weekly update

Writing:

We have been working so hard on writing persuasive letters to different people about books we have read. This week we learned how to address an envelope, which is not as easy as it looks! We have written to friends, family, staff, and authors, and we still have more to say! This week we wrote to Miss T, our former student teacher. Did you know she is our building substitute teacher? We recommended books for her classroom library when she gets her own classroom. She wrote back thanking us for our great recommendations!

Math:

The second graders are really doing great counting money. This week we related money and base-10 blocks and worked on number sense and place value in the high hundreds. If you haven't yet, see if your second grader can count a pocket full of change at home.

Reading:

After working hard the first part of the week, on  Thursday the second graders presented posters from their book clubs to Mrs Kunzi's class. Each group shared their poster and explained about the series their book club read. Everyone also had to say one reason they recommend the series. Everyone was very persuasive and many second graders included examples from their series books to back up their opinion statements. It was fun to see how writing and reading skills came together for their presentations.

Thanks to everyone who came in to be a mystery reader - and those who will come next week too. We have been loving listening to our mystery readers!

One other reading thing we have been doing this month is something called March Book Madness. We have been reading different picture books and then voting for which one should advance. It has been lots of fun reading these books and then re-reading the winner as they move closer to the finals! This week we made it to the Great Eight. Next week will be the Final Four and then the March Book Madness Picture Book Championship! 

Phonics:

It really is more vocabulary work than phonics, but this week the second graders played a few games of connections. Mr Tom even joined us for a game. It was tough!! Then the second graders made their own. I have been using this site to find games for us to play as a class: Swellgarfo (Disclaimer: I have not looked at all of these, so I can not vouch for the content of all of the games. I do however always check the ones I intend to play with the second graders. To make sure it is appropriate for our class I play the whole game all the way to the end!) Towards the end of the week we made our own connections games. I'm hoping to use that same site to turn the second graders' plans into real games and add them to Google Classroom!

We have also been using some of our phonics time to work on handwriting and mechanics work, as well as writing complete sentences. If you haven't seen these "stretchy sentences" yet, check your child's mail this weekend. They have been doing amazing work!

Social Studies:

This week we explored the feeling word Embarrassed. We used the book Ira Sleeps Over to talk about how feeling embarrassed is a normal, although unpleasant, feeling. We talked about thought and action strategies we can take to help us move away from feeling embarrassed, and we talked about how important self talk is. Instead of saying "I'm so dumb" we came up with some alternative self-talk. There is optional homework that talks about this feeling word too. Next week we talk about the feeling word Hopeful.

Extra Information:

Dress Up Days next week!