Spring Break Is Almost Here!!

                                                                                                              March 30, 2015

Dear Parents,

Our parent conferences are almost over.  It's always such an exciting time to visit with each family discussing your child's progress.  Over the course of Friday and Saturday Mrs. Jackson and myself have visited with thirty-one families in the first and second grade.  We so appreciate your promptness and attentiveness to conferences.  

The student's of Room 5  earned their Cupcake Decorating Party.  It took quite awhile but the students finally earned it!!  Here are some pictures of the celebration!!

Math
We contined our work in representing 4 data through creating graphs.  Students used data that they collected from students at lunch to create picture graphs and bar graphs.  Along with the graphs, students also wrote questions to go along with the graphs.  This week students also learned about a new way to show data--line plots.  Our work with line plots will continue into this week.
Math Homework
Mon.       Line Plot Worksheet
Tues.      W.B. pg. 112
Wed.       W.B. pg. 113-114
Thurs.    No Homework (Spring Break)

Writing
My writing plans did not work out this week.  Students were supposed to start writing their persuasive/opinion pieces this week.  Although I introduced the idea of OREO, our project time took over our writing time.  The acronym OREO stands for the following, O-state your opinion, R-give reasons for your opinion, E-explain your reasons, O-restate your opinion. 
Projects
Projects are coming along very slowly.  We have had many students absent this past week with fevers and we have also had a few issues with our Chromebooks.  Although we are behind our time line for this project, we will forge ahead and present on Thursday, April 2nd from 2:30-3:30 PM in the cafeteria.  This will be very informal but please feel free to join us.

Language
In language we are working on prefixes.  This past week we created a tree map with the prefixes un = not, re = again, and pre = before.  Each prefix was discussed and students listed words for each prefix.  Students practiced defining words and using them in sentences.

Spring Break is almost here.  I’m hoping that the weather continues to be as beautiful as it has been the past week.  Wishing all my second grade families a Happy Easter and relaxing Spring Break.

Sincerely,

Anne Bloomfield

Reading information from Mrs. Jackson...

March 30-April 2

What a whirlwind of a weekend but one of my two favorite times of year (besides the rodeo and my annual trip to Mendocino).

Conferences!  

It is always so nice to spend time with the families of all of my students, getting to share how much they are learning, how much I appreciate their hard work and where we are headed! Thank you for taking time to come in and meet with Anne and I.

This week we are finishing our fable unit and will be writing fables based around morals or lessons that we should follow here at school.  During our daily dive rotations we will  listen to fables and will also be looking at some poetry and the way that words and phrases add meaning to poems like they do to stories.

We will be taking an overall Spelling assessment this week like one that we took in the fall to compare our progress since then regarding our knowledge and ability to use word patterns and word families.  

This week, we should also be finishing the novels we are currently reading and be ready to begin new books when we come back from spring break.  We will also be getting new folders after break, since many of our folders have gotten torn since the beginning of the year.

Have a safe spring break. Happy Easter!

Sincerely,

Mrs. Jackson

Welcome to Spring Conferences

                                                                             March 23, 2015
Dear Parents,

We survived St. Patrick's Day!  It seemed Oasis Academy definitely had some Leprechauns visiting.  Leprechauns caused some problems in a few classrooms, but we were lucky and our Leprechaun visitor just did a little decorating and left us a pot of "Rolo" gold.  
   
On Friday we will start our Spring Parent Conferences.  Hopefully you have signed up using the Sign Up Genius link that was sent to you.  Mrs. Jackson and myself are excited to meet with you and discuss your child's progress.  Your 2nd graders are almost 3rd 

Math

In math we started our work with data, graphs, and tables.  This unit will continue into this week as well.  Last week our focus was on picture graphs, surveys, tally charts, and bar graphs.  Students got some "real world" practice with gathering data.  Each student developed a question to survey between 15 to 20 people at lunch.  They will be using that data to create a picture graph. Students will also develop questions to go with their graphs. 

As we worked on graphs students also learned about reading the key or scale of the graph.  We learned that the pictures on a picture graph sometimes represent more than one item.  Students know that they have to always check to see if a graph has a scale before answering questions.

Our work in math this week spilled over into snack time when Wyatt decided to sort and graph his gummy snacks.  I just had to include a picture!!  I love seeing these connections!!

Math Homework
Monday           IXL R.5 Create Bar Graphs
Tuesday          Practice Test B
Wednesday     IXL R.6 Interpret Line Plots
Thursday         IXL R.7 Create Line Plots

Writing
The focus in writing was revising and editing our narratives about what students will be like when they are 100 years old.  These have been fun pieces to revise and edit, but I feel like we have been working on them for 100 years!!

Projects

Students continued learning about landforms.  We learned about slow changes to land (erosion and weathering) and about fast changes to land (earthquakes, floods, landslides, etc.).  In the pictures above students are exploring how water can change the landforms they created with sand from the playground. 

