The last few days were quite a whirlwind.  On Monday, the students definitely loved reading outside in the warm sunshine on their beach towels.  Also, Mrs. Behrenwald's class joined us for a science experiment.  I put a whole sleeve of mint Mentos in a 2 liter of Diet Coke.  We watched the reaction as the Mentos hit the pop.  Whoosh, a huge geyser of diet coke shot high into the air. 

On Tuesday, we ate grapes, donut holes, cherry turnovers and strawberries in the morning for our brunch.  Then the students helped me sort books and math manipulatives. We also finished a movie that we started Tuesday afternoon and cleaned out our desks and lockers.

Report cards were also sent home Tuesday.  If your child was not at school Tuesday, their report card was mailed today.

I wish all the students the best in 3rd grade!

Thank you for a great year!

*I hope to add a couple more slide shows next week before revamping my website for 4th grade.

*Many parents and students have asked me what I am doing next year.  I have been moved to the Middle School and will be teaching 4th grade.  I told the students they would still see me around as Cailyn will be going to Kindergarten in Lakeview this fall.

Way too much rain last week.  I am so glad that is over.  The kids were bummed about the field trip as were the teachers.  It was really out of our hands with this Michigan weather.

Math- We finished with fractions and only need to review comparing fractions before I give the assessment.  Our fashion fraction Friday was a success.  I was impressed with some of the creative ideas in both dress and snack.  We are also still working on MEAP practice and test taking skills.  Please remember the End of Year Favorite Number Math Project is due on Friday!!

Reading- Assessments are pretty much complete so back to guided groups for the last few weeks of school.  We learned about our new CAFE strategy- Synthesizing.  We will continue with this skill through next week.

Writing- Assessments are completed.  Our last unit focuses on writing opinion pieces.  This is a new unit for 2nd grade but I think the students will enjoy it.

Social Studies- Our new unit focuses on history.  Students will be bringing home a time-line activity that they did last week.  If you have any great, old artifacts that are sturdy enough to come to school, please send them in especially if they are from Lakeview.

Library books- If you have any missing library books at home, please send them with your child this week.

Have a great short week!

Here is a quick review of last week.

Math- We continued with fractions.  First, we started with fractions as a set and then fractions of a whole.  We made kite fractions and fraction animals.  The animals came home Monday.  I think they turned out super cute.  We still will be learning to compare fractions with like denominators as well as working with 1/2 increments on a number line.  Friday is Fashionable fractions day.  A note went home in their home/school folders today!

Our end of year Math Homework Favorite Number Project is coming home Tuesday, complete with directions and a rubric for scoring.  It is due Monday, June 6.  Please email me if you don't see the information.

Writing- We continued to work on small moments.  Our writing assessment will be completed by Wednesday.  The topic is "a special time with someone close to you."  These stories stay in their assessment binders and get passed on to next years teachers.

Reading- Assessment, assessment, assessment.  We will be ending the year working on the CAFE strategy of synthesizing.  More information about this skill to come later.

Science- Plants

Social Studies- History with a focus on time lines and pictures/artifacts from the past.

Field trip to Heritage Village is Thursday. Students need to wear comfortable shoes!!  If your child did not sign up for a sack lunch from school they must bring one from home (completely disposable),

Have a fantastic week!

Hello families,

Math- Last week we continued  with multiplication and division.  Our main focus in multiplication is getting the students fluent in solving facts up to 5X5.  This helps the 3rd grade teachers and students immensely for next year.  Our focus in division is through the use of story problems.  Students must know when to multiply and when to divide by paying careful attention to the problems and looking for important vocabulary.  When we are “giving away” or “sharing” we know we are dividing while finding “how many we need” usually signals multiplication.
    This week and next we will be focusing on fractions while reviewing concepts taught all year.

Writing: We continue to review small moments to get ready for our final writing assessment of the year.  Our main focus is writing a “meaty middle” that keeps the reader interested and wanting to read more.

Reading: We continued with the CAFÉ strategy of Determining Importance.  We did this mainly through the use of biographies.  We learned about Rosa Parks, Johnny Appleseed, Grandma Moses, Alexander Graham Bell and Helen Keller.
Next week we will be learning and applying another CAFÉ strategy called Synthesizing.

Science: Our plant unit will be completed this week.  Your child’s journal will be coming home soon!        

Last week in word work we learned about homophones.  Ask your child to give you some examples of homophones from their learning.

This is our last week of spelling words.  The rest of our word work time will be focused on other learning.

