Mrs. Bice's Second Grade

Book in a Bag

This week we kicked off our “Book in the Bag” homework! The readers have loved choosing books to bring home from their book box! Please encourage your child to read them independently or with you each evening! Help your child to remember to put the bag back in their backpack each morning! This will help to encourage your child to read books on their level as well as seeing a home to school connection.

Readers Workshop

We started getting right to work and are rolling up our sleeves when we get to a tricky word. We have tons of strategies we can pull out and use when we come to a tricky word! We will be adding strategies to our tool belt this year and never giving up when we come to difficult words. We also looked at beginnings and endings of words and realized there are many chunks we already know in a snap (ex. pre-, re-, -ly, -ing, -ed.) Our stamina has really taken off! Every day we independently read and then we read with our partner. The partners are in leveled pairs so they can coach each other while reading together!

Our Word Work has been improving immensely! Thanks for all your hard work at home with your child as they continue their word work at home each week! The students have been loving word work time each day and have learned so much more about word patterns!

Writer’s Workshop

I hoped you loved the video that I took of the writer’s this week! They have really been impressing me with their work ethic during Writer’s Workshop this week! Their stamina has increased which means the volume and quality of their writing has increased. This week we used our mentor text “Owl Moon,” to look at endings of stories. We realized that many of our small moments had very abrupt endings. Some endings said “Then I went to bed,” or “Then I went home.” We realized that we needed to tie everything together and have endings that don’t end so abruptly. Yesterday we focused on punctuation in our writing. We reread our work and tried to figure out where we needed a period. Many times, we had run on sentences and we just needed to replace an “and” with a period! This skill will be a work in progress for the entire year!

Math

In Unit 2 we have been working on addition strategies! As 2nd graders we need to all work on our fact fluency! A 2nd grade standard is to “fluently add and subtract within 20 using mental strategies and to know from memory all sums of two one-digit numbers. This week we started taking 1 minute timed tests! The students are graphing and tracking their progress! I am still adjusting things to meet the needs of the class so we may change the setup over the next few weeks! As of now, it is really motivating the kids to get better at their mental math and memorization of their facts! Another great tool to use at home is xtramath.org. I sent home the login information on Monday and kids can access it at home or school! Some students prefer to work with flash cards! Either way gets the job done of fluently adding and subtracting!

Science

This week we revved up our scientists muscles and starting learning about bees! We will be learning more about bees and how they help to pollinate during our field trip to Robinettes! Next week we will look closer at the bee and plant relationship!

Parent Teacher Conferences

Fall Parent/Teacher conferences will take place on Monday, October 28 and 30 from 4:00-7:45 pm. Next week you will receive more information from the school on how to sign up electronically.