Mrs. Bice's Second Grade

Gratitude

This week we continued to talk about gratitude and what it means at our homes, schools and our community. The students kept a gratitude journal and each day started with them thinking about what they are grateful for. This is such a valuable practice and I challenge you to talk with your child daily about what they are thankful for each day! One day it might be Lego and the next it might be their food but helping kids to verbalize their gratitude creates more grateful humans!

Today your child will bring home Thankful project! The last few days they worked hard to think of people, food, hobbies, and places they are thankful for! Be sure to have your child share every part of this project with you!

Readers Workshop

We continued to grow our 2nd grade muscles by “rolling up our sleeves” and getting to work! We reviewed some strategies that 2nd graders do when they get to tricky words as well as looking deeper at some words. We learned about prefixes and suffixes and how they an help us determine the meaning of a word! Please help your 2nd grader to use these clues in decoding and understanding the meaning of new words!

PJ Poetry Party

Covid has put a damper on lots of things this year so I have had to be creative and find ways to make the kids feel special, valued and most importantly… FUN! Our poetry unit was cut a little bit short due to the change in schedule but the poets still had time to revise, edit and fancy up a poem of their choosing! Check out Seesaw to see your child’s poem! In the meantime, we will hang our poems out in the hallway for other classes to read and enjoy. We loved wearing our PJs today, having some snacks, and enjoying a special treat! The writers learned so much about poetry and it was fun for them to compare their poems they wrote on the first day of our unit to their published poems! Way to go writers! BRAVO! When we return from Thanksgiving break we will kick off a unit on realistic fiction!

Phonics- Marvelous Bloopers

We began the week learning what a “blooper” is. I couldn’t introduce the concept without showing some of “Funniest Home Videos.” I have never seen a class of 2nd graders laugh so hard! We found out that 2nd grade writers also make some bloopers in our writing! Bloopers are normal and everyone makes them but it is our responsibility as writers, to find them in our own writing! We also review our r-controlled vowels and found them in lots of different places in our writing and books!

Math

This week we continued learning about subtraction. The math curriculum really dives into different strategies mathematicians can use in solving subtraction facts. We can: go up through 10, go down through 10, use related addition facts, count up, and count back! Please encourage these strategies when your mathematician is solving problems so that they rely on their number sense to solve subtraction facts. The more they see the connection and relationship between numbers, the easier problem solving will be for them down the road.

Today we will take the unit 3 test and then begin unit 4 when we return on November 30. The primary focus, until the end of the year, will be on telling time and place value. The 2nd grade standard in telling time requires students to tell time to the nearest 5 minutes. The more you can expose your child to telling time at home, the easier it will be for them. Practice, practice, practice!

Updated Calendar

We will not have school the week of Nov. 23. We will return back on. Monday, November 30. We will also have half days on December 17 and 18.