Onward to 3rd

Congratulations 2nd Graders!

You did it! Have a wonderful summer! Remember to read every day (scholastic.com/summer) and practice your math (xtramath.org) every day. Please call the office with questions. Miss Debbie has all of the login information.

See you in August! I can't wait to hear all about your summer adventures!

Fire Fighter Visitor

Our class loves visitors, and we were excited to have a fire fighter (parent of a pre-K student) come to talk with us about fire safety on Monday. He told us three main tips in case of a fire:

1. Get up!

2. Get low!

3. Get out!

He reminded the students about the importance of having a safety plan for getting out, as well as making sure their homes have smoke detectors. He let me try on his fire fighter outfit, and he promised the students that if they all memorize their addresses and phone numbers (another safety issue) and check with their parents about smoke detectors and safety plans, he would come back and let them try on the outfit. How cool! (I will send home a letter about this in Thursday folders this week!)

In other news, we are learning about perpendicular lines in Math. These lines come together to form right angles- see the photos below. Usually they are a horizontal and a vertical line intersecting (or meeting), but they can also be two oblique lines intersecting to form a right angle.

We also made our favorite book titles into cookies as we compared the joy of reading to the joy of following a good recipe. We put all of our key ingredients together for reading success!

Mmm! Cookies and reading!

Recent Math Lessons

This school year is flying by very quickly, and in 2nd grade, time flies when we're having fun...

In the past week, we've been reviewing telling time to the nearest hour, half hour, quarter hour, and five minutes. On Tuesday, we made clocks out of paper plates to help us- see the pictures below:

For help with the minutes, we can peel back the numbers!

We have also been reviewing different ways to write numbers.

Standard form
Word form
Picture form
Expanded form

See the photo below for an example of each:

In other good news, the snow on the plaza area is starting to melt. We hope to be outside for recess soon! In the meantime, another teacher's brother drew us a poster of Olaf from Disney's "Frozen" to help us stay in high spirits.

Math Websites for Subtraction

The students took their 100 addition facts quiz on Monday. Later this week we're starting multiplication.

Here are some websites where they can find some fun multiplication games to practice. I will add to the list as I find more websites. If you know of any games (or iPad apps) that are helpful, please leave a comment or send me an email with the information, and I would be happy to add those to our list as well:

http://www.abcya.com/subtraction_game.htm -ABCya balloon pop subtraction

http://www.abcya.com/math_man_subtraction_jr.htm - ABCya math man subtraction

http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/mathgames/popup/popup_subtraction.htm - Pearl search subtraction

http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/mathgames/fruitshoot/fruitshoot_subtraction.htm - Fruit shoot subtraction

http://www.funbrain.com/FBSearch.php?Grade=2 - Fun Brain math games

http://www.knowledgeadventure.com/grade/2nd-grade-games/ - Knowledge Adventure 2nd Grade games


Thank you! We're working our way through our first full week back.

Dig In

Tuesday was a busy day for us. We started the morning with the morning work problems. Then we transitioned to Phonics, where we studied words with ou (examples: out, shout, loud) and ow (examples: cow, flower, tower).

During Reading, we really stretched our brains as we read Wumbers (Amy Krouse Rosenthal).

.

Wumbers = Words + Numbers

The students deciphered some words like cre8 (create), sh80 (shady), 2th (tooth), and 4give (forgive). Then a few students even made up some of their own. I love their creativity!

Then they spent some time Working on Writing, Reading to Self, and Reading with a Buddy while I met with some reading groups who started new books. They are moving up levels and really enjoying the books they are reading. It is a beautiful thing to see!

During Writing the students started transferring their biography facts from note cards to an outline. It was challenging, but they stuck with it, and they finished up their introduction paragraphs for their research reports.

We read about the church season of Easter and Jesus' rising from the dead in our Religion books before heading outside (a little early) to enjoy the fresh air for recess.

After lunch, we read from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and took a math quiz before starting Science.

First, we read a book about rocks and soil.

Then, we examined samples of soil.

Next, we completed a chart about attributes (properties) of soil.

We then discussed the three layers of soil: (1) bedrock (bottom), (2) subsoil (middle), and (3) topsoil (top). We labeled a diagram.

Finally, we made edible layers of soil.

Bedrock = marshmallows (bottom)

Subsoil = Cheerios (middle)

Topsoil = Cocoa Krispies (top)

We even added a gummy worm because worms live in the soil.

And VOILA! Our very own edible layers of soil. They each labeled their cup according to the different layers, and then we prayed grace before we were able to...

