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!

Reading Strategies

April has come and gone (I can't believe it, can you?!), so we finished up our reading strategy of "Visualizing" this week. We read the story Peter and the Wolf on Monday. Then on Tuesday we discussed different musical instruments and listened to the story played by an orchestra as we pictured the characters and the plot in our minds.

In May we will focus on "Monitor and Clarify," which is all about making sure we understand what we are reading. So, in order to make sure we stop, we made our very own stop signs.

We also worked on learning new vocabulary, so we read about and discussed "bee words." We read a magazine, looked at other books as references, made a vocabulary honey comb, and even enjoyed some delicious honey comb cereal. (Yum!)

Speaking of bees, we'll be "busy as bees" in the coming month as we wind down the school year. Please make sure your child is completing his or her homework (including Spelling) every night. Thank you!

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!

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 Detectives

February's reading strategy is Infer (or Making Inferences). The students have been doing just that.

We decided it is sort of like predicting, but you also use clues in the text or from pictures to help you make a good guess...

Miss Foyle's detective hat and magnifying glass

This week we have really focused on inferring characters' thoughts and feelings, and what better way to do that than to write in their thought bubbles?

Thought bubble chalk board and chalk

This student is happy! She would say something like "Yay!" or "Oh goody!" or "I am so happy to be at school!"

Here are some of the books we have visited with inferences. The one on the left is from the Target $1 buckets. The students add words to each cartoon for what the people or animals in the cartoons would say. The top book Pancakes for Breakfast (Tomie de Paola) is a wordless book. The students eagerly discussed what the main character (and even the pet animals) on the farm was thinking at various points in the story. The book on the right is Fireflies (Julie Brinckloe), which we'll read tomorrow (Thursday). It is the story of a child who has a dilemma after he catches fireflies in his jar.

Good books for inferences

Next week we'll focus on inferring the setting of stories and continue our detective work.

*Reminder*

2nd grade is preparing the Children's weekly liturgy this week. Please join us at 8:15 am in the church to see your children read, bring up the gifts, and participate in the mass.

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).

Busy in 2nd Grade

We have had quite a busy week in 2nd grade. We took a break from our normal Math routine to learn about capacity (how much liquid a container can hold) and liquid measurements. Your child should have come home with this guy- Mr. Gallon Man- to help remember how many cups are in a pint, how many quarts are in a gallon, etc.:

 In Reading, we started a new reading strategy- Infer. It is using clues to make an educated guess (or prediction). I brought in a bag of items from my apartment. The students inferred things about me from the items. See the chart below for some good inferences:

Today (Friday) we celebrated with our 2nd Quarter Bee Buck afternoon filled with crafts. The students made Valentines with Miss Snyder, Mardi Gras masks with Miss Longton, snowflakes with Mrs. Afton (Miss Sullivan), and snowmen with me. (I apologize if they came home with a little bit of paint on their hands and/or clothes! They had a good time!)

Thanks for another great week. Here are a few reminders:

1. Family Mass - Sunday, February 10th- 10:30am in the church. Hope to see many of you there. The students will read and bring up the gifts. (We even have altar server helpers from 6th grade!)

2. No School Days - There is no school for students on Friday, February 15th (due to a staff development day). Monday, February 18th, is also a day off of school (for everyone) in honor of President's Day. Enjoy the long weekend.

Many of the students have really become interested in learning about the presidents. Look below at one of the second graders putting all of the presidents in order (during recess)!

Have a wonderful weekend!

Life's Little Equations Read Aloud

Today we took a break from our December reading strategy of Asking Questions and focused more on Making Predictions with our read aloud entitled:

This Plus That: Life's Little Equations

(You can check out a description of the book at this link: http://www.amazon.com/This-Plus-That-Little-Equations/dp/0061726559)

In this book, the author makes addition and subtraction (and occasional multiplication and division) equations such as:

wishes + candles = birthday

book + chair = cozy

chalk + sitting = learning

chalk + jumping = hopscotch

The students enjoyed predicting the answer to each equation as we read the book aloud. (They had some really good thoughts!)

After we finished reading the story, they came up with some of their own equations. Here are a few I remember from their journal entries:

Jesus + Mary + Joseph = Holy Family

mom + dad + me = family

pop + chips = snack

Bears + touchdown = awesome!

family + church = Sunday

I am always amazed by their creativity! I love learning with them and from them each and every day.