Math Update

We will be taking a unit test on Graphing and Statistics this Friday the 17th. It will cover reading and analyzing data from a bar graph and a pictograph. 

We have begun learning our "make ten and some more" basic facts for quarter 2. We have covered facts that add 9 and 8. We are learning to solve these facts quickly by making a group of ten. For example: to add 9 + 7 we take 1 away from 7 and add it to the 9 to make 10. Therefore, 9 +7 is the same as 10 + 6, which we quickly know is 16.  A math log went home with flashcards today. It is due on Friday.

Please e-mail me with any questions or post them here. Thank you!

Back to Work!

I hope everyone enjoyed Thanksgiving with your families! Here is a preview of our learning to come when we get back to work on Monday...

Math: 

11/29-12/3

We will be continuing our learning of 2-digit addition with regrouping and expanding our knowledge to 3-digit addition with regrouping. We will also be reviewing solving story problems and the many strategies we have learned. We will take our Algebra and Computation test on these skills on Friday, December 3. Please take time to review the homework this week and classwork that comes home to help your child study for their test.

12/6-12/10

We will begin the Analyzing Data and Statistics unit. We will be collecting data and organizing it into bar graphs and pictographs. We  analyze data in many ways. Important vocabulary words for this unit are: data, represent, bar graph, pictograph, analyze, table, tally marks

Home-School Connection: Check out the HCPSS SMART page  for math resources to help your child at home! Click HERE 

Science:

We are beginning our Science unit on the Moon this week! Look for a calendar that will be coming home each night to record observations of the moon phases.  

Home-School Connection: Here is a GREAT site to use to confirm your moon observations  Current Moon Phase

 Social Studies:

We are wrapping up our first unit on communities this week. Here is a fun online game to reinforce our learning of the 7 continents!

Home-School Connection: Geospy Continent's Game

Writing:

We will be learning the components of a friendly letter and writing many friendly letters. Check out the parts of a friendly letter here: Friendly/Business Letter Poster  *Note: In the heading on the top left, we only teach the students to write  the date

Home-School Connection: A great idea to reinforce learning at home!

**Have some fun with friendly letters at home for the holidays! Have your child write friendly letters to their friends and family and decorate with holiday images and colors in lieu of giving a holiday card.

Classroom Updates

Science:
We just completed an exciting unit on Soil and Erosion. We investigated the properties of soil and the "parent" materials that make up soil and its layers. We also investigated soil erosion by observing erosion models made out of soil materials and shoe boxes!

Social Studies:
We began our first social studies unit called "My Community." We learned that a community is a place where people live, work and play together. We will be creating and designing communities this week. Next week we will learn about rural, urban and suburban communities.

Home-School Connection: While driving in the car with your child, help them point out places in our community where people live, work, and play!

Writing:
Quarter 1 objectives in writing focus on reading and writing personal narratives. The students finished writing personal narratives about a long trip they had been on. We made sure our stories had a beginning, a middle, an end and used the words "I" and "we".

On Friday October 22 the class went on a fall walk to observe evidence of the changing seasons outside and around the schoolyard. We used our observations of what we saw, smelled, felt and heard as inspiration for a short personal narrative about our walk. The students created  beautiful sensory images with their words. A great simile was created when J'Lynn compared the crunching of leaves under my feet to the crunching of potato chips!

Fall Festival/ Halloween Parade

An orange letter went home today about our fall/Halloween celebrations to be held on Friday, October 30. Here is some information from the letter about what our day will look like:

In the morning the students will be enjoying special fall-themed reading and math lessons. After our Recess, Lunch and Related Arts, the students will be preparing for the Phelps Luck Halloween Parade! (Students who wish to wear their costumes may bring them to school in a bag labeled with their name. We will be changing into them before the parade). The parade will be at 2:00 and, of course, parents are welcome! After the parade we will be enjoying some treats in our homeroom. If you would like to donate a food item to our celebration, return the bottom portion of the orange letter to your child's teacher. Students who do not celebrate Halloween will enjoy a fun Fall Festival in our Media Center :)

We are Scientists!

We have been enjoying exploring soil in science class! We have investigated soil samples brought into class, discovered how soil materials move through water to make layers and rubbed rocks together to demonstrate weathering and how rocks break down into particles. 

