April 23, 2021

Science

It is force and motion time in second grade! Now that the students’ rock projects are decorating our hallways, they are studying the big ideas that control the world around them like pushes and pulls, mass, friction, magnetism, and gravity. There is a lot of force and motion fun coming their way soon!

Math

The students are doing an amazing job in our measurement unit! So far, we have focused on linear measurement, or measuring the length of something. The students have worked with centimeters, inches, feet, and yards. They have practiced finding the perimeter of different shapes by measuring the outside of the shape and then adding up the sides (this was great two-digit and three-digit addition practice as well!) This unit will also cover how to find the area of rectangles. The students will study the different units for measuring capacity (ounces, cups, pints, quarts, liters, etc.) and weight (grams and pounds.)

Reading

The students have been practicing drawing conclusions and making inferences. These are tricky skills because it requires them to figure out something that is not directly stated in the text. As the students move into higher reading levels, they will be required to draw more conclusions based on the clues in what they read. They have been practicing this important skill in our reading curriculum and in their independent books!

Spelling

This week the students continued to practice spelling multisyllabic words like spinning and simple. We will continue this skill next week as well.

Writing

As the students learn to write longer and more detailed stories, the need for strong writing mechanics is becoming more and more important to help make their work easier to read! The class has been working hard on the difference between plural and possessive nouns. They have learned that a plural noun is more than one and to make a word plural you only need to add an “s”  to the end of the word or an “es” to words that end in ch, s, sh, x, or z. Possessive nouns show ownership and the students have learned to add an apostrophe and “s”, like Sarah’s brothers. It is common for students to confuse these two skills and we will continue practicing in the weeks ahead. The students are also doing a nice job learning the rules for when to capitalize a word, and when to use commas and quotation marks.