What we will be learning this week!

Week of September 4th - 7th, 2012

We had a great first week in 2nd grade last week and are easing into our classroom routines and procedures.  We will continue with that this week as well and will be focusing on the following concepts:

In Math, we will study a graph and practice number sense daily.  We will practice fact fluency, review the 100's chart and place value.  We will also work on determining if a set of numbers are greater than or less than each other. 

In Science, we will continue to discuss science tools and lab safety and will be conducting a cool experiment at the end of the week called "Bust a Baggie"!  This past week we collected specimens and learned about how to study the data we found.  We are learning that science really is all around us!

In Social Studies, we have been learning about what it means to be a good citizen and read many stories about our friend, Kelso the Frog.  Kelso teaches us many strategies on how to solve big problems and little problems.  This week we will read about Yertle the Turtle and talk more about citizenship.

Our Word Study pattern this week will be words with the short e sound.  A complete list of this week's words will come home in your child's red homework folder on Tuesday (since there is no school on Monday).

We will begin setting up our Writer's Workshop routines this week.  We will learn how to use our writing binders, our writing dictionaries, and how to begin a new story once we have a finished one.

This past week in Reading we read non-fiction texts about frogs and toads and learned how they are same/different.  This week our focus will be on fiction texts as we discover the Frog and Toad series of books by Arnold Lobel.  This is always a fun unit of learning for the students each year. 

We will have a spelling/word study test on Friday, Sept. 7th over the short e pattern words.  The spelling spirals (regular Monday night homework) will not come home this week due to the Labor Day holiday.  I will begin sending those home beginning Monday, Sept. 10th with instructions on how your child can complete their homework on SpellingCity if they want! 

We will have regular home work for math and reading response this week.  We visit the library on Wednesday afternoon so the students will have a library book to use for their reading response homework.  ***Please remember that homework is due the NEXT day after it is assigned and not at the end of the week. 

Looking forward to another great week of learning in 2nd grade!