Posted by kavery508 | Posted in Uncategorized | Posted on February 1, 2016
Our next Early Release Day is this Tuesday! Our Media day has been rescheduled for Wednesday of this week, so students should bring their books back then. Instead of lunch, I have a snack time planned at their regular eating time, since they’re used to eating then. However, if you’d rather they wait until getting home to have lunch, that’s fine too! On Tuesday, I will be working with grade 2 teachers across the district developing and using rubrics that deepen our understanding of student learning and achievement with math problem solving (think of those 2-step bar model problems that require depth and accuracy, for example).
Valentine’s Day is coming! We will exchange valentines in class on Friday, 2/12. If your child will be bringing valentines in for classmates, please be sure there is one for everyone. There are currently 23 students in our class; refer to our class list if your child wishes to personalize valentines with names. Of course, hand-made ones are welcome as well as store-bought! Please be sure no food (including candy) is attached per our district policy, and thanks!
Thank you to Christy Minton, Media Specialist, who taught us how to find safe and reliable information in libraries and online. Using iPads, students were guided through the Shrewsbury Public Library portal to the Encyclopedia Britannica Kids site, where they searched for information about famous Americans they chose to research. Students then explored the multimedia information given, and learned to print their findings–awesome! Using these articles and books provided, students are now applying reading comprehension strategies (Asking Questions and Reading to Find Answers; Determining Importance) to find evidence of character traits in historical figures. Karina has already discovered how Helen Keller was hardworking when she learned to speak by practicing over and over, and Martin noted Paul Revere’s determination in his attempts to communicate the movements of British troops across the state. Wow!
The kids have made great strides in their opinion writing work, showing they understand the purpose of writing an introduction, opinion, and justifying their reasons with examples. Consider the word choice and explanations in these excerpts from 1) Aamir and 2) Rose: 1) In my opinion, Eid is the best holiday. One reason is…it is exciting! Stores are bustling with people to buy food for the holiday. 2) In my opinion, cats make much better pets than dogs. For example, cats are very loving. They can say “We are family” by rubbing their head against you. Our last challenge this term will be to write opinions using evidence from text as part of the research project above!
This week’s math introduces students to a new concept in measurement: the broken ruler. Check out the example above. Here, students are being taught to develop an understanding of length that goes beyond lining up a ruler at “0” and reading the number at the end. You will see examples of it on this week’s homework. Students need to count the centimeters when measuring and comparing in order to understand what the numbers involved mean in terms of length. We will also be learning to represent lengths using bar models. For a reminder, see the bar modeling section of the homework packet from chapter 4. Note: there is no math homework assigned for Tuesday. I suggest using the time to work on math facts!
The 100th day of school is nearing! I will set up a “100 Day Museum” to show off student projects and learning. I encourage children to create a poster/collection/display/etc. that somehow represents 100. Instead of simply collecting 100 things in a bag, I’m challenging students to think more deeply about number. They could bring/show something that displays an understanding of number, patterns, and/or the math we’ve done so far, such as: grouping objects (stickers/pennies/etc.) on a poster that shows counting by 5s, 10s, 2s, etc., possibly with accompanying multiplication/repeated addition/division explanations; bar models using 100; create real-world problems with 100. There is also a plethora of projects and ideas on Pinterest and across the web!
Our weather study continues with a look at what air pressure is and how we can use it to predict weather locally and nationally. I’ve been using surface maps and temperature maps daily with the kids from The Weather Channel at weather.com. To help them make meaning, we are doing investigations with pressure that teach us 1) how air can be compressed, and 2) how pressure can be used to manipulate a system–cool!
