November 9th- 13th

We took a fun and informative trip to Zabs Place Thrift boutique this week! The students learned about how their donations can help others in the community. They also learned about the special work Zabs Place does to create jobs for individuals who have a hard time working other places. We learned about “up-cycling” where you take something used and make it into something even better! This trip was a great addition to the students’ unit on communities in their Project Based Learning class.

Writing

This week all of the students completed their first round of writing conferences and established their writing goals! The students goals match an area where they show room for growth. The students are currently working on goals that will develop the ideas, organization, or voice in their writing. Throughout our next writing unit the students will work to meet their goals and then start the goal process all over again! Next week, we will begin our unit on organization.

Reading

The students finished their fifth lesson in their Journey’s curriculum this week.  This lesson covered plural nouns and singular nouns, story structure, visualizing, and reading words with the endings “s”, “ed”, and “ing.” Next week, the students will review material covered in our first 5 lessons and then take the end of unit test. We will review many important reading skills and strategies that aid in the students’ comprehension of text. Some of the concepts we will review are: Cause and effect, compare and contrast, determining the main idea, and sequencing story events. There will be no new vocabulary words next week.

Here are some of the students sorting plural nouns and singular nouns. We worked on some challenging plural nouns like moose and teeth!

We also began working on our dictionary skills this week! This skill involves major problem solving for our second grade readers!

Spelling

This week the students studied words containing the short “o” and short “e” vowel sounds. Next week, the students will study words containing the short “u” sound like hunch. They will also study how to use the letter “y” to make the long vowel sounds at the end of words like totally.

Math

The students came to the end of their third math unit this week. This unit covered time, money, and place value. Our next math unit is on addition and subtraction. The students will develop various mental arithmetic skills that are done in the child’s head. The students will learn how to use a “parts-and-total” diagram and a “change” diagram to plot out ways to solve word problems. These strategies will help students solve double digit addition and subtraction problems more efficiently.