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!