Week 26

                                                                                                   February 27, 2017

Happy Monday Bighorns,

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 teamates!  We even held a relay race with addtion problems  as we worked together towards ACCURACY not who was the first group finished!  

This has been a gigantic math standard to work on and Miss Garcia and myself are so proud of the students.  They have worked so hard on adding and subtracting numbers within 1,000.  We will test this standard on Monday and then begin time.

Homework for the week of February 27th - March 2nd...

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

Language- We are still learning about when and where to use the apostrophe.  We have finished with the apostrophe’s role in contractions

Writing - Our writing work has been very related to our project as students are researching their decades.  The writing involved has been filling in information on their notetakers and writing captions to go with their pictures.

Projects - Students are gathering lots of information on their decade.  As they are learning more about their decade it has been very cool to listen to the connections they are making as they share some of the facts they are learning.

Last week was National FFA (Future Farmers of America) Week.  The High School students involved with FFA and the F-H students, brought their animals to school and spoke to the students about their animal project.  Our second graders got to see and hear about horses, steers, sheep, goats, and working dogs.

Wishing you a great week as we say hello to March!!

Sincerely,

Anne Bloomfield

       and

Shannon Garcia

Week 25

    February 21, 2017

Dear Parents,

Miss Garcia and myself hope that everyone enjoyed the extra long weekend!  It was so nice to have an extra day but we are ready for another great week in 2nd grade!

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.  

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:

   3 6 6  → 300 + 60 + 6       1.  Show the first addend in expanded form.         

+  4 5 7  → 400 + 50 + 7       2.  Show the second addend in expanded form.

   7 0 0      700 + 110 + 13    3.  Add the hundreds, then the tens, and the ones.

   1 1 0                                    4.  Add the partial sums--700 + 110 + 13 =823

      1 3

   8 2 3                 

Partial Differences With Renaming

Example:

   4 6 7 → 400 + 60 + 7   1.  Show the minuend in expanded form.          

-  2 9 8 → 200 + 90 + 8   2.  Show the subtrahend in expanded form.

   2 0 0      200 - 30  - 1  3. Subtract the hundreds, then the tens, and the ones.

   -  3 0                          4.  Add the partial differences--200 - 30 - 1 = 169

  1  7 0                           5.  Watch out for negative numbers!!

- 1

  1  6 9

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 have been learning about apostrophes.  We will work with apostrophes in contractions and possessive nouns.  We have started focusing on using apostrophes in contractions.

I am = I’m           do not = don’t        we are = we’re      that is = that’s

Writing/Projects

Students have been working with their partners on their Decade Projects.  This research has been interesting as students explore their decades.  This has been a very labor intensive project so far and part of the project time is overlapping with our writing time.  

Sad News…

As many of you know, the second grade classes have been very fortunate to Miss Darity to teach Zumba for PE every Tuesday.  Last Tuesday was our last Zumba Day.  Below are some pictures from the last Zumba class.  Miss Garcia, myself, and all the second graders appreciate Miss Darity sharing her time and talent with us over the past five months.

   

We are now actively searching for another parent to help with second grade PE on Tuesdays.  If you would like to help please let Miss Garcia or myself know!  

Sincerely,

Anne Bloomfield and Shannon Garcia

Happy Valentine's Day and Happy President's Day

  

                                                                                                           February 13, 2017

Dear Parents,

Happy Valentine’s Week!!  As has been mentioned in the last couple of blogs, since Valentine’s Day is on a school day, we will be celebrating it with a small party on Tuesday.  Students may bring in Valentines to give to their classmates.  We will pass out Valentines and play some Valentine related games on Tuesday afternoon from 3:15 till 3:55 pm.  We are keeping it very simple!!

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: Subtraction Branching with renaming 10’s
Tuesday	No Homework due to Valentine’s Day
Wednesday	Worksheet: Subtraction Branching with renaming 1’s and 10’s
Thursday	No Homework enjoy the long President’s Day Weekend

Language

In Language we are finishing up our work with commas in friendly letters.  Students have been practicing using commas through letter writing to Groundhog Phil, expressing their opinion of his prediction of 6 more weeks of winter.  We will assess on commas this week and move on to the punctuation mark, apostrophe.

Writing

Peer Editing and Revising in Action.

Editing and Revising.