This week we will be learning about soil erosion. We will learn what causes it and what the effects of it are on our earth. We will also be observing evidence of erosion in our own schoolyard.

Applesauce!

 

Mmmmmm!

 

 We followed a recipe to add the applesauce ingredients to a crock pot first thing in the morning.

 

We tasted 3 types of apples and described the tastes.

 

We voted on which apple we liked the best and graphed the results. The class preferred the sweet and sour Granny Smith!

 

In science we observed an apple in cooperative groups. We recorded how the apple looked, felt, smelled and tasted.

 

Enjoying the applesauce. Yum!

Each student took home a copy of the applesauce recipe. It's fun and super easy to make at home (with lots of parent help of course)! If you don't have a crock pot applesauce can also be made in a large sauce pan. Enjoy this tasty and healthy fall desert!

Word Study Homework

Here is an example:

This sort is for a child who has learned short vowels and is beginning to distinguish between long vowel sounds and patterns.

pig (short i)......... kite (long i).......... oddball

.........skip..................... nice....................... give
.........still..................... knife
........kick....................... dice

The students should notice that each of the long i words follows the pattern CVCe (consonant, vowel, consonant, e). The students recognize this pattern as "magic e". This is one pattern that makes the long i sound. They will learn others in later sorts such as "oa" and "ow". The oddball is for words that in some way don't fit the pattern. In this example the word give has the short i vowel sound but follows the CVCe pattern. We learn these patterns in class on Mondays.

Homework:

Mondays: Students will sort their words and copy the words in their categories into their journal (as shown in the above example).

Tuesdays: Students will sort their words as fast as they can ("speed sort"). Then they will choose 5 words and write each in a sentence. I expect the students to write complete sentences with correct capitals and punctuation. I also encourage them to number their sentences and skip lines after each sentence.

Wednesdays: Students will complete a "blind sort". This is to be done with an adult. For this sort the students don't see their words. The adult reads a word. The child listens for the pattern and points to the category it belongs to. The students will then choose 5 words and write them in alphabetical or a,b,c order.

Thursdays: Students will sort their words one last time then glue the words neatly into their journals in their correct categories.

Assessment:
On Fridays the students will be tested on their words. Students will be asked to spell 10 of the words. 2 points are given for each word spelled correctly. 1 point is given if only the pattern is spelled correctly.

Example:
For a pattern identifying the long o pattern "oa":
2 points: coach 1 point: koatch

9/20-924

Highlights for 9/20-9/25:

Back to School Night

Tuesday the 21st is Back to School Night! It will begin at 7:00. All parents will meet in the cafeteria and then head to their child's classroom. There will be a presentation for all second grade parents in the second grade pod. We will discuss important aspects of second grade learning including homework, communication of progress and second grade reading and math focuses for the year. We look forward to seeing you there!

Health 

We began this quarter's first heath unit, Mental Health, last week.

• We discussed qualities of a good friend.
• We learned what a conflict is and different ways to compromise in order to reach a resolution. 
• We talked about what makes us angry and learned healthy and safe ways to let out our anger. Some ideas we came up with are: squeeze a pillow, scribble a picture and find a calm place.
• We will also learn about bullies including how to identify a bully and what to do if you are bullied or are a "bystander" to bullying.

Science

We will begin science this week by discussing what a scientist is and how we can be successful scientists. Our first unit "Soil and Erosion" will begin soon!

Johnny Appleseed

We will be learning about Johnny Appleseed this week. We will engage in many fun activities including making observations of different apples in science class, taking a class survey of apples we like the best in math and reading about Johnny Appleseed in language arts.  

On Friday we will be making applesauce! We are asking each child to bring in 1 or 2 apples of their choice by Thursday to observe and help make the sauce. Yum!

Math

We began math learning with our new math classes last week. We discussed math routines and explored some of the many tools we will use in math this year such as clocks, linking cubes, pattern blocks, number lines and hundreds charts! This week we will start to learn our first set of basic math facts +10/-10. We will begin on Monday by learning strategies to help us add the numbers 0-9 to 10 quickly (ex. 7+10 = 17). We will use linking cubes, hundreds charts and ten frames to learn our facts. We will look for patterns in our answers to help us learn strategies that will enable us to recall the answers automatically. Look for a post this week about practicing math facts at home.