The PTO sponsored Walk-a-thon is on Wednesday with a rain date of Thursday.  Please turn in those pledge envelopes.

Our field trip is scheduled for May 26.  If your child has not turned their permission slip in, please have them back by this Wednesday.

 Unfortunately, it is testing time again. Your child will still be bringing reading home   but for the next week or two my guided group time will be spent on assessing  students.

 

We had a fantastic week which included our afternoon field trip to Dr. Delaney's office in Big Rapids.  I know the students were extremely happy they could have outside recess after being kept in all last week!  Let's hope this great weather continues.

Math- We continue to practice multiplication but also began division.  To introduce division I read the story The Doorbell Rang and we acted out the story.  In the story grandma makes 12 cookies for Sam and Victoria.  The kids divide up the cookies amongst each other, where each kid gets 6 cookies.  Then the doorbell rings and some more kids are at the door and welcomed in.  The cookies get divided again. The doorbell rings again, again and again.  Finally there are 12 kids and each kid gets 1 cookie.  Each time the doorbell rang we divided up the "cookies" and made the correct division equation to go along with the story.  The next day the students worked with a partner to complete their own The Doorbell Rang worksheet.  We will continue with division while we keep reviewing multiplication and time.  Our last math unit of the year is on fractions.

MEAP practice- Each morning we have been completing MEAP practice questions.  The reason we do this is to get the students accustomed to the format of the MEAP as well as for review of important math concepts.  The students bring the practice sheet home each day.  Please be on the look out for the practice sheet and go over it with your child.

Writing- Each student published a poem of their choosing.  I will be making them into individual class books which will go home later this month.  Then we started a review of small moment (personal narratives) to get ready for our MLPP writing assessment in a few weeks.  We made a chart titled Qualities of Good Writing and will be referring to that as the students once again write stories about their lives.  This time around I will be introducing the Thinking Map flow map as a writing tool to plan their stories. 

Reading- We continue our unit on the Determining Importance CAFE strategy.  We read a Scholastic News Big Magazine about Helen Keller and used the information in the text to determine which facts were interesting and which facts were the most important about her life.  The students had so many questions that the next day I read a short biography of her life and we once again determined important information from the biography about her life. 

Science- We continued with our plant unit.  We planted flower seeds for each individual child, radish seeds in a plant view finder where we can see the parts of the radish plant as it starts to grow and started an experiment to see which type of soil is best for growing plants (plain dirt, enriched soil or gravel).  Our plant unit should be finished by the end of the week but we will continue to watch the plants grow in our classroom until they are ready to go home.

The PTO sponsored Walk-a-thon is scheduled for May 19 with a rain date of May 20.  Information and a pledge envelope went home last week.

Thursday, May 26 is our annual 2nd grade field trip to Heritage Village.  A permission slip will be coming home on Monday.

Early Release is on Wed. May 11 and Wed. May 25.

I hope everyone has a safe and happy Mother's Day!!

Sorry, I did not post last weekend.  I was super busy with Easter and everything else going on.  I'll try to fit in a super condensed version of the last two weeks.

Math:  We have continued work on elapsed time, estimating and adding while beginning multiplication too.  We started out using the egg cartons to show that the X in multiplication means "groups of."  For example:  To solve 4 X 2=  or 4 groups of 2= the students would put 2 objects into each of 4 egg compartments and then skip count (repeated addition 2+2+2+2= 8) to solve the problem.  Next, we moved into drawing circles and stars to solve multiplication problems, then drawing quick sketches to solve multiplication story problems and finally we are learning how to use arrays to solve.  It is important to teach multiple ways to solve a multiplication problem so the students can find the way that makes the most sense to them.  The goal is to have students leave 2nd grade multiplying facts up to 5X5 fluently.

Reading:  We finished our unit on inferring.  During the unit we made inferences using fiction, non-fiction and poetry.  The main goal is for students to ask questions and make inferences based on the text they read independently. I love hearing students in a reading group using vocabulary such as inferring while we are reading :-)  Our new unit is the CAFE strategy of determining importance.  Students need to be able to pick out the most important parts of a story to fully comprehend what they are reading.  This is important in fiction texts but also in non-fiction texts.  We started out reading short non-fiction passages and underlining the most important information.  A big part of that is recognizing fact vs. opinion and thinking about what piece(s) of information best help us answer our questions.  Next week we will be using biographies to teach determining importance.

