Week 30

We watered and helped plant in the garden this week. Now, we have butternut squash and okra growing on the windowsill in our classroom! A big thank you goes out to Mrs. Serbin for making the time to work with us!

 

Reading

We started a new chapter book this week called, The Secret School. This book is set in a one room school house in Colorado, in 1925. The students are getting to see how different life was almost 100 years ago! We used this book to practice asking questions, figuring out the meaning of unknown words, and visualizing what we are reading. Historical fiction, like this book, is difficult to understand unless you are picturing the story in your mind! 

We are continuing to work on our phonics, fluency, and grammar skills each day! Here are our students reading and editing a paragraph. They do a great job finding and fixing mistakes!

  

Spelling

The students studied how to put words into the past tense this week by adding “ed”, dropping the final “e” then adding “ed”, or dropping the final “y” then adding “ed.” We will continue practicing these skills next week. Here are some of our super spellers!

 

Writing

The students began practicing the research report writing process this week! They learned how to take notes from nonfiction texts and put their notes in their own words. They are also determining which facts are important enough to make it into their report. This is a hard skill and takes a lot of practice! Each student will write a research report on the life cycle of a chicken, frog, plant, ant, or butterfly! Then, the students will get to pick out their own topic to research and will we look for books on their topic when we visit the public library next week. 🙂

 

Math

The students are beginning a new math unit on measurement! So far this year, the students have studied linear measurement and weight. They have worked with inches, centimeters, ounces, grams, and pounds. Our new math unit will introduce them to feet, yards, and more of the metric system. The students will use these units to find the area and perimeter of objects in our classroom and on the playground! We will also study capacity and work with gallons, liters, quarts, pints and cups (see the “Gallon Men” the students made below!) 

Below, the students are measuring the room in second graders. We decided that standard units of measurement are much easier to use!