September 23 - 27th

A huge thank you to all the families who have sent in classroom supplies, playground toys, extra snacks and tissue boxes!  Also thank you to  Stefanie (Tristan's mom), Shawna (Savannah's mom) & Christina (Nick's mom) who have been and will continue to be coming in weekly during Math to help out.  Thank you also to Tristan's mom for stuffing our Wednesday Envelopes each week, and to Nick's mom & Mahir's mom for helping out weekly in the library.  We are so fortunate to have such wonderful parent involvement at Angell.

In case you hadn't discovered this, you can click on any photo in the blog to see view it 

larger, and from there you can click through all the photos in sequence.

Our Dogwood tree, changing colors...

This week in science we learned about how to tell the age of a tree by counting its growth rings. We practiced with some tree cross sections:

  

 

In social studies we learned how suburban communities develop outside urban

communities. Ask your child to tell you about the activity below, and what each ring represents:

Practicing number grid jumps with our "number swatter":

 

Playing "Beat the Calculator" and discovering how often our brains are faster than calculators!

We had many special readers this week:

For Grace's birthday, she chose to share her mom!  Mrs. DeYoung came to talk to us about

her profession: She's a teacher at Angell!  The children had lots of great questions for her & Grace.

This week we partnered up for Writing Buddies for the first time.  The children listened to each other's stories and gave feedback to one another on writing, details, and more.

 

 

Enjoying the gorgeous autumn days!

September 16 - 20th

Our third week of school just flew by! The children are getting into the rhythm and flow of our days, really understanding the routines and procedures, and showing so much excitement and enthusiasm for learning each day.  Below you can see Sam, so kindly finishing reading "Mr. Nosey" aloud to the class, because I was starting to lose my voice that afternoon! 

Word Work, sorting by pattern:

  

One part of our literacy approach that is sometimes overlooked is the importance of Read Alouds.  Second graders are not too old to be read to!  They benefit from it in many ways, and at school it is a shared class experience that all the children enjoy. It is a great time to focus on story comprehension, including themes, predictions, characters, and setting.  Below you can see James and the Giant Peach, written by the wonderful Roald Dahl.  This is the chapter book I am currently reading to the class.  We listen to a chapter or two each day. The other book pictured is "Once There Was a Tree", which we read this week as a connection to our science unit on Life Cycles.  It tells the beautiful story of one single tree, which is cut down, and then left as a stump, becoming a home to several different creatures and animals who all seem to claim it as their own.  It teaches a beautiful lesson about nature and respect for our surroundings.

     

Ask your child to tell you how this crazy, fire-breathing dragon reminds us how to 

use the greater than and less than symbols:  <   >   =   

p.s. I am told it likes to eat children and metal garbage cans.

 

Other topics covered in Math this week included calculator practice, 

temperature/thermometers, and number grid practice including the Number Grid Game.

The highlight of our week was creating our own communities on paper, modeled after the three major types we are learning about in Social Studies: Rural, Urban and Suburban.  It was amazing to watch the children work together to share ideas, help one another, and get along so well.  You can see in the photos how the Urban community grew from one hotel and one sky scraper, to a busy bustling city.  I heard "That's okay that it's crowded, it's DOWNTOWN!"  and "Let's make more restaurants! Hot Dogs!"  The Suburban community team included a gorgeous golf course, the winding roads you would typically see in subdivisions, and lots of sidewalks in the neighborhoods.  The Rural community team informed me that I didn't give them enough paper: "We need more land!  We need to draw crops!", so we taped on more butcher paper.  The children went above and beyond and didn't even complain when I told them we were going to work through recess because they were on such a roll adding buildings, detail, and more.  One of the neatest things was seeing the kids finish up at their assigned community, and move to another group to see if they needed help, unprompted to do so.  I told the children how impressed I was that they worked so well together and that their first group project was such a success!

   

Healthy snacks & happy friends!

September 9 - 13th

   We had another wonderful week! On Monday we talked all about what it means to be SCIENTISTS!  We did a little bubble experiment, exploring whether bubbles would stay in tact, bounce, or pop, depending on the material of the surface it touched.  We used our "I Wonder" circle which highlights the main skills a scientist uses when exploring something:  "I Wonder, I Think, I Try, I Observe, I Record, I Discover". 

       

   

 This week we began our year long study on Life Cycles by getting to know our beautiful Dogwood tree out by the Upper El. playground. We observed using our senses of smell, sight, sound and touch. We measured the trunk, main branches and secondary branches, and made predictions about how much the tree will grow by spring. Some students predicted the tree would not grow at all in the winter. We also made predictions about what other changes we would see on and around the tree throughout the seasons.  We recorded our observations and predictions in our science notebooks.  

                        

     In Social Studies we learned about the three main types of communities: Urban, Rural & Suburban.  Ask your child to tell you the major differences! 

     In Math we have been reviewing coin and dollar values, and finding sums for a group of coins or dollar bills.  We learned the math game "Addition Top-It", which is an extension of "Top It" that the kids played as first graders.  If you have some time this weekend, try logging on to the Everyday Math website (link in right margin) using the login card given to you on Curriculum Night.  You should be able to find a game section on the website where your child can play Addition Top-It.

   In phonics this week we explored homophones: two words that sound the same, but have different spellings and meanings.  Ex. two, to, too  /  your, you're  /  there, their  The children had to pick the right one when hearing it used in a sentence aloud, and then use the remaining homophone (alternate spelling) in a new sentence of their own.

    Today the students took their first round of the NWEA test in the computer lab.  They did a fantastic job as Mr. Court led them through each step with the new version of the program.  Please let me know if you have any specific questions!

Silly shots!