Writing:  We have been working on poetry the last two weeks and will continue a few more days next week.  We started out writing free-verse poems and then moved into more specific types of poetry.  Outside the classroom is our Poe-tree with free verse poems written on leaves that the students wrote themselves.  I will try to post a picture soon.  We will end our unit having each student choose one piece of their poetry to publish in a class anthology.   Next, we will be reviewing small moments to get ready for our final writing assessment of the year.

Social Studies/Science-  Unit 4 social studies work was sent home last week.  Our current science unit we are working on is plants.  Students need to know the main parts of a plant, plant needs and plant heredity.  We started out by examining dry and wet lima bean seeds to learn about the important parts of seeds.  We learned new words such as seed coat and embryo.  On Wednesday we  dissected marigold flowers.  We drew the different plant parts after observing them with magnifying glasses.  The students LOVED this.  One student said to me, "I don't want to take it apart, it is too beautiful!"  He soon discovered how much fun it was.  I did take a few pictures that I will try to upload to a slide show soon.  We finished the week by making plant part flip books that turned out wonderful.  There was a substitute that day and both she and I were so proud of how they turned out.

Other:  We learned about contractions and antonyms/synonyms.  We finally used the band-aids families sent in when we completed contraction surgery.

May 4 is our field trip to Dr. Delaney's office in Big Rapids.  I have still not recieved 6 permission slips and that is after resending them on Thursday.  We must have a signed permission slip for your child to attend the trip.  We have another field trip planned for the end of May to Heritage Village.  You will be seeing a permission slip for that trip soon.

We had another full week this week.  Thank you to all of our parent visitors who came to talk to us about their jobs.  The students completed a Community Helper book with a page about each of our visitors.  These books will be coming home next week.

Writing:  We started our poetry unit.  We made The Important Thing poems which will be put on our lockers for everyone to enjoy.  We looked through poetry books and made a Our Schema about Poetry chart.  We learned that not all poems have to rhyme.  In fact we spend most of our time writing free verse poems, which do not rhyme.  We used our senses to describe a dum-dum sucker and turned those observations into our first free verse poem.  Next week we look at objects through "poets eyes" and continue to write free verse poems.

Math:  We continued to work on elapsed time (a finished worksheet should have come home each day this past week) and  ____minutes past____ and ____minutes till____.  We also started estimating and adding three digit numbers.  Our next big unit is multiplication which we will be starting Wednesday of next week.  I received more than enough egg cartons but also have another request of each student. Everyone needs to bring a baggie with 30 small items inside.  Some item ideas dry beans, beads, pennies or small paper clips.  I will be using these along with the egg cartons to introduce multiplication.

Social Studies:  We are finishing up with Unit 4.  Thank you to everyone for doing such a fabulous job on the family homework that was sent home.  Once unit 4 is complete we will begin our science unit on plants.

No school on Friday, April  22 due to Good Friday.

Early Release is Wednesday, April 27.

Literacy Night is on Thursday.  A second note about the event went home Friday.  We only have 20 second graders signed up and are looking for more.  I hope to see you there!!

Well, hard to believe but we have made it to Spring Break.  Every year it seems to sneak up on me.  Hopefully we have some good weather coming our way soon!!

Math- We continued our unit on telling time.  Students currently are working on elapsed time.  This is a very tricky skill for some.  Students can use their paper clocks they brought home a few weeks ago to manipulate the time when figuring out elapsed time problems.  Elapsed time example:  Mrs. Naasko puts cookies in the oven at 9:25. If they cook for 30 minutes, what time will the cookies come out of the oven?  We also just started learning how to round numbers to the nearest hundred.  Students  need to round numbers to the nearest hundred and estimate the answer to three digit addition problems.  Time and estimating will continue the week after Spring Break and then we will move on to multiplication.

Writing:  All About Books are finished.  Most came home today.  The rest will come home when we get back.  After break we will start our poetry unit.  Students get the chance to write different types of poems with a focus on freestyle poetry.

Reading: We continue to work on the skill of inferring.  We read the story The Royal Bee by Frances and Ginger Park, making/charting our inferences throughout the whole book.  Students were asked to fill out an inference sheet asking, "Who do you infer will win the Royal Bee?"  Then they had to write the clues from the text or their schema that helped them make their inference.  We will continue inferring after break.

Social Studies- Family Homework went home Monday and is due the Monday we get back from break.  We are continuing with Unit 4 and then will move onto our final science unit of the year, plants.

Report cards came home today!!

Literacy Night: Only a few parents signed up for the Literacy Night at LES on Thursday, April 21.  If you are available that evening it will be well worth you and your child's time to come.  It will be a fun and educational night.  Dinner is also provided!

Many parents have already told me they have egg cartons saved for me.  Thank you!!  It sounds like I will still need the boxes of band-aids that I requested. If you are able to make that donation, I plan on using them at the end of the week.

Have a wonderful Spring Break!!

Hello everyone,

Well, that was a crazy week.  I was gone Tuesday, snow days on Wednesday and Thursday and back to school on Friday.  The good news is that everyone is back and seemingly healthy!!

Math:  We continued to work on telling time to the nearest 5 minutes and elapsed time.  Today we played a game called I Spy.  The students had to walk around without talking and find clocks around the room.  When they found a clock they would write the correct time on their I Spy sheet.  Once all clocks were found the students then took their individual clocks and practiced making the appropriate time.  It was a lot of fun.  The kids were absolutely silent and did a wonderful job!!

Writing:  We worked on letters to Robert Munsch.  I will be sending them to him in the mail and then in a few weeks we should hear back from him.  Hopefully, he will write a story with all of our names like he did for my class last year.  Our All About books are not forgotten but have yet to be bound.  As soon as that is done they will be coming home.  After Spring Break we will be working on our Writing Poetry unit.

Reading:  We barely made a dent in our inferring unit but did spend time inferring the meaning of unknown words in the story Where Are You Going, Manyoni?  Inferring will continue into next week and the week beyond spring break.

Social Studies: We finished Unit 3.  We briefly started Unit 4 today before going to computers.  Unit 4 will take us about 2.5 weeks to complete.  Be looking for a family homework project as well as an  opportunity to come into the classroom to talk about your occupation.  Both will be coming home early next week!

Report Cards will be coming home on Friday, April 1.

Spring Concert is Tuesday night at LES.

An orange note went home last week about Family Literacy Night at LES on Thursday, April 21.  If you are able to attend, please send back the orange sheet to RSVP a spot for you and your child.

On Friday we will be having a mini read-a-thon in the afternoon to celebrate the end of March is Reading Month.  Be looking for more information on Monday.

My absence: I will be in another professional development meeting on Thursday, March 31 with the rest of the 1st and 2nd grade teachers. 

Spring has finally sprung, YEAH!!  Hopefully it will stay around for awhile.

Even though I was gone for two days the class managed to get a lot done.  We even had time for a little leprechaun art!

St. Patrick's Day: With the guest teacher Mrs.Graham, the students made leprechauns out of all the colors of the rainbow.  For math, they graphed the number of different types of marshmallows in one big box of Lucky Charms.  Our results will be tallied and then submitted online to be added to results of classrooms from all around the U.S.  This is very similar to the Oreo Cookie Project we completed in September.

Math: We began work on our telling time unit.  We reviewed telling time to the hour and half hour from first grade.  Then we began to learn how to tell time to the nearest 5 minutes. Some students seem to be able to already tell time to the nearest 5 minutes with ease.  The trickiest parts are not to get the clock hands mixed up and to beware of the "danger zone."  The danger zone is the 15 minutes before the next hour.  When the minute hand is in the danger zone students have to pay extra close attention to the hour hand to make sure they don't get the hour mixed up.  We made paper clocks this week complete with a "danger zone" that will be coming home Monday.  Ask your student to explain the "danger zone" to you as they demonstrate telling time with their clocks.

Writing:  Our All About books should be completed Monday.  As soon as I am able to get them bound they will be coming home for your enjoyment.  On Friday, we went to the computer lab and word processed our own All About covers complete with clip art.

Reading:  We have begun our unit on inferring.  The students really enjoyed the lesson taught by the LES reading consultant, Mrs. Owens.  The unit will last about 3 weeks.  We also started reading response logs.  Students will be filling out logs 3-4 times per week.  These will be kept in folders in their individual book boxes that are kept in the room.  Students are asked to rate their book, label as fiction or non-fiction and complete a response. Right now responses focus on connections and questioning.  Once we delve further into inferring that skill will be included as well.

Social Studies:  We keep plugging away.  Unit 3 will be complete for report cards but unfortunately Unit 4 will not.  Unit 4 focuses on economic concepts such as goods and services.

I will be absent on Tuesday as I will be attending START training in the district.  START training is training to learn more about the Autism Spectrum. 

Early Release on Wednesday, March 23.

Report cards go home on Friday, April 4.

Spring Musical is Tuesday, March 29 at 7:00 P.M.

Literacy Luau: A bright orange note went home today.  If you wish to attend please send the note back ASAP.  It is on Thursday, April 21.