Research, research, research...our writing has focused on researching student selected Famous People.  Students have used their chromebooks and books to fill out their notetakers.  Students have created a slide show about their Famous Person.  Each slide show includes slides on the following topics... title slide, birth date and place, childhood, reason for their fame, other interesting facts, and a resource slide.  Most students have finished this project and are working on revising and editing.  Famous People slideshows will be completed this week and ready to share.  The students have done a great job researching and creating their slide shows.                                                                                                                            

Projects

Students have been actively working on their decade time line projects.  Pairs of students are working on completing notetakers.  They are learning about the presidents, important news, inventions, transportation, music, children’s books and movies, and much more as they research their decade.  

Remember that President’s Day is coming up on Monday, February 20th, there will be no school.  Wishing everyone a Happy Valentine’s Day and a Happy President’s Day!

Sincerely,

Mrs. Bloomfield and Miss Garcia

A few more photos...in our read aloud book, Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder, Laura, Mary, and Ma make butter.  This week we decided to make our own butter too!  It made for a tasty snack on bread.

          

Week 23 is Here!!

   

                                                                              February 6, 2017

Dear Bighorns,

Miss Garcia and myself can't believe we just changed the calendar pieces from January to February!!  How can we be done with the first calendar month of the year???

In math 2nd grade students have been working very hard using previously learned strategies (open number line-last week and branch models-this week) renaming the ones and tens to add and subtract within one thousand.  This work involves a lot of decomposing and composing of numbers.  Students are showing their ability with number flexibility as they are catching on very quickly.

Examples...

Addition

450  +  90 = ___    1.  The next hundred after 450 is 500.

         ↙ ↘           2.  To get to 500 you need 50, so the 90 get decomposed into 50 and 40.

     50   40             3.  The renamed equation is 500 + 40 = 540.

500 + 40 = 540        4.  Check by using the open number line.

Subtraction

56  -  7 = ____  1.  The last ten before 56 is 50.

      ↙ ↘             2.  To get to 50 you need to subtract 6, so the 7 gets decomposed into 6 and 1.    

6    1                    Then take the 6 and subtract it from the 56 to make 50.

56 -6 = 50          3.  The renamed equation is 50 - 1 = 49.

50 - 1 = 49         4.  Check by using the open number line.

More Examples…

Renaming the ones.

      606   +   145  =                                    1.  Decompose addends by place value.

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

    600  0   6   100 40  5                     3.  Add hundreds.  Add tens.  Add ones.

(600 + 100) + (0 + 40) + (6 + 5)           4.  Decompose the ones place to rename.

     700       +     40     +     11              5.  Write and solve renamed equation.          

                                         ↙ ↘

                                       10   1

     700        +     50     +     1 =  751

Renaming the tens.

         256   +    371  =                    1.  Decompose addends by place value.

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

 200  50  6  300 70 1                        3.  Add hundreds.  Add tens.  Add ones

(200 + 300) + (50 + 70) + (6 + 1)  4.  Decompose the tens place to rename.

                     ↙ ↘                  5.  Decompose the tens place to rename hundreds place.

                    20 30                   6.  Write and solve renamed equation.  

500     +     120     +     7

                 ↙ ↘

              100  20

600    +    20    +    7  = 627

Homework

Due to our work in math over the next couple of weeks, 2nd grade homework for this week will be worksheets.

Language

We have moved from working on shades of meaning of words to using commas.  In 1st grade students learn about using commas in a date and using commas to separate words in a list.  This week we reviewed the 1st grade comma standard and started learning about the 2nd grade comma standard, which is using commas in the greeting and closing of friendly letters.

Writing

Second grade students have been very busy researching the famous person they selected last week.  Students have used 2 resources to research their person, filled out a note taker, and worked on creating a slide show.  Students will be finishing their slide shows this week and presenting their research to the class this coming week.  The students have been very excited about learning about their famous person!

Projects

Students have worked on their personal time lines.  Thank you for sending in some dates for some of the special events that your child has achieved during their lifetime.  Our 2nd graders have been paired and they have drawn a decade from the 20th century to explore.  Students will be researching about their decade and have a list of facts to find.  The facts include everything from the President of the United States to popular children’s movies of the decade.  Students will really start digging into this project this week.

Valentine’s Day

Valentine’s Day is coming up on Tuesday, February 14th.  Since this holiday falls on a school day, the 2nd grade team will enjoy a few activities at the end of the day.  Our plan is to have students pass out Valentines (please be sure that your child sends one to everyone), play Valentine Bingo, and share appreciations.  Miss Garcia and myself wish to have the children enjoy the holiday with our students in a very simple manner.  

FYI...The Oasis Student Council will be selling Candy Grams.  Although Kindergarten, 1st, and 2nd graders will not be allowed to buy them, parents may purchase them at the front office.  

Wishing you all a great week!

Sincerely,

Mrs. Bloomfield and Miss Garcia