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.

December

     We are approaching the half-way mark in second grade, so our learning is off and running!
      Our November writing project was writing a persuasive paper to convince others to prepare a new dish for the Thanksgiving meal.  We had some interesting wishes, such as spaghetti and chicken legs.  After the paragraph students wrote their own recipes for the dish.  These also were interesting to say the least! I hope you were able to take the time and read your child's work when it was sent home last week.
     We finished our read aloud of Little House on the Prairie. Some students enjoyed the book and have ventured out on their own to read some of the other novels written by Laura Ingalls Wilder. We have just started the book, "The Mouse and the Motorcycle", by Beverly Cleary.  So far they are enjoying it, and at least one other student has gone on to start another Beverly Cleary book. I hope to introduce students to at least one character, or author that encourages them to read for enjoyment.
      Regrouping has been the focus in Math for several weeks now.  It has been a challenge, but most students seem to be keeping up the concept of when they need to regroup.  We will be testing their knowledge this week and then move on to adding and subtracting money amounts. We are still hard at work on addition and subtraction math facts.  Times tests seem to be a necessary evil in getting them to learn the facts quickly and automatically. We practice every day and they do seem to be getting quicker.
    We tested last week on landforms and maps in social studies. We moved on to Science and will test at the end of this week over Plants and their life cycle. Then we will go back to Social Studies with a new unit over Resources.
     I hope you are enjoying our new reading series as the children bring home their book at least once a week and read to your from them. I hope you are seeing an improvement in their reading ability.
     Christmas will soon be here, so we have made Santas for the room and are currently working on a narrative fiction story, "How I Got a Shiny Red Nose." I am enjoying reading their creative ideas as we work in reader's Workshop.
    

November

     The month of October has come to an end with our annual Halloween Party.  Students began with a walk around the school to show off their creativity and then returned to their rooms for the fantastic party the room mothers had planned. Fun was had by all, and we appreciate how much our parents do for us.
     We just completed  math units on two digit addition and subtraction.  We will begin two digit subtraction with borrowing as our next unit.
     One of our new writing standards for second graders is the ability to write a persuasive paper. We are writing a persuasive piece on our favorite dish that should be served for Thanksgiving dinner. Students are coming up with some traditional and not so traditional dishes for the holidays!
     We just finished our unit on animal types which culminated in a trip to Mr. Keehn's room in the high school.  Students were very excited to see and touch different animals and we were even able to take a real snake skin back to our room.
   Some of the students will begin to put together a power-point presentation over the animal groups they learned about.  This will also help them become more familiar with computers.
     We continue to read excellent literature in our new reading books and work on the second grade standards that students will be tested on in third grade.
     We started a social studies unit on landforms and maps. Finding locations on a map and describing the direction has proven challenging.
     So second grade is off and running!
    

October

        By October second grade is off and running. We are working hard and hopefully having some fun along the way.
      In math we have worked on even and odd numbers, place value, and we continue to work on our addition and subtraction facts.Our next unit will be covering money. Helping your child count a collection of coins, and dollar bills with a collection of coins will reinforce what we are teaching in class. We will also be writing the value of the money using a cents sign and dollar sign. any additional work done at home will help us greatly!
     We continue to get familiar with our new reading series. We learn 5 new vocabulary words each week and students are encouraged to find these words elsewhere in their reading, show it to the teacher, and give the definition to earn a sticker for their sticker chart.
     Currently we are writing stories that were inspired by the book, "Here Come the Aliens" and  "Harry and the Terrible Whatzit".  You can see their own creature creations along with a narrative story when you attend parent-teacher conferences next week.
     We just completed a unit on Government in Social Studies.  Next we will begin a Science unit on Animals, focusing on the differences among birds, mammals, reptiles, fish, and amphibians.
     We are about half-way through our read aloud novel, "Little House on the Prairie." We write in our journals daily focusing on a skill we are attempting to master in the second grade. Most students have their own copy of the book so that they are able to follow along as I read to the class.  I love when they are able to point out any mistakes the teacher makes!
     I am looking forward to seeing everyone next week at our conference and telling you more about your own child's progress.

Beginning of the Year Fun

     We kicked off our Wild West theme at Jackson Heights with an elementary school visit to the Red Rock Ranch in Soldier. It was a rainy day, but our enthusiasm was not dampened.  Fun was had by all, as we sang campfire songs, learned about horses, and ate home-cooked rolls!
     Theme activities will continue all year school-wide and in individual classrooms.  In our second grade we have just started to read the novel "Little House on the Prairie" together.  We will read and discuss many things about the Old West with the help of this novel.  Students are encouraged to have their own copy of the novel to add to their enjoyment!

Second Grade Kicks Off Best in the West Theme!

April Activities

     The last couple of months of school are upon us!  You can feel the excitment in the second grade for sure. 
      We have been fine-tuning our skills in 3 digit addition and subtraction, in addition to more work on place value.  We should get to an introduction on multiplication before the year is completed.
      Charlotte's Web by E.B. White is being read aloud at the end of each day.  Each child has a copy of the book and is following along with me as I read aloud to the class.  Response questions are answered in their own journals.
       Stories are being proofread and will soon be presented on , "The Night I Followed the Dog" and they are very entertaining.
       Music concert will be presented April 23 for grades K-4.  The students have been hard at work learning lines and songs. Plan to attend and enjoy the entertainment.
       Our field trip will be to the Topeka Zoo on May 4 and Play Day will be May 11. Lots of fun to look forward to before our last day of school!!
            

