January Classroom Update

January 17, 2020 Classroom Update

It has been nice to get back into a regular classroom routine after the holidays. I love that we have a solid 6 weeks of learning between the Winter Break and February Vacation! 

Over the past couple of weeks in math, we have spent some time wrapping up Unit 4 and doing our Mid-Year Assessment. We have also started Unit 5, which focuses on addition and subtraction strategies and using money to buy things at "pretend" stores. The next few lessons students will be using various diagrams to help them organize and solve number stories. 

Our reading groups have been reading fictional texts and working on visualizing and making inferences while reading to help them with their comprehension. We continue to practice retelling and summarizing stories. We are currently using a summarizing strategy that asks the kids to answer the following: "Somebody, Wanted, But, So, Then." This helps them organize their thinking when summarizing longer texts. 

The children have been very excited about our new "Opinion" writing unit! Together we created a list of things we have opinions on and discussed supportive vs. not supportive reasons. The students have also completed a graphic organizer for their first opinion piece, which is a restaurant review. This is being modeled by creating a class review of the Robinson Cafeteria. Over the next month or so, the children will have the opportunity to write several different reviews. They may choose to review a movie, book, toy, place, game, etc. 

Our content blocks have been a combination of both science and social studies. We have begun to learn about the 7 continents of the World. The students will be exposed to one continent per week for the next several weeks. We are currently on our 3rd continent. The hope is that this will give them a general overview of the world and the various cultures and geography. 

Our science unit is called "Earth's Surface." The children have learned that the world is covered by 70% water and 30% land. We have also discussed some of the landforms found on earth's surface such as: mountains, valleys, rivers, ponds, streams, oceans, islands, etc. The children enjoyed creating these landforms out of clay and will be bringing home their diagrams soon! In the next couple of lessons, the children will investigate how earth's surface changes with wind and water. 

The Second Grade compassion project is well underway! The Robinson community has collected over 550 books so far! We will continue to collect books until January 31st. Our school goal is to collect 1,000. I know we can do it! 

Upcoming Dates:

January 20th- No School 

Week of January 27th-31st- Great Kindness Challenge Week 

February 5th- Early Release for Professional Development 

December Classroom Update

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Classroom Update

December 17^th

Happy December! I hope you are all surviving and enjoying this busy and exciting time of the year! The energy is certainly felt in 2nd grade! :)

In second grade we have been very busy. We enjoyed an all school assembly last Wednesday where our class stood in front of the whole school and ran the greeting. Everyone did an awesome job! During this community meeting the children were reminded how important each and every one of them is to the Robinson School community. The whole school enjoyed a beautiful read aloud by Mrs. Rivet titled Your Here For A Reason by Nancy Tillman. At the end of the meeting the kindergarten shared with us how many hats and mittens have been donated. Then they challenged the whole school to bring in even more. I am proud to say as a whole school met that challenge in just two days!!

We have been enjoying our new social studies unit on Mapping Skills. The children have learned about the cardinal directions, map key, and how to "read" various maps. They have also created maps of Robinson School, including symbols, map keys, and a compass rose. Classes walked around Robinson and tested out their maps. We were lucky enough to have Mr. Middlemiss join us as we used our maps to navigate our way through Robinson!   We are also beginning to learn about the names and location of the 7 continents and the 5 major oceans. These are skills that will lead us into our next social studies unit, Cultures and Migration.

We are looking forward to starting our next science unit, Earth’s Surface. The children will explore the earth’s surface and how it changes. Students will be engineers while they build and test ways to protect a road from a landslide. They will also create a 3D clay model of land and water on earth. This is a fun and engaging unit for the children.

In math the children have been learning about telling time on an analog clock. This can be a difficult concept for some, so we encourage you to reinforce this concept at home. This is an area that we will continue to review throughout the year. At this point, the expectation is that the children can tell time to the hour and half hour. The expectation for the END of the year is that they tell time in 5 minute intervals. We have also worked with place value. The children have built various numbers with base ten blocks. The children have also explored the value of each digit in a 3-digit number along with comparing which number is largest by looking at the value of each digit.

During reading, we have spent some time enjoying holiday books. We have also been learning about making inferences and visualizing while reading fictional texts. The children have learned that when a reader makes inferences they use the words from the book along with their own background knowledge to make inferences about the story. While visualizing the students learned to make a picture in their minds about what they have read. These are skills that the children will continue to practice as they begin to read longer texts.

