Upcoming Dates:
Feb. 6-10 - Parent/Teacher Conference Week (11:00 dismissal on Thurs./Fri.)
Feb. 20 - President's Day - No School
March 27-31 - Spring Break - No School
*Italics are repeated from last week's blog.
Reading: We will continue with our reading unit: "Studying Characters and Their Stories". This unit is all about characters and studying how they change and grow. The students will be making lots of inferences and predictions in this unit! First, we will learn about character traits and how to "stop and jot" to make predictions. We will also work on writing complete answers to questions about our reading using the R.A.C.E. Strategy. You can click here to learn more about the RACE Strategy. This week we will learn how to set goals for our reading as well as our "Stop and Jots". A Stop and Jot is a note-taking strategy that we use in 2nd grade. The students use post-it notes to jot down their thoughts while reading. We will also work on making predictions about the characters in our books!
Writing: We will be continuing our writing unit: "Writing Gripping Fictional Stories". This unit is all about character and plot development. The kids always have so much fun making up their own characters and stories! This week we will be a ver exciting week because the kids will get to start the first drafts of their stories! We have been spending the first part of this unit in the "planning phase". Now that our characters are developed, we have a setting, and a problem and solution...we're ready to go! We will also work hard on how to write a good lead to hook are readers from the very start of our stories.
Writing: We will be continuing our writing unit: "Writing Gripping Fictional Stories". This unit is all about character and plot development. The kids always have so much fun making up their own characters and stories! This week we will be a ver exciting week because the kids will get to start the first drafts of their stories! We have been spending the first part of this unit in the "planning phase". Now that our characters are developed, we have a setting, and a problem and solution...we're ready to go! We will also work hard on how to write a good lead to hook are readers from the very start of our stories.
Math: This week we will continue our math module, Module 4: "Addition and Subtraction Within 200 with Word Problems to 100". This is a huge module that covers several different strategies for adding and subtracting larger numbers. Next week we will be working hard on subtracting two-digit numbers. We will be working on situations with and without regrouping. Regrouping is when you need to borrow from the tens place before subtracting. This can be a challenge for the kids at the beginning. We will work with manipulative and place value drawings. It is important for them to know why it works instead of just teaching them the"rule" about subtraction.
Social Studies/Science: We will continue our learning about having a growth mindset all year long. However, we are also working on a science unit about the States of Matter: Solids, Liquids, and Gases. We have switched from focusing on solids to now focusing on liquids. This week we explored how liquids change in different containers. We have also continued to learn the locations of the 50 states. This past week we added one more state to our growing knowledge of the 50 states: WY. Ask your child about "ManTan's" body and what he is saying because he really doesn't like doing the dishes!