This week was also the start of the research end of this project.  Students are working with a partner to learn about 2 types of landforms.  For each landform students are using a notetaker to list the definition, how the landform occurs, whether it is related to slow changes or fast changes, examples of this landform, and interesting facts about the landform.
Language

In language we reviewed compound sentences and worked on compound words.  Students spent time giving examples of compound words.  We played some group matching games and we defined many compound words.  

Looking forward to another great week in 2nd grade, but I am also looking forward to meeting with all of you soon for parent conferences!!  See you all soon!!

Sincerely,

Anne Bloomfield

Here's the reading information from Mrs. Jackson...

March 23-26

Conference Week!

I saw many of you at the Dancing with the Stars event on Saturday night.  How entertaining it was to see Mrs. Tisdale on the floor!  Boy did she represent Oasis Academy well!  Not only were we represented well by Mrs. Tisdale, but so many of our students were also involved in the swing dancing and other dancing that night as well.  I love seeing so many of our families as part of the larger Fallon community!    

I am looking forward to seeing you all within the next two weeks!   I can’t believe it’s almost spring break and Easter for those of us with eggs, lambs, chicks and chocolate in mind.  I will pull out a few of my Easter books this week since we only have 2 weeks left before break.  

We will also continue studying fables and are specifically looking at the requirements that fables must include.  During Work on Writing we have been encouraged to write our own fables.  We will be using a rubric to look at the fables we have written and continue to write and will be turning some of these fables into Readers’ Theaters to be read in small groups next week.  

In our Guided Reading groups we are looking at the way that authors choose to use certain words to create specific images and feelings in the readers’ minds.  We are also noticing that different characters have different voices to demonstrate their different personalities and feelings (even sometimes in reaction to the same events).  

Please let me know if there are any specific questions or pieces of specific information that you would like to review at conferences.  This way, since we cover so many different standards each term, I can make sure to have the information that you wish to review right at hand.

What a fun week this will be!  Thanks for all of your support!

Fourth Quarter Here We Come!!

                                                                                                                March 16, 2015

Dear Parents,

St. Patrick’s Day and the first day of spring, oh my!!  It’s crazy how fast time is flying by!!  During our weekly planning session on Saturday, Mrs. Neal and myself sketched out the standards to be covered in this fourth and final quarter.  Your 2nd grader will be a 3rd grader before you know it!!

Math
We continued our work with mental math strategies, working with the operation of subtraction.  Students were able to apply much of what they learned the prior week when we worked on mental math strategies with addition.  Students worked on strategies for subtracting ones or tens from a 2-digit number, subtracting ones, tens, or hundreds from a 3-digit number, subtracting two 2-digit numbers, and subtracting a number close to 100 from hundreds.  For all these strategies students got a lot of practice breaking down (decomposing) numbers into numbers that are easier to subtract.  I must say that students are getting quite good with their mental strategies.

Mon.	IXL H.9 Subtraction Word Problems Up to 2-digits
Tues.	IXL R.8 Interpret Pictographs
Wed.	IXL R.9 Create Pictographs
Thurs.	IXL R.3 Interpret Bar Graphs

Writing
Our work in sentence fluency brought about some interesting writing this week.  Sentence fluency means students are writing pieces with sentences of different lengths, different beginnings, a variety of sentence types, and with a smooth flow.  When students are strong in sentence fluency their writing just flows and is easy and interesting to read.

Students participated in an activity in which they were given  a topic and rolled a die to determine how many words would be in each sentence.  We did the first topic as a class and then the following day students worked with a partner on different topics. Students did an amazing job with this activity.  I can't wait to see how our work in sentence fluency transfers into student writing. .

Here is what the students of Room 5 put together as a class.  

Fire Drill

Beep, beep it's a fire drill!  Get outside quickly to the playground! Fire drill!!  Get outside now!!  Ahhhh!

Projects

We continued learning about landforms and bodies of water through completing our notetakers.  Students practiced the vocabulary through playing an "I have...Who has?" game focused on the landforms and bodies of water and their definitions.

Students also used their knowledge about landforms and bodies of water to create models of 5 landforms and 5 bodies of water in clay.  Students worked hard designing, creating, and labeling their models.

Students will be working on their projects over the next couple of weeks.  They will be presenting their projects on April 2nd from 2:30- 3:30 P.M.  Mark you calendars and join us to learn more about landforms and bodies of water around the world.

Language
In language we finished our work with compound sentences and reviewed plural nouns.  Students were assessed on both skills.

Wishing you a wonderful St. Patrick's Day and a Happy Spring.

Sincerely,
Anne Bloomfield

Here's the reading information from Mrs. Jackson...

March 16-19

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

Every week it seems that there is something special to celebrate.  

