April

     The school year is winding down, but that does not mean things have slowed in the second grade.
     We are working hard honing math skills with further discussion of place value, and will soon move to three digit adddition.
     We are finishing "Charlotte's Web" soon and will move on to our "Ramona
Brave."
     We will begin a new Reading Unit next week with the theme, "America's People." Our stories will focus on other cultures, so feel free to send any items you have from other cultures to share with us.
    In Science we have been looking at fossils with discussion of how they are formed and what people learn from them.  Thank you to all of the students who sent rocks to share with the class.
    I have enjoyed working with your child all year.  Remember to keep them reading and writing this summer, in addition to drilling on addition and subtraction facts.

February

     After several snow days we are finally getting back into the swing of things in second grade. We just finished a unit on measurement and are now beginning a unit on telling time.  This will be a challenge, as they also need to know how to draw the hands on a clock to show a specific time.
     We finished "The Chocolate Touch" and have now begun my personal favorite read aloud, "Charlotte's Web". We will be doing various writing activities along with this book.
    Social studies has been focusing on early American history with discussion of symbols important to America.  They will be designing their own idea for a memorial or monument as an American symbol. When this unit is completed we will turn to Science with a study of the Earth's surface. If you have any fossils to share with us, send them with your student!
     Our next reading unit is entitled, "Courage". We will have a board dedicated to any items that connect to this theme.  Please help your student gather any items to share with us!
     We are still working on our Hero Biographies.  The students are loving researching about their famous person in history, and I am anxious to complete and present them.  Next month we will do a persuasive paragraph, in which students try to convince a leprechaun to give them his pot of gold.
    So as you can see, we are still working hard in second grade!

                                                January
     Well, we are off and running in the new year here in the second grade.  We had a nice long Christmas break, but now it's back to work!
     Math work started off with solids and plane figures. Now we are on to fraction work and next week we will start on probability.  We continue to drill the addition and subtraction facts also.
     We took our fourth benchmark assessment in reading and our now starting our fourth unit, Look Again. We will be focusing on main idea and details within expository text in this unit.
     Story writing like another author has been started by reading books by Laura Jaffe Numeroff. Give a Mouse a Cookie, If you Give a Pig a Pancake, If you Take a Mouse to the Movies are just a few of the books we read before beginning our own cause and effect story.  We hope to publish these stories so that each student eventually brings home their own book!
     We are currently doing a unit on Kansas Symbols since Kansas Day is January 29.  Students are enjoying learning facts about Kansas and coloring pictures of each symbol.
     We finished Mouse and the Motorcycle right before Christmas break.  We were able to enjoy the movie also, and students had fun comparing and contrasting the book with the movie.  Our next book will be, The Chocolate Touch.