During writing we have been learning about character traits. Discussing character traits led us to a fun writing activity. We received a letter from Santa explaining that he was looking for some friends to help the elves at the North Pole. The children brainstormed the character traits that they felt Santa would be looking for and the reasons why those character traits would be important to Santa. Next, we wrote letters to Santa explaining which character traits would make them an excellent helper at the North Pole. After the writing the children created their own elves (with real photos of their faces). I hope you enjoyed them! After winter break we will begin our next writing unit on opinion writing.

Have a wonderful holiday break!

Upcoming Dates:

December 19th- Winter Party

December 20- Pajama Day Spirit Day and Whole School Dance Party

December 21-January 1st- Winter Vacation

November Classroom Update

Happy November!  I am amazed that Friday was our 50th day of school already!!!  As usual, we've been busy in 2nd Grade...

We had a wonderful time celebrating Halloween last week! The children enjoyed the Harvest Party and looked awesome in their costumes. Thank you to everyone who helped to make the party a success. We appreciate all of the donations and helpers. We look forward to our next classroom party, the Winter Party, in December.

After spending several weeks reading fictional texts during our Guided Reading groups and focusing on story elements (characters, setting, problem, and solution) and retelling, we moved  onto nonfiction texts this week. This past week the children worked on reviewing non-fiction text features (Glossary, Index, Headings, captions, labels, Table of Contents, diagrams, maps, etc..) by doing a scavenger hunt through a non-fiction text.  We also had an opportunity to read non-fiction texts in our groups and discuss the many new and interesting things we learned.

Our math lessons have been focused on subtraction strategies such as: counting back, counting up, subtracting 0 and 1, and using what we know about Doubles Facts to help us subtract. The kids also enjoyed playing 2 new games called Salute and Subtraction Top-It. Ask them about these games, as they are great games to play at home to practice their math facts! You can find the directions by logging onto your child’s Everyday Math Account. Their login information is in their Take Home Folders inside one of the plastic sleeves. Once you login, click on the Everyday Math book image to enter the site.  Your child should have brought home their fact triangles last week.  Using fact triangles is a really great way to increase fact fluency. We hope you will pull them out every once in a while to practice with your child.  Second graders need to be fluent (answer within a few seconds) all of their combinations of 10 facts and their doubles facts by the end of 

term 1.  

During our writing blocks, we have spent time continuing to work on the Looking Back personal narrative stories that the children brainstormed for at home. The children are doing an excellent job applying the learned structure of personal narrative stories. We are currently working on revising and editing their work. Their completed stories will become part of their writing portfolios that will be sent home at the end of the year.  We are also doing a fun writing story about Thanksgiving.  We look forward to sharing these stories with you at conferences.

Our Science unit on Plant and Animal Survival has come to an end.  Our culminating activity was to pick a habitat and create a diorama showing at least 1 plant and animal that lives there and show how a plant depends on an animal or how an animal depends on a plant. The kids did a great job writing short paragraphs about their dioramas.

Now that our science unit is complete we will begin our first social studies unit of the year, Mapping.  We started talking about this topic this past week, and we look forward to some fun, interactive lessons coming up in the next few weeks.

Parent teacher conferences are coming soon! The online sign-up will go live on November 12th at 3:30.  I look forward to meeting with you to discuss the growth that your child has already made in Second Grade. 

Lastly, there will be no spelling homework for next week, November 12th-15th. With the shorter week we have decided to spend our spelling time in class doing some assessing as we near the close of term 1.

Enjoy the long weekend!

Upcoming Dates: 

November 25th- No School- Parent Teacher Conferences 

November 26th- 2 Hour Delay- Parent Teacher Conferences

November 27th- Turkey Trot and Early Release for Thanksgiving Break 

October 25th

Classroom update:

In math, we have finished Unit 2, which focused on addition fact strategies.
Near Doubles, Turn Around Facts, and the Making Ten strategy were some of
the strategies we practiced. The children will continue to use these strategies while
playing games during guided math and completing their math journal pages. This
week, we started Unit 3. This unit also works on fact strategies but with a focus on
solving subtraction facts.  Frequent practice of addition AND subtraction facts will
help second graders develop math confidence and fluency. If you're looking for ways
to help build your child's math skills, please work on fact fluency at home. Second
Grade students are expected to know addition and subtraction facts to 20 with
automaticity by the end of the school year. Thank you for your help in developing
this important skill. 