March

     March has been another busy month.  We completed our biographies and presented them, so they are now hanging on our bulletin board for your to read during Parent-Teacher Conferences.  The next writing project we tackled was writing persuasive text.  Each student tried to convince the leprechaun they deserved his pot of gold.  Many convincing ideas were dreamed up, and they all wrote delightful paragraphs!  Ms. McDaniel listened to their oral presentations and decided that Justin Mullins gave the most persuasive talk.  He was awarded a green hat full of gold coins and necklaces to share with the class.
    We are almost finished with another read-aloud.  The Chocolate Touch has been a very entertaining story, and they have done an excellent job writing in their chocolate kiss journals.  Our next novel will be Charlotte's Web.  If anyone has the book at home we would appreciate you sending it to school with your child so that everyone can have their own copy to follow along as I read aloud.
       We just completed units on time and probability in math.  Next we move to comparing numbers to 1,000. We will be reviewing place value again and learning how to write numbers in both standard and expanded form.
      After break we will complete our Science Unit on Exploring Earth's Surface and then test their knowledge of information covered.  Then we will begin a new Social Studies unit studying producers and consumers.
     As you can see, we are still hard at work in the second grade, even though there are only 8 weeks of school left!

February Activities

  February is off to a great start in the second grade. The students became real authors, as they finally were able to take home the book they each wrote and illustrated.  We studied the books of Laura Numeroff: If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, If You Give a Pig a Pancake, If You Give a Moose a Muffin, to name a few.  Then each student wrote their own version.  There is also a copy of each book here at school to share.
  We are also finally completing our biographies of famous people in history.  We have begun to present them to the class, so that we get to hear and learn about 16 famous people.
  We have been working hard on main idea in reading, and using context clues to identify unknown words.  In math we have been working on measurement, in lenght, weight, and capacity.
  We have been studying early American history in Social Studies and tieing that knowledge in with our read aloud of Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder.
 

January News

    We celebrated our 100th day of school this week, but that does not mean our work is done!  We are still working hard.
     We are still working on writing our biographies of a famous person.  This is a slow process since it is probably the first time they have attempted to write a research paper.  We work on them everyday, so they should be completed and ready for presentation soon.  While working on our papers we continue our review of sentence structure, and focus on our parts of speech with discussion of nouns, verbs, and adjectives.
    In math we just completed a unit on shapes, with discussion on symmetry.  New vocabulary words like rotation, translation, and reflection were learned.  Our next unit will be on measurement with standard and non-standard units.  Soon we will break out the rulers and measure in inches and centimeters.
   Next week will be the Science test over living things and their environment.  Then we will move on to Social Studies where we will learn about some early American History, with discussion of the Revolutionary War.
   We are still reading Little House on the Prairie and completing our reader response journals as we read.  Thank you to those of you who sent a copy of the book with your student.
  
    

December Activities

December is off to a busy start! In math we have moved to a goal of completing 100 addition facts in 4 minutes. We are also doing two digit addition and subtraction.  We introduced carrying and regrouping which was challenging for us, but in the end we were successful!  Reading lessons involved working with story elements with emphasis on identifying problem and solution.  We also worked on writing the plot of a narrative text story and identifying the main idea in expository text.  We are currently working on writing a narrative text story of fantasy. Our inspiration was the story "Imogene's Anters" by David Small. Instead of antlers, we are writing about having a shiny nose. In Social Studies we are beginning a study of Natural Resources.  We began reading Little House on the Prairie during read aloud and students are learning about life on the prairie long ago. These are just some of the activities in the second grade! 

Read Aloud in the Second Grade

One of the activities that I especially enjoy in the second grade is read aloud.  We will soon finish the book Ramona the Brave by Beverly Cleary.  Our next novel will be Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder.  If you have a copy of this book we would appreciate you sending it to school with your child so that he or she can follow along while we read aloud. We do journal activities associated with each chapter, so if each child has their own copy of the book it is helpful.  I look forward to sharing this book with your child.  I hope they enjoy it as much as I do!

Fall Activities

Our Class has been hard at work this month enjoying the books by author Laura Numeroff.  After reading, If you Give a Mouse a Cookie, If You Give a Pig a Pancake, If you Give a Moose a Muffin, If you Give a Cat a Cupake, and other books by the author the students were encouraged to write their own stories complete with illustrations.  We have discovered many talented authors and illustrators in the second grade!  Some of our titles are If You Give an Elephant a Peanut and If You Take a Rabbit to the Race Track. They have worked hard on their tales and have made them very entertaining as well as learning about cause and efffect text structure.

Spirit Week

The second grade shows their spirit!!

Welcome to the Jungle

Sharing or Monkey Masks

Kicking off the jungle theme with monkey masks