The next couple of weeks we will spend some time on the following two standards-determining the central message, moral or lesson of fables and folktales and acknowledging differences in points of views of characters including by speaking in a different voice for each character when reading dialogue aloud.  We will be combining these two goals by spending time this week reading fables in a Reader’s Theater fashion.  I imagine that we will greatly enjoy practicing reading with different voices.  

In our Guided Reading groups, we will be focusing on acknowledging how characters feel differently about the same events as well as the use of word choice to enhance meaning in a story. We are learning that meaning can be portrayed through text, illustrations or dialogue and how this is done in a variety of manners with a specific focus on dialogue as it relates to character.  

We will be bringing home new chapter books this week and some groups will have questions to answer as well.  We will also be studying a new word family-the “ow” family this week.  

During our independent work time we are finishing our 5 paragraph animal reports, so these should be up in the hall when you come to visit during conferences.

Mrs. Bloomfield and I have decided to conference jointly with all of our families again just like in the fall.  I look forward to meeting with you soon!  

Have a great week!

Last Week of the Third Quarter

                                                                                     March 9, 2015

Dear Parents,

It's very hard for me to believe that this coming week marks the final week of the 3rd quarter.  Mrs. Jackson and myself will be sending out information for Parent Teacher Conferences via Sign Up Genius very soon.  Conferences will start on Friday, March 27th and continue into the next week.  We are anxious to meet with you to discuss you child's progress.  I can't believe how this year has been flying by!!  

Math
The focus in math this week was using strategies for mental addition.  Students worked on adding ones, tens, or hundreds to a 2-digit number and a 3-digit number.  We also worked on mentally adding two 2-digit through decomposing (breaking apart) the tens and ones.  Finally we practiced adding a number close to 100 to a 2-digit or 3-digit number.

Example of mentally adding ones, tens, or hundreds to a 2-digit number.

  37 + 6 = 30 + 13 = 43

 ↙↘

30  7

Examples of mentally adding ones, tens, or hundreds to a 3-digit number.

 398 + 5 = 400 + 3 = 403

           ↙↘

          2  3

340 + 80 = 400 + 20 = 420         or          340 + 80 = 400 + 20 = 420

         ↙↘                                                      ↙↘

       60  20                                             320  20  

Example of mentally adding two 2-digit numbers.

46 + 35 = 81

      +30           +5

46 76 81

Example of mentally adding a number close to 100.

  98 + 37 = 100 + 35 = 135

          ↙↘

         2  35

As children work through adding mentally they are building their flexibility in working with numbers.  We will continue to to build our fluency through practice, practice, practice!   

Another highlight in math this week was celebrating the 100th Day of School.  Students played a "Tally to 100" game in which students rolled a die and filled in that amount of tally marks.  The winning student was the one that reached 100 first by exact count.

 Students playing "Tally to 100".

Students also wrote 100 different equations that all that had an answer of 100.

Homework for the week

Mon.       Worksheet pg. 18
Tues.      IXL J.1  Subtracting Multiples of 100
Wed.       Worksheet pg. 22
Thurs.     No Homework (completing 3rd quarter assessments)  

Writing
Our work in writing was a quick description of what it would be like if we were 100 years old.  The writing focused on a description of how we would look, our family, and what types of activities we might be doing when we are 100 years old.  This quick writing will be up in the hall next week.  We also continued to work on our organization pieces.

Language
The new concept in language this week was to combine 2 simple sentences with a conjunction (and, or, but, so) to make a compound sentence.  Students realize that a simple sentence is about one idea.  Two simple sentences that have related ideas can be joined to create a compound sentence.

Our review language concept was irregular plural nouns.  This review will continue next week.  Students will be reassessed on this skill this coming week.

Projects
Students presented their matter projects.  We also started on the vocabulary work for our next project on Earth's Systems.  Students are using a notetaker and the Enchanted Learning website to complete "break down" definitions of 10 landforms and 10 bodies of water.  The work with definitions will help students as the forge ahead with the projects this week.

It seems like “Springing Ahead” with our clocks this past weekend has brought on beautiful spring like weather.  Hope you can get out and enjoy it this week!!

Sincerely,

Anne Bloomfield

Enjoy some 2nd grade information from Mrs. Jackson...

March 7, 2015

What a  beautiful weekend; I went for a run on Saturday and spent the rest of the weekend practicing softball with my daughters.  

This week we will continue working on our Spelling pattern “aw” since we didn’t get to spend as much time as I like to last week reviewing and discussing that Word Family in our classroom.  

I took last week and will spend time this week as well re-teaching and re-assessing certain standards that we saw earlier in the year.  We will also finish up with the last few standards for this quarter; these standards will all be part of our upcoming progress reports.  

I met with Strategy Groups rather than Guided Reading Groups last week working on the skill of comparing and contrasting Informational Text. We worked in small groups all week learning techniques that we can use to identify as similarities and differences when analyzing any two non fiction articles.  