Word Study Homework

Students will bring home their Words Their Way journals to begin word study homework starting Monday. Words Their Way is a research-based word study program for phonics, vocabulary and spelling instruction. Word study teaches spelling through recognition of common patterns in words. Successful learning of these patterns will also help students acquire important reading skills from decoding to vocabulary. In class, word study instruction begins with a new word sort on Monday and is integrated into guided reading group instruction throughout the week. The students take their journals home each night for homework to reinforce their learning of these skills in class. Students practiced the word study routine in class last week and completed examples of each night's homework in their journals. A schedule for homework and a description of activities are glued in the students' journals. 

I will include a separate post this week to discuss  the word study routine in more detail.

 

Wednesday Folder Update

Scholastic Book Club catalogs will go home in Homework Folders tomorrow. The October catalog will be coming home but the September catalog will be open to order from online.

Math class assignment letters will also be going home in the Homework Folder tomorrow.

Scholastic Book Clubs Ordering!!!

One of my most cherished memories from grade school is when I would find those thin paper Scholastic catalogs in my class mailbox each month. I would immediately look through the colorful selection of books for the month, carefully choosing which ones I hoped I would be lucky enough to own. It was the equivalent to finding the Toys R Us catalog in the mail at home, except I knew there wasn't a chance I would be able to order what I wanted out of those!

Today, in addition to receiving those very same paper catalogs in the classroom that children love, parents can now go online to view this month's, as well as next month's book selections and conveniently place their orders online. Although we have not received our class catalogs yet, parents can go online today and start browsing the book selections and place their orders. Another benefit of ordering online is that we earn even more free books for our classroom library for each order placed online. The great thing about these books is that there's a selection of books and themes kids are interested in for a great price. There is always a selection of books starting at $1.00 and the books are shipped to the classroom, so shipping is always free. 

A letter will come home in the Wednesday Folder next week describing the ordering process and will  include a code to enter to get started. Here is the code if you would like to get started right away! Class Activation Code: GXDTD You can access the class ordering page from the link posted on the right toolbar!------------->

Happy ordering :) 

Homework

Please check the second grade blog for information regarding homework start dates.

Enjoy the long weekend!

Ms. Shucosky

Day 3

We have done several activities to get to know one another and build classroom community in our first 3 days together. I am so impressed with each student's positive attitude and openness to find what they have in common with an old or a new friend. Here are some additional classroom highlights: 

Math

 Yesterday we collected birthday data by decorating a cupcake with our birth dates. Today we discovered that we needed a way to organize our data so we could learn more about when our birthdays are. Gavin suggested that we group our cupcakes by month and line them up. From there we created a pictograph! We also represented our data through a human graph! Tomorrow we will make bar graphs using our data and analyze it.

Reading

We continued our learning with Froggy Goes to School by recalling important characters, events and the setting of the story. Today students wrote a sentence about something that happened to Froggy on his first day of school and a sentence about something that happened to them on their first day of school.

Writing 

The student's began their first writing assignment today. They began prewriting by brainstorming ideas about what they did this summer. Tomorrow they will choose an idea to expand on and write about. Students will craft a sentence about their chosen idea and revise it for fluency and add good word choice. Look for our completed sentences on a display in the hallway next week!

Wednesday Folders 

Wednesday folders went home today. Inside you will find our second grade grading policy which aligns with the primary report card grades I, W, and  N. Please check the folders each week to find school updates and graded work.

Homework Folders

Some completed classwork is sent home in the homework folder. Please check the folder each night for these items and keep them at home.

Thank you for your amazing support at home. 

First Day of School

We had a great first day of school today! The students learned many classroom rules and routines for a successful year in my class. The students also enjoyed listening to the story Froggy Goes to School. They found they had several connections to Froggy's first day of school experiences from feeling nervous to missing the bus. Then, they decorated their own Froggy character and glued our class rules on the back to help them remember. We also learned body movements to learn our class rules today. 

The students took home their Green Homework Folder today. Inside you will find their "Froggy" crafts, a copy of our Special's schedule and a Daily Behavior Progress Chart. The Homework Folder should be reviewed and returned to school each day. A letter was also included in the folder which explained how we use the behavior chart. Please contact me if you have any questions about it. I look forward to seeing everyone again tomorrow!

