The Invisible Boy

     This week flew by.  We started the week by reading The Invisible Boy.  This story starts off very sad, I cried, but it ends happily.  The illustrations in this book are interesting.  Some pictures of Brian are in black and white and some have color.  Ask your student what happens to cause Brian to become more colorful.  We made lots of connections to this story and ourselves. 

     We practiced identifying and fixing sentences that were incomplete.  We know that just because there is a capital at the beginning and punctuation at the end, it does not mean you've made a complete sentence.

     Mrs. Maguire brought in some fun math games for us.  Students have been practicing place value and are very good at it.

     Our class is SUPER lucky to have Mrs. Comiero, a neighborhood grandmother, come every Thursday to read to the children.  She started this week and read a story about a girl who likes something "different" to eat.   This story reminded us of the Invisible Boy.  Ask your child why?  Remember, I'd love to have some dates for "super, secret mystery readers" booked.  Let me know if you're interested.

     In writing, we took our stories and made the beginnings more exciting and changed some ordinary words into WOW words. I'm looking forward to the finished product. 

    Some students "saw" some great "pictures" of students being kind today.  We had lots of fun doing that. 

     

We Love Emus

     This week's mentor text was Edward the Emu.  Our class loved Emu week.  Edward kept trying to be something he wasn't because he thought other animals were better.  Guess what?  He was wrong.  This is a super fun rhyming story that also introduces us to Edwina.  Edwina has her own book as well.  She learns what she really wants to be after trying to find the perfect job.

     We watched some videos and read a non-fiction text about emus as well.  Your child has lots of fun emu facts to share.

     Students have been reviewing nouns and proper sentence structure.

     To help us master our addition and subtraction facts, each child was sent home with log-in information for xtramath.  It is simply drill and practice, the faster and better your child gets, the more advanced the problems become.  Ideally, students will have completed both levels by the end of the year.  This will definitely happen if he/she plays at home.  

even and odd

subtraction practice

Camilla Cream

     This week's mentor text was Bad Case of Stripes.   We completed lots of activities that related back to this fun story.  Camilla gets stripes, polka-dots, and even a tail.  Ask your student to tell you about this story and what lesson Camilla learned.

Directed drawing

     

     We brainstormed Camilla's character traits, summarized the story, discussed why we should always be ourselves and even wrote what we would do if we came down with the stripes.  Students also used the vocabulary in the story to practice ABC order.

     In math we have been been working on number sense, skip counting and even /odd numbers.  Here are some of our hands on activities.

sorry it's upside down

sorting

skip counting

      It seems like everyone has settled into their new routines beautifully.  This Thursday is a half day. Dismissal will be at 12:30 and lunch will be served.

WEEK ONE

     We did it.  We made it through our first week of school.  Whoo hoo!  This week was great.  We have a AWESOME bunch.  I'm super excited to share that Mrs. Duggan will be with us this year.  She was an aide in Mrs. Farrell's class last year and did such a great job she was promoted to second grade.  HOW LUCKY ARE WE???

     We started off reading First Day Jitters by Julie Dannenberg.  It's a fun story about a girl who does NOT want to go to the first day of her new school BUT there is a twist at the end.  Ask your student to tell you about the surprise ending.

     We played some games to help us become better friends.  We searched the room to "find someone who....", we interviewed each other for our notebooks, and even played "I have...who has" to get to know the school staff better.  We timed ourselves on "I have...who has" and MAY have broken a speed record.  It was lots of fun.  

      Did you know there were hungry sharks in class?  They were reviewing math strategies.  Hungry sharks like to eat the biggest number of an equation then count on to find the sum.  The students played a few shark games.  I think shark attack might have been a favorite.

Candy Corn Shark 

Partner Game

   
      We were lucky enough to have music and gym this week.  I'll be sure to put gym days on the homework packets (starting Monday) so you can be sure to have your student wearing sneakers that day.

     Hope to see you this Thursday, Sept. 14th, for Back to School night @ 6:00.  Come see what second grade is all about.  You can also follow me on twitter -kpotamis- to get some peeks into your child's day.

   On to week 2!!!!