Happy Hanukkah!

Dear Second Grade families,
We have had a wonderful first half of our school year! Thank you for trusting me with your fabulous children! As a new teacher this school year, I have felt so welcome at CJDS. I am so excited to see the learning and growing we will do in 2015!
Sincerely, Jessie Felter

Math
In math this week we continued to explore geometry concepts and terminology. We studied shapes using pattern block templates, our marker boards, and geoboards and rubber bands! The students drew and constructed shapes. They also learned the names and rules for each shape. For example, can you explain the rules a square has to follow? (To be a square a polygon must have: Four straight sides of the same length, four vertices, and four right angles!) Mrs. Felter’s class also had the opportunity to manipulate tangram shapes on the computer and Smartboard. The students did a wonderful job of working with partners and groups!

Reading and Writing
Our big focus this week was working on our writing portfolios. Each child met with me one-on-one and reread a piece of their writing. The students and I discussed the strengths of their piece and what they could do better next time. Some students noticed that they had not met the writing goal they set in November and others were ready for new goals! The students developed writing goals for January based on what we saw in their pieces. Each student also developed a plan for how they would meet their goal. For example, if a student’s goal was to add 5 sensory words into their story, they might decide that their first step is to picture what they saw, heard, smelled, tasted, and touched in their story. Their next step might be to come up with interesting words to describe those senses. The student will work towards these writing goals and we will meet again to review their work next month.

Hanukkah Celebrations!
The school was buzzing with Hanukkah excitement this week! The students had 3 Hanukkah assemblies hosted by the amazing Morah Bracha! They got to make Menorahs out of grapes, oranges, and jellybeans, sing Hanukkah songs, participate in relay races, and even sizzle like jelly doughnuts in the fryer! We also watched a neat presentation on how our school’s giant wooden Menorah was made.

First in Math Trimester Celebration
Our student council decided that our First in Math trimester celebration would be a pajama day with hot chocolate and cookies! Our school has earned almost 100,000 “stickers” on the site, which means we have done over 200,000 math problems! 100,000 stickers was our end of the year goal, so we have decided to try and earn 200,000 stickers! What an awesome way to practice our math facts! At the celebration, we played math games and dreidel, made penguins and snowman using geometric shapes, and we read Hanukkah books!

   

Have a wonderful and relaxing winter break! Happy Hanukkah from my my family to yours!