sums
Wednesday	Worksheet: Partial Differences
Thursday	Worksheet: Partial Sums and Differences in Word Problems

Language
In Language students are working on identifying the subject and predicate in simple sentences.  We have also worked on making simple sentences more complex by adding adjectives, adverbs, where, and when.  We will continue this work this coming week.
The cows eat grass.
The brown cows eat green grass.
Down in the meadow the brown cows eat green grass everyday.
Writing/Projects
Our writing and projects will be joining together this week.  Students have been working on writing their rough drafts of their animal research reports.  By the end of the week students should be working on the final copy of their animal reports.  

Since our project work has focused on geography and maps, students will be creating maps of where their animal comes from.  Within the partnerships one student will create a physical map and the other will create a political map.

Special Note
Our class brought in the most money for "Money for Maverick".  The student council will be taking us for our treat at Maverick on Wednesday, February 17th. We will walk over after lunch for our treat.  No extra money is needed as the student council is paying for our treat!

It will be a short but busy week!!

Sincerely,
Anne Bloomfield

Here is some reading information from Mrs. Loop...

Hello Second Grade Families,

Last week all 1st and 2nd grade students at Oasis Academy wrote reasons that they love reading on pink post-it notes and they were placed in the shape of a heart in the hallway for all to see and read.  Stop by and read the many reasons that all 42 first graders, 40 second graders, Mrs. Rowlett, Mrs. Garcia, Mrs. Bloomfield, and myself wrote about why we love reading.  This heart is on the wall near Mrs. Garcia and Mrs. Bloomfield’s classrooms.

This week many second graders will have new reading books that they will begin.  Please plan on having your child read aloud to you each night.  Even though your child is a reader now they still need to practice reading aloud to someone so they get fluency practice.  Due to us only having three days of school this week there will not be any spelling words for the week. ~Katy Loop

Happy Valentine's Day

                                                                                                  February 8, 2016
Dear Parents,

Moving right along, we are now half-way through the 3rd quarter.  Before long we will be scheduling Parent/Teacher Conferences.  I really wish this school year would slow down!!

*******Important*******Important*******Important*******

We have a student in Room 17 that has been recently diagnosed with a tree nut and sunflower allergy.  This is just to give everyone an awareness, everything will run the same for our classroom.  As per parent request, our classroom will not become a food free zone.  I would like to use this opportunity to remind you that students should not be trading and sharing food at school!

*****************************************************

Math
We have continued working on adding and subtracting with renaming within 1,000.  This is a very complicated standard (remember, it was started at the end of the first quarter).  All of the time has been very worthwhile, as students are really picking up on the renaming, because it is all done through decomposing and composing numbers students are really understanding how to break down and rename the different place values.  

This past week we focused on addition using branch method on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.   On Thursday students worked on subtraction using the branch method with renaming in the tens place.  Here's an example...

762   -    43  =                          1.  Decompose numbers by place value.

         ↙↓↘         ↙ ↘                            2.  Group hundreds.  Group tens.  Group ones.

   700  60 2    40    3                          3.  Subtract hundreds.  Subtract tens.  Subtract ones.

(700 - 0) + (60 - 40) + (2 - 3)              4.  Watch out for negative differences.

      700       +    20     -     1  =            5.  Write and solve renamed equation.   

          720 - 1 = 719   
Here's the homework for the week...

Monday	Worksheet: Branching with renaming 100’s
Tuesday	Worksheet: Branching with renaming 10’s and 100’s
Wednesday	Worksheet: Word Problems
Thursday	No Homework due to assessment.

Language
In language students have been learning about collective nouns.  Collective nouns are nouns that name a group, for example a pride of lions or a gaggle of geese.  Each student picked a collective noun.  From there students created a slide that included the collective noun, an image of the collective noun, and a sentence using the collective noun.  Students shared their slides with me and I put them into one slide show.  This collective noun slide show has been viewed by the students of Room 17 and shared with Miss Garcia's class and both 3rd grade classes (who are also studying collective nouns) as well.

Writing

Research, research, research...our writing has focused on researching student selected animals.  Students have used their chromebooks and books

to fill out their notetakers.  The notetakers have the following topics--What the animal looks like, What the animal eats, The animal's life span, The animal's enemies and defenses, Where the animal lives, and Interesting facts about the animal.

Students are also keeping track of the resources (books and websites) they are using.  

Students are researching a variety of animals.  Everything from giraffes to geckos.  It's exciting to see the students working with a partner to research and then wanting to share their new facts.  I am learning a lot as well.
Just a reminder, since Valentine's Day falls on this Sunday; which also happens to be a long weekend, we will not be celebrating at school.  I'm hoping that each family will celebrate the holiday in a special way!

This week promises to be another busy week in Room 17.  I can't wait to see what it brings!!

Sincerely,
Anne Bloomfield