I also met with other small groups revisiting the skills of author’s purpose, text features, the use of diagrams and the main idea within a multi-paragraph essay.  

Next week we should be back into the groove of our regular Guided Reading Groups, so for those students that have finished their past chapter books and haven’t been bringing home new assigned reading, they will begin bringing home new chapter books next week.  

Please make sure that your child is still reading nightly; it should be exciting for them to be able to choose to read anything they want!

I am looking forward to another week of smiles with my second-grader readers!

Thank you!

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss and Happy 100 Days of School

                                                                          
                                                                                                               March 2, 2015

Dear Parents,

It was FABULOUS to see so many of you at Math Night!  The sessions (Adding and Subtracting Strategies) in Room 5 had a steady flow of parents and students. Although I didn't have a sign in sheet, I know that at least fourteen families from Room 5 were able to attend.  Thanks for coming to Math Night!!

Here is what happened in Room 5 over the past week!!

Math

Students playing a "time" game.

In Math we tested on time.  As with many of our Math skills, this is a skill that will get reviewed constantly, both during Math Meeting and  as we go through our day to day schedule.  I'm noticing more and more students wearing watches and just being 
generally more aware of the time.  Statements like, "Oh it's 11:20, we will be going to lunch soon!"

We spent the rest of the week working on how to find missing numbers in addition and subtraction and use a count on strategy to mentally subtract from 100.  Students are using the terms "Whole" and "Part" when discussing how to find the missing number.

If You Are Missing a Part......Then...
... 23    +   ?     =   48                    48    -    23    =    23  
Part      Part     Whole             Whole   Part       Part    

67    -    ?    =    32                   67    -    32    =    35
Whole   Part    Part                 Whole  Part       Part

If You Are Missing a Part......Then... 
...
?    -    29    =    36                   29    +     36    =     65
Whole Part       Part               Part         Part        Whole

Students will continue using this strategy next week.

Here's the homework for this week...
Mon.     Workbook pgs. 11-12
Tues.    Workbook pgs. 13-14
Wed.     Practice Test B
Thurs.   No Homework (Assessment)          

Writing

Students looking for interesting words.

In search of strong words.

Students got to do some peer editing on their "Organization" stories and I have started to meet with students to revise and edit.  The next writing trait which we started this past week is "Word Choice".  At first, students worked in small groups highlighting interesting words within books that had been read to students as past "Read Alouds".  Students spent time creating word choice posters with 10 favorite words from a selected book.  The students certainly picked strong words.

Projects
Although I was hoping to have the matter projects completed this week, we experienced some technical difficulties so we will have some overlap as we finish with the matter project presentations and start our next project on Earth's Systems.

Language 
It was a review week in language.  Students reviewed the use of commas.  We discussed where and when we use commas.  Students also got to practice  this skill by inserting commas in a letter on chart paper and working on some worksheets.

Another review skill was Collective Nouns.  Students spent time in small groups to review Collective Nouns through a Read Alouds and playing games.  Both skills were assessed on Thursday afternoon.

Between Dr. Seuss' Birthday(March 2nd) and the 100th Day of School (March 3rd) it is going to be an interesting week.

Sincerely,
Anne Bloomfield

Some information from Mrs. Jackson...

March 1, 2015

Welcome March!  Finally a bit of snow!  

I want to thank Mrs. Bloomfield for her amazing presentation and the effort that she put into Math night last Thursday and as a Math leader in our building.  I have worked with so many teachers, but Mrs. Bloomfield always finds a way to go above and beyond.  She puts so much into each child in her classroom; I am inspired.  Thank you Mrs. Bloomfield!

Monday, March 2 is Dr. Seuss Day.  We will be learning a bit about Dr. Seuss and then spend time during our daily five rotation reading and writing about his books and his life.  Have fun pulling these books out at home this week and remembering how fun they truly are!

This week our Spelling pattern is the “aw” Word Family.

We have 2 more weeks left in this quarter.  We are going to spend time during the next two weeks reviewing the author’s use of fact and opinion in their writing and why they choose to include more facts or opinions as part of their pieces.  We will also continue reading information that is presented as a series of events.  

Have a fabulous first week of March!  Softball’s begun; I hope to see many of you on the fields this spring.  My daughter Kacey in 3rd grade is playing in the U8 league for the first time against many of my 2nd and 3rd graders.  Should be fun!

Dr. Seuss-Did You Know?

• Dr Seuss wasn’t really a doctor, he added Dr. because his father wanted him to practice medicine.
• Seuss is really Dr. Seuss’ last name.  Seuss actually rhymes with voice, but was changed later the current pronunciation.
• Dr. Seuss first book And to Think I Saw it First on Mulberry Street was rejected by 27 publishers.

Sincerely,

Mrs. Jackson