December Here We Come!

                                                                       December 5, 2016

Dear Bighorn Parents,

December seems to have snuck up on us.  Miss Garcia and myself hope that everyone enjoyed their Thanksgiving holiday.  This is an extremely busy time of year--Christmas decorating, parties, and other treasured holiday traditions, please remember with all the fun festivities to try to keep a “regular” homework and sleeping schedule for your child.

With the end of November and beginning of December has come some bitter, cold weather.  Students are on the playground before school, outside at snack recess, and outside again at lunch recess.  Although it has been warming up by the afternoon, students need to have appropriate outerwear for the weather.  

Every year our Student Council selects a local group to support with donations.  This year the Student Council has been collecting money for the Fallon Youth Club.  The class that brings in the most donations will be awarded with a movie and a Taco Bell snack.

The students in Mrs. Bloomfield’s class will be presenting their Music Program on December 19th at 3:15 PM in the “High School Hang-Out”.  They have been working hard with Mrs. Manse throughout the 2nd Quarter learning many music standards.

Oasis Academy is sponsoring a Food Drive. The National Honor Society is running this Food Drive that will go to Out of Egypt. Students may bring in canned food through Thursday, December 15th. Any class bringing in at least 150 items will be rewarded with doughnuts!!

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.

Counting faces, edges, and vertices

 

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.

Building 3-Dimensional Shapes with Pipe Cleaners

 

We are also very busy with working with our "high number".  Students are working with their "high number" daily and are assessed 2 times per week.  The goal for students is to complete 50 mixed problems (addition and subtraction) correctly in 4 minutes.  Students graph their progress twice a week.

Here's the homework for the upcoming week.

Monday	IXL U.5  Identify Faces of 3-Dimensional Shapes
Tuesday	IXL  U.7  Shapes of Everyday Objects (Part 1)
Wednesday	IXL T.5 Flip, Turn, and Slide
Thursday	No Homework (due to assessment)

Language

Students are focusing on capital letters in language.  We are using the acronym MINTS (M=months and days of the week, I=the pronoun “I” anywhere in a sentence, N=the names of people, places, and things,T=titles, and S=start of every sentence) to help us to remember words that need to be capitalized.  Our work with capitalizing will continue into this week.  We have made a resource for our room to help us remember when we need to capitalize.

Writing

The writers in 2nd grade have completed a persuasive piece trying to convince their parents to get something or allow them to do something.  Students had to come up with reasons and examples to support their “want”.  These pieces will be up in the hall for you to enjoy.  

Our writing is now moving more towards opinion writing.  Students having been taking sides on whether or not restaurants should be allowed to ban children.  They have listed reasons with examples for “pro” and “con” on this topic and have used those reasons and examples to fill out a flee map.  This information will be used write together an opinion paragraph.

Projects

Students are ready to experiment by cooling or heating their chosen matter (solid or liquid).  They will work through the scientific method with a partner creating a science board.  

Wishing you peace as you prepare for the holidays!!

Sincerely,

Mrs. Bloomfield

 and

Miss Garcia