Upcoming Dates:
May 19: Field Trip to Chicago Children's Theater
May 30: Memorial Day - No School
May 31: Walking Field Trip - Oak Park Conservatory (permission slip coming soon!)
June 2: 2nd Grade Picnic - Rehm Park - 11:30-2:00 (Families welcome!)
June 7: Last Day of School
*Italics are repeated from last week's blog.
Writing: We will be continuing our writing unit: "Poetry: Big Thoughts in Small Packages". This unit is all about writing poetry and focusing on line breaks, rhythm, and meaningful phrases. Making sure our words rhyme is completely optional (poetry is so much more than that!).This week we will learn that poets consider the mood they want to convey in a poem, making sure that this mood matches the poem's meaning. We will also choose our favorite poems and fix them up for publication.
Reading: We will continue with our reading unit: "Series Book Clubs". In this unit, students will work together in small groups to read books in a series. The students will be assigned books at their appropriate reading levels. They will work on comprehension strategies together with their groups. This week we will that readers notice when an author uses literary language and they try to figure out what the author REALLY means. We will also work on noticing patterns in our series books and using those patterns to figure out how other books in the series might go.
Math: We will finish our work with Module 8: "Time, Shapes, and Fractions". We will work on telling time to the minute as well as relating time to A.M. and P.M. The kids will learn to solve elapsed time problems involving whole hours and half hours. Finally, we will take the end-of-module assessment at the end of the week.
Social Studies/Science: We will continue our learning about having a growth mindset all year long. This week we will continue our science unit: "Plants and Insects". We will study the life cycle of mealworms as well as plants. Each student will have their own worm and seed to study and plant in class! This week we will be continue studying the life cycles of a plant and mealworm. We will make observations and record what we notice in our journals. We have also reviewed our US maps. We now know all 50 states! Yay! We will have a quiz on all 50 states on Friday, May 20th.