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!