Dig in!

Yum!

The students packed up and went to Spanish... then it was time for announcements and dismissal... My, oh my, time flies when you're having fun...

Stop and Check... and Cheese

Monitor and Clarify --> STOP!

Do you understand what you're reading?

Do you need to reread something? figure out a word's meaning? ask a question? make a prediction? visualize the story in your mind?

The second graders are asking themselves just that this month. They LOVE reading (in fact, I would call them "voracious readers"), and now we know good readers need to stop and check for understanding.

Why would we read a book if we don't understand it or remember it once we're finished? :)

Recently in Math, we learned about area- how much is covered in a shape? We set out to find the area using "1-inch tiles" (or in our case, Cheez-it crackers). We laid them out on the rectangles and counted up how many square tiles each rectangle's area measured.

Mmm! Math can be tasty sometimes!

Visualizing... and Making Geometric Solids

It's hard to believe we have already started the month of April. April is National Poetry Month, but all of the classes at St. Ann are learning how to visualize.

In second grade we discussed how a book can be like a movie in our minds. We think about what we see, taste, hear, smell, and feel when we read. We have also been building our stamina while reading to ourselves and reading with buddies.

Here are a couple of books we have used to help us become more familiar with the idea of visualizing:

Duck! Rabbit! (Rosenthal) - Which animal do you see?

Make Van Gogh's Bed (Appel & Guglielmo) - Touch the art! See and feel the paintings!

The students had some pretty creative responses for what they saw when they looked at this picture. What do you see?

As far as the rest of the day goes, we've been learning about geometric solids (3D shapes) in Math. We read a book called Mummy Math on Monday and made some observations about the shapes. Tuesday we actually built the shapes out of toothpicks and gum drops. We counted faces (the flat surfaces of shapes), edges (where faces meet) and vertices (where edges meet). Look at some photos from our classroom. The students were able to play around with the toothpicks and gum drops to create their own shapes after we finished the lesson.

Mummy Math (Neuschwander) - a lesson in geometric solids

Our shape chart to record our observations, toothpicks (edges), and gum drops (vertices)

"Look! I made a campfire!"

Counting the edges of the pyramid...

"I made a hexagon!"

Our fingers got a little sticky...

A dancing person :)

In other subjects we are working on:

Persuasive Letters (Writing)

Preparing for Reconciliation (Religion)

Open and Closed Syllable Words and Words with AU, AW, AL (Phonics/Spelling)

Economics (Social Studies)

We are excited for the field trip on Thursday to Navy Pier to see the Children's Museum!

Easter break

Have a blessed Easter break! Safe travels to all of those who are traveling. We will see you on Monday, April 8th.



Also, enjoy a few photos I took of the students working on some March Madness (basketball-themed) math and vocabulary problems:

Label the court

Basketball vocabulary matching activity 

Basketball for early finishers - take your best shot! 

Concession Stand - money problems

Please help your child remember to complete his/her reading log every day. Thank you!

Photos of Recent Learning

Here are some photos of things the students have been learning over the past couple of weeks:

Reading Skill of the Month = Summarize - Welcome to Story Street, where students list the characters, setting, problem, and solution (see next picture too)

Measuring in inches and feet - we outlined a few of  the students and measured them with rulers. After they finished their buddy work, they decorated the people.

Economics lessons in Social Studies. So far we've learned about goods, services, producers, and consumers. In this activity students pretended to own a restaurant and listed food they would sell (producers) and what they needed to buy for their restaurant (consumers).

Inferring and Telling Time

We're regular detectives in 2nd Grade...

Today, we put on our thinking caps and used pictures and context clues to predict compound words and infer word meaning in our read aloud. We had words like grasshoppers, sunflowers, stagecoach, rattlesnake, and doghouse, just to name a few. Look below at a compound word match the students did after the read aloud:

Once There Was a Bull... (frog)

Finding the compound word matches

Can you make a compound word?

We'll be working on inferring word meaning the rest of this week, and next week we'll focus on inferring what characters are thinking and feeling.

In other school news, we made special clocks today to help us tell time to the nearest 5 minutes. Check out the clocks below:

It looks like just a normal clock, but...

the hour numbers open to reveal the minutes!

We're off to a great start this week!

*Reminders*
-There is no school this Friday (2/15) or Monday (2/18).
-Our weekly children's liturgy will be on Wednesday (Ash Wednesday) at 8:15am in the church (instead of Friday).