Happy Holidays from Second Grade!

December 15 - 19

This will be the last week of instruction prior to winter break.  Classes will resume on January 5th.  We hope that everyone has a safe and peaceful holiday vacation. Here is what we will be working on in English this week:

• Finishing up our snowman stories: the blue class needs to finish writing the final copy and then illustrate, the red class is working on illustrating
• writing a Santa tale given a prompt
• phonics: letters a, b, f, d, and g
• phonics: common word list #1 - the, of, and, a, to, in, is, you, that, it
• phonics: building consonant-vowel-consonant words
• phonics: nonsense consonant-vowel-consonant words
• comprehension strategy: ask someone to define the word
• comprehension strategy: cause and effect
• comprehension strategy: compare and contrast
• math: begin working on the standard algorithm (see below) for two-digit addition with regrouping
• on Friday we will have holiday rotations to learn about different holiday customs around the world

November 9 - 12

I am so sorry that I didn't get the blog post up for this past week.  Things have been a bit crazy!  Hopefully they will calm down, and we can get back to life as normal.
Last year, the entire faculty sat down and determined what was essential for students to know at each grade level in math and language arts in order for them to be able to progress to the next level.  We know that there are many things that students need to know, but we came up with one per quarter that we were going to track.  We call these our "Big Rocks" because they are goals that absolutely have to be met.  Big Rock #1 for math in second grade is that 100% of students will demonstrate fluency with numbers through ten.  One of the ways we have been working on this is with ten bonds: 0+10. 1+9. 2+8, 3+7, 4+6, 5+5. 6+4. 7+3, 8+2, 9+1, and 10+0.  While we have not reached the 100% mark yet, I am happy to report that 89% of second graders know the ten bonds without having to use their fingers.  I sent flash cards home with the six DLI students that are still working on them, and I would appreciate it if you could work with them at home until they have mastered these facts.  We are now working towards Big Rock #2: 100% of students will be able to represent number to 1,000 in standard form, written form, pictorial form, and expanded form.  I will let you know our progress.
Here is what we will be working on this week in English:

• Holiday music assembly: Wednesday @ 1:00
• creative writing narrative: What does your snowman do at night?  Circle map, flow map with transition words and details, opening (who, what, and when) and closing (who, what, and how) sentences
• math: horizontal two-digit addition using expanded form (no regrouping yet) - see below
• math: vertical two-digit addition using expanded form (no regrouping yet) - see below
• power hour: continuing to work on becoming fluent readers who can effectively comprehend what they read
• fluency strategy: using punctuation to enhance phrasing/prosody
• comprehension strategy: main idea and supporting details

Here is what we will be working on in Spanish class:

• science: the phases of the moon (full - luna llena, half - cuarto menguante, new - luna nueve, quarter - cuarto creciente)
• science - color and brightness of stars, constellations (video)
• social studies - ponsettias (flor de la nochebuena)
• math: two-digit addition vertical expanded form (with and without regrouping)
• math: place value quiz (see big rock #2 above)
• words with z,c, or s that make an /s/ sound: salida, paso, sopita, hizo, dice, cereal, cima, taza, zorro, lazos, cien, solo
• high frequency words: escuchar, encima, tirar, fuerza, igual, facil, malo

We will teach the children three different algorithms for completing multi-digit addition problems.  Last week they learned how to use the expanded form algorithm (some people call it the partial-sums algorithm).  We have only worked with numbers that do not require regrouping so far.  It looks like this:

We have also been working on the expanded form algorithm in a vertical format.  It looks like this: