Welcome to 2nd Grade
Conferences went great! Thank you all for coming in and taking the time to talk about your child's progress.
In Daily 5 we are working on asking questions. We are asking questions before we read, during reading, and after reading. When we finish the story we are going back and trying to answer the questions we asked. The students are learning that not all questions are good questions that will help them learn more about the story. The students are also learning that some answers to the questions are right in the book, other answers you have to infer, and even some answers you have to go to an outside source or you may not even be able to answer.
In Writer's Workshop we are working on writing How To Stories, or giving directions. We are learning that it is very tricky and that you need to be very simple and percise when giving directions. The students wrote down how to make a paper airplane. Then I read a few directions out loud and tried it myself. Not one of the airplanes turned out. We will continue with some other fun activities before we sit down and write our own How To Story.
In Math we have finished with the drill and kill of double digit subtraction with the regrouping, trading, or borrowing, depending on what you call it. We will go back and review it every once in a while to make sure the students have it, but for now we are moving on. We are working now with equal amounts in an array. In short terms that is multiplication, but only the introduction of it. We are introducing how to share something amongst 6 groups equally or how if we had 18 items, how many would 3 students get. It is only an introduction.
Last, but not least is Social Studies, Science, and Art. We are changing classrooms for this. Mrs. Armstrong is teaching art, Mrs. Niemeyer is teaching Science, and I am teaching Social Studies. Right now Mrs. Armstrong is working on Picasso and the students are creating wonderful masterpieces. Mrs. Niemeyer is teaching about Matter and there is an experiement happening in there daily. I am teaching about four different groups of Native Americans. The students will be creating triaramas with a partner on one of the four Native Americans that they learned about.