Happy Thanksgiving!

On the eve of Thanksgiving, second grade was still bustling with learning today!  We worked on getting a few things finished up and worked on pre-graphing skills with a mystery picture early this morning.  During all of Reading Workshop, we practiced our Readers' Theater play.  It was a great way to practice fluency, have fun reading, and work together.  The best part was presenting our play to Mrs. Beaty's class and then later to Mrs. Love's class and Mr. Brown.  They all loved our VERY dramatic presentation!  We worked on some writing skills with some punctuation and capitalization work, and subtracted numbers using the hundreds chart.  We got to watch Mayflower Voyagers with the Peanuts characters.  While we were watching, we discovered that all of the things that happened in our play really happened to the Pilgrims and that the people we played in the play were real people!  (Imagine that!  Don't you hate it when you are learning and don't even know it?!)  Some students even made connections to the Thanksgiving themed books we read in reading groups!  Whew!  It was a busy day full of learning!

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!  Rest up, Leitze Learners!  We have a lot of learning to do after break before Winter Break!

Terrific Tuesday 11/15

What a day!  We started off having a great time having breakfast with our grandparents.  We read and worked in writing on using conventional capitalization.  We're such big second graders that we even took notes in our Writer's Notebooks!  This afternoon, we got to have the Dance Kaleidoscope group teach us about dance.  It was so cool!  If your family would be interested in seeing them on Friday, Cowan has ticket vouchers available for you courtesy of Emens and the National Endowment for the Arts.  Just let us know and we will send them home.  The performance is at 7:30 on Friday.

I almost forgot...homework is 6-5 (adding tens like we did the tens and ones yesterday).  According to the students, it's easy peasy!

Monday, Monday

We worked a lot today on our non-fiction life cycle reading, working on conventional writing to make it readable to others, and on adding using a hundreds chart.

In Math, we learned how to add numbers using the hundreds chart.  We start at one number, move down the number of tens, and then move to the right the number of ones.  Then voila! we end up at the answer.  We figured out that it doesn't matter which number we start with either, we get the same answer!  Homework is Math practice page 6-4.

Friday 11/11/11

Happy 11/11/11 and Veteran's Day!

We had a wonderful time celebrating our writing with Mrs. McNiff's 5th graders!  They brought their Diary of a ... books and shared them with us.  We got to hear great stories, give and receive feedback, and share a trail mix snack.

This was a busy, trying week.  Rest up, Leitze Learners, and get ready for next week.  We'll be starting on some new things, like a new writing unit, and finishing up some things we've been working on, like mental addition and life cycles.

Writing Celebration Tomorrow!

We're so excited for our writing celebration tomorrow!  We'll be sharing our books with Mrs. McNiff's class and they'll be sharing some of their books with us.  We'll even be giving and getting some written feedback on our writing.

In Math, we worked on more strategies for adding tens and ones.  For homework, students are doing #9-17.

If you're going to the Chuck E Cheese fundraiser, it's from 3-9 tonight.

Wednesday 11/9

We've had some challenges using our school manners and listening in the past couple of weeks, but especially this week.  We've been working hard on listening and following directions and not talking when others are talking.  This has taken a lot of energy this week.  Please reiterate this message to your children at home.

In math, we talked about strategies for adding ones mentally.  We talked about counting on (ex. 18+4 count on 19, 20, 21, 22), about making groups of ten (ex. 18+4= 18+2= 20+ 2 more = 22), and about adding the ones and then the tens (ex. 8+4=12 and 12+10= 22).  I have encouraged the kids to use the strategies that make it the easiest for them to work on mental math and not to worry about the other strategies.  Homework is the practice side of sheet 6-2.

Manic Monday

What a busy day!  We had a lot to get done today!  We are really enjoying getting started on another science unit!  These Leitze Learners really love science!

Tonight's homework is a 2 sided sheet for math practice.  One side is called Pieces of Gold and the other is Which Key?  Students are to do both sides.

Have a great evening and don't forget to read!

Week of 11/7

Here's the link for our newsletter this week.