Week 6 (September 22 - 26)

Week 6 (September 22 – 26)

It’s been a busy, but interesting week. I’ve been playing with our schedule a bit, trying to monitor and adjust to see what works well for our wonderful 19 children! I thank those of you who came to conferences; when the bond between school and home is strong it paves a clear way to success for the child!

Math

We revisited some of our earlier mathematical concepts (odd/even, addition, doubles, addends) as we worked on subtraction this week. 

 As we discussed the number line strategy for subtraction, many students were having trouble visually understanding. So what did we do...Monitored and adjusted. I created a makeshift number line on our floor and we have literally been jumping our way to find the answer to our subtraction problems.

We will continue to work really hard to solve subtraction problems in the weeks to come.

ELA

As we continued to work on complete and incomplete sentences, we began to dissect complete sentences and did a word study on nouns. We started with each group sorting words. They named each of these categories and what do you know?...all groups organized within the categories of person, place, thing (stuff), and animal. This was a very fun activity and the students really enjoyed it. 

We’ve also been working on friendly letter writing. Each student has a secret friend that they must write a letter to. These letters are top secret so students are taking extreme measures to make sure that no one finds out whom they have.

Social Studies

Communities and maps!! Yes, we are still discussing communities, but we are not only discussing the rural, urban, and suburban; we are discussing our own communities outside of the school, inside the school, and within our classroom. We are also looking at communities around the world and engaging in some phenomenal conversations around the differences and what causes these differences. We are also beginning to look at maps and their features. Maps are a tricky concept but we will continue working on them this coming week.

We are looking forward to another fun filled learning week. I hear that we may have some parent visitors; remember my door is always open! If you have any questions or comments please don’t hesitate to contact me!

Week 5 (September 15 - 19)

Week 5 (September 15 -19)

We’ve had yet another great week. This week we’ve been focusing on the mechanics of our math and ELA workshop! The kids have really been getting into the groove of things and are taking full responsibility during workshop time. As always, we are also continuing to work on our classroom community and procedures.

Math

 Addition, addition, and more addition!!! That’s been on our menu for this week. We’ve been exploring the different strategies for solving math problems and also working on word problems. Word problems have proven to be the most difficult for us, but will continue to work on them this coming week and as move to subtraction problems. The Cubix blocks have been very helpful and the kids love using them.

ELA

This week we have been focusing on homophones for phonics. The students have a really good understanding of homophones and have really enjoyed trying to figure out as many as they can. In writing we have been looking at the 5 parts to a friendly letter. We launched this conversation with “The Day the Crayons Quit”! We all loved this book. The students’ favorite crayon was the “naked” peach crayon.

Currently we are working on writing a friendly letter to our “secret pal” in the class. Students will be presenting these letters this week. As soon as I know the day and time I will email and let everyone know, in case you would like to join our celebration.

I’ve updated our library checkout system because it was just getting too complicated and too much work for the students. The new system is much easier and the students seem to enjoy it more.

Our word wall is now up and running and it has been so very useful for the students and is easily accessible.

Social Studies

The students finished up their “My Community” booklets and they are displayed on our bulletin board. I’m sure most of you noticed at open house. They really took pride in those booklets and they turned out wonderful. We are continuing to discuss rural, urban, and suburban areas; however we are deepening our conversation and attempting to understand what the lifestyle might be in these specific areas and why what causes these lifestyles.

We are looking forward to another great week and as always if you have any questions, comments, or concerns please let me know!! 

Week 4 (September 8 - 12)

Ms. Tinsley’s 2^nd Grade Class

Hip, hip, HOOOORAY!! We’re done with MAP testing for now! The students are so excited to finally have it over with! They did a wonderful job of using their chrome books for the first time! We all know that taking a test can get very tiresome, so we made sure to get in some movement right after each testing session with our GO NOODLE!

Community

As you all know our IB unit at this time is: Where We Are In Place And Time. Within this unit we are discussing not only our community, but also other communities around us; such as rural, urban, and suburban. We’ve had long discussions on what we think makes up a community and although some communities are different from our own, it doesn’t mean that they are wrong!

While we’ve been discussing communities, it felt only right to discuss the attach that occurred on September 11. Many students had no ideas why this day was so important, but once they had an understanding of what happened, they engaged themselves in a beautiful discussion around why it happened, how they were feeling, and what we did as a community to help each other out. After our discussion we created a graffiti board to get all of our thoughts, feelings, and questions out.

Adding

Although the students are doing wonderfully well with their adding, we are spending more time on adding this week because I want to ensure that all students have an understanding of the different strategies for adding so that they can choose a strategy that works for them. We’ve continued to discuss strategies and then used many math games to help us try those strategies out.

This week

This week we will be moving into subtraction strategies and also continuing to review addition strategies. For ELA we will continue to work on building our reading stamina and also choosing that “just right book”! We are also transitioning from free writing to narrative writing this week. We will be working on writing friendly letter to one of our many friends within the classroom. I’m excited about yet another week and I predict that it will be another great week! If you have any questions, comments, ideas or concerns please let me know!