Note: For parents who were not able to make it to the Open House, Wednesday folders were sent home with Emergency Card information and forms to fill out and return tomorrow.

Open House

It was so exciting to meet so many of my students today at the open house! I can't wait to start school on Monday. We are going to have a wonderful year!

Be sure to check the second grade team blog to find reminders for Monday. Also, please feel free to participate on our blogs. You can do this by posting any questions/comments you have as comments on a blog post. Keep in mind that your comments are public. Your questions may help us clarify information for others as well. As always, if you need to speak with me directly you may e-mail me at laura_shucosky@hcpss.org.

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!

Ms. Shucosky

Hooray for 2010/2011!

The new year is about to begin! I can't wait to meet my new students and their families!

Quarter 4 Math Updates

We just finished our unit on probability and statistics this past Friday. The students enjoyed learning about probability through making predictions and investigating the probability of certain events using cubes, spinners, Skittles, and real world scenarios! They also enjoyed giving their classmates a survey about their favorite things and graphing their results on paper and on the computer!

The rest of the quarter will focus on the remaining objectives:

*Algebra, Patterns and Functions

*Measurement

*Exploring the operations of multiplication and division.

I will send home a parent preview as we begin each unit.

As always, thank you for your support at home! :)

Spring Has Sprung!

Wow! I can't believe it is almost May. Spring found me busier than ever, catching up after our snow break and attending grad school in the evenings. It came to my realization this week that I have not posted in a couple of months! I browsed through my posts from the year thinking about all of the things we have learned so far and the fun activities we have completed together. There is one more quarter to go and a lot more to learn!

Please help your children stay focused and find the time to complete their homework, practice math facts and read each night. I realized, as I started dreading focusing my mind to complete my homework each night that if the spring bug was distracting me, it must surely be distracting our children! A healthy balance of work and play and an extra push from those who care may be needed to stay on track. Thanks for all you do at home to support our learning at school. :)

I will be posting classroom updates for quarter 4 soon!

NEA's Read Across America Day

Tuesday is the National Education Association's Read Across America Day. To celebrate, guest readers will be joining each classroom throughout the day to share beloved books. We will also be reading Dr. Seuss books throughout the week to celebrate. You can learn more about Read Across America Day on the NEA website at http://www.nea.org/grants/886.htm .

Here is a little background about Read Across America Day from the website:

What is NEA's Read Across America?

NEA's Read Across America is an annual reading motivation and awareness program that calls for every child in every community to celebrate reading on March 2, the birthday of beloved children's author Dr. Seuss.

Parent-Teacher Conferences Update

Parent conferences will not be rescheduled. If you would like to schedule a conference with your child's teacher you may contact them directly.

Valentine's Day Update

Valentine's Day activities will now take place on Friday school-wide. We will send home more information on this tomorrow.

Snow snow snow!

I hope everyone is staying safe and warm during the snow storms. I can't believe that they keep coming! I look forward to returning back to the classroom and getting back to our schedule. Here's an update on some things we have missed:

Valentine's Day Activities
We will be holding our Valentine's Day activities on Tuesday, February 16 when we return. Each child was asked to bring Valentine's cards for each of their classmates. I will also be collecting the supplies to make our Valentine's treats on Tuesday as well.

Parent Teacher Math Conferences
Conferences will be rescheduled. Look out for information coming home about the new schedule next week.

Happy Birthday Martin!

We are fortunate to have the day off of school today in remembrance of the great leader, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The students watched a video on Friday that taught the children about the wonderful things Martin did for our country and explored what their lives may be like today without him... scary! The children were moved by this man and had many questions about Martin and what life was like for him growing up. If you have the time today or this week, I'm sure your children would love to know more about him. Here is a link to a web page where you can view a slide show of photographs and read more about his life. Click here to learn more about Dr. King.

Have a wonderful day with your families :)

Field Trip Pictures

Here are some pictures from our field trip in December to the Baltimore Museum of Industry.
The students took on various roles, each acting out a job that one would have had in Baltimore when the museum was a cannery in the late 1800s. Some of the jobs the students had were a baker, stevedore, ship captain, oyster shucker, pharmacist, grocery store manager and banker. The pictures show some of the children as they were acting out their jobs.