During writing, the children are working on their “Looking Back” stories. They are
using the photos and brainstorming sheet brought in from home to write the first draft
of their stories. It has been so much fun seeing all the wonderful photos and the stories
are off to a great start! The children also had an opportunity to create their own
"monster" and write a creative story about their monster. 

Daily 5 is up and running and the children are doing a wonderful job! In our reading
groups, we are currently focusing on retelling and identifying important story elements
(characters, setting, problem, solution). The children will be using the “five finger”
strategy to identify the story elements and will use them to help retell stories. These
are skills that we will practice throughout the school year.

In Science, we are finishing up our Habitat and Survival Unit. The children have
learned about our final habitat which was the ocean habitat. We have also begun
library research where the children are researching one habitat (ocean, rainforest, desert)
to further their knowledge. This is also our first research project, so the children are
learning how to "research" by learning about note-taking, putting their information
into their own words, and about non-fiction text features and how they help them
understand the test. The children will share what they have learned in small groups.
We have also started working on our habitat dioramas, the children are VERY excited
about this culminating performance project. 

Thanks for all you do and have a wonderful weekend!

Mrs. Siano

September 25, 2019

Classroom Post

We are off to a great start here in Second Grade! I am really enjoying getting
to know each of the children! We have spent a lot of time talking about
classroom expectations, routines, and establishing the culture of our classroom.
Here is a glance into what has been happening in your child's second grade
classroom these past few weeks. 

We spent most of our reading blocks reviewing the Daily Five structure. For those new to Robinson or those unfamiliar with Daily Five it is a literacy structure that allows for differentiation in the classroom and provides consistency. It is an integrated literacy instruction and classroom management system that is used during our literacy block. While I am working with small groups for Guided Reading, the other children have literacy “tasks” that include: Work on Words, Work on Writing, Read to Self, Read to Someone, and Listen to Reading. It takes a few weeks for me to assess all of the children and to determine their reading levels and while I am doing that, the children will build their stamina in each of the "task" areas. The children have been able to do 3 rounds this week consisting of "Read to Self, Work on Writing, and Listening to Reading."

In math we have recently finished working on Unit 1. This unit did a lot of review of concepts learned in first grade and allows time for us to establish math routines in the classroom. We've focused on number scrolls, number grids, and combinations of 10, and learning about equivalent names for numbers.

During our writing blocks, we have begun to talk about Personal Narrative stories which is our first unit in second grade. The children have had the opportunity to brainstorm ideas for their stories, completed their graphic organizers, and begin drafting their first personal narrative story.

I also assessed the children on the 100-second grade high frequency words. This is done periodically throughout the year to see what words your child needs to practice. These words will become part of their weekly spelling words that they will practice at school and home.

We started "Star of the Week" last week!  Each week one child will be chosen to be our "Star" for the week.  That child gets to bring in photos and other special items that tell about themselves.  We will display the photos for the entire week, and the child will get to present their items to the class on Fridays.  Last week I got to be the 'Star"! It was a fun way to demonstrate what "Star of the Week" might look and sound like.

**Second Grade Homework starts has begun! Please check your child's folder daily for homework assignments. On Mondays, your child will bring home their weekly Spelling Words on the back of their "Spelling Tic-Tac-Toe" sheet. Your child will be expected to practice their spelling words at least two nights per week. The Spelling Tic-Tac-Toe sheet will have a variety of choices for your child to pick from in order to practice their words.

Also, second graders are expected to read for at least 15 minutes per night. Your child will bring home a "Reading Log" on Mondays as well. We ask that they keep track of their weekly reading and return the "Log" on Fridays along with their "Spelling Tic Tac Toe" sheet. Both of these sheets should remain in your child's Take Home Folder all week and will be passed in on Fridays.We strongly encourage that your child read daily for enjoyment and/or extra practice.   

In addition to spelling and reading, your child will have math homework two nights per week. Most weeks this will take place on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The math homework is due back the following day. Thank you for your help and support on homework.