Geometry and Gratitude

This short week we will be doing some activities dealing with gratitude and Thanksgiving. We are also finishing up our Math unit on Geometry. We have learned about names for various 2D and 3D shapes, how to use square inches to determine which rectangle is biggest, and we have been doing activities with symmetry. We made really cool symmetrical turkey tails out of pattern block paper pieces.

Look for the November and December Book Order Catalogs coming home on Monday. Please place your orders by Tuesday November 29th. Remember books make great gifts for your children learning to read. If you place an order online we get $3 for class books. Whether you order online or send me the book order and your money you can send a note or email and let me know if you want the order kept a secret from your child. I can then contact you directly when the order arrives so you can keep it secret.

This week we will play a game called "Guess the Covered Word" to help them with their word attack skills. In the game they learn that when they come to a word they don't know they should think of it as a covered word. Then if they follow these strategies they should be able to guess the covered word.
1- Think about what you are reading about - ask yourself "What would make sense in this sentence?"
2- Look at the picture - it will help you think of words that will make sense in the sentence.
3- Say the first sound - What word that begins with that sound will make sense in the sentence.
Usually you will know the word by now - if you don't you can try two more things.
4- Look at the ending of the word to see if it will help you find a word that makes sense.
5- Say the middle, vowel sound then try to blend the beginning sound, vowel sound and ending sound into a word that will make sense in the sentence.

Many children try to sound out a word without thinking about what they are reading. If they first think about what they are reading and then think of what will make sense in the sentence they often will be able to guess the word. Then they employ the other strategies to see if it is correct.

In our Language Arts unit we are exploring Legends, Fairy Tales, Tall tales, and tales of the Wild West. They will be comparing and contrasting a traditional Tall Tale with a modern Tall Tale - "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs". We are also reading several traditional and non-traditional versions of "The Three Little Pigs". They will be writing a narrative piece about The Three Little ________ and the Big Bad ________. Finally we are also learning about collective nouns such as; a school of fish, a herd of cows, a pod of whales, a flock of geese and a pack of wolves.

We will be having a token store on Friday December 2nd. I will use our boxtop money to stock the store but would still welcome donations to make sure we have enough items for the students to use their hard earned tokens on. Thanks to all who have donated. It really makes a difference.

Wednesday at 1:10 we will put on our turkey hats and gobble around the school. This is a fun 2nd grade tradition. If you want to hear a flock of turkeys, come wait for your students outside of the second grade doors at about 1:20-1:25. (Please park in the parking lot, not along the pick up curb if you are going to be leaving your car.)

This week's keyword is "Gobble, Gobble"

We will have a great short week. Have a wonderful week and a Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanks for the Fun!!!

A huge thank you to Myndi Paras and all other parents involved in putting on a great Halloween Party for the class yesterday. The kids had a lot of fun. I appreciate that the refreshments were mostly non sugar - a more healthy choice. The kids were really well behaved all morning and had a great afternoon with the party and the parade. Congratulate your child on their super behavior!

I have been pushing them hard the last couple of weeks trying to finish up some projects and get some final assessments done before the end of the term. They have been real troopers, working hard and not complaining, even on the day we did 7 different short tests. I am trying to finish listening again to each of them read to determine their present GRL. I am not finished scoring two of their writing assignments and we do have a few more assessments to complete. I do this so that I have a really good picture of their strengths and weaknesses to more accurately determine their grade. Also we can use this information to guide our discussion about your child and his/her needs.

This week we have started two important areas of study. In math we are studying doubling of numbers. This is a great strategy to help them learn a lot of their math facts as many of the facts can be solved by using doubles, doubles +1 or doubles -1. We will have some good fun with doubles tomorrow. We are also studying the group of fiction genres that include legends, fables, folktales, fairy tales, and tall tales. We read two folktales, "Two of Everything" (a Chinese Folktale) and "Double Trouble" (a Latin American Folktale). They are basically the same story but set in different cultures. This experience helps the kids learn that many of these types of tales and stories are related in different cultures with some differences. These two tales also introduce the strategy of doubling.

Today we also read "The Three Wolves and the Big Bad Pig," a fractured Fairy Tale which is also included in this genre group. Their next vocabulary list will come from this book. Watch for that list to be posted tomorrow, hopefully.

PLEASE REMEMBER TO SIGNUP ONLINE FOR YOUR APPOINTMENT TIME FOR PARENT TEACHER CONFERENCE WHICH WILL BE NEXT WEDNESDAY AND THURSDAY.

Keyword -"Parent/Teacher Conference"