Happy Halloween!

We had a great day today! We started our day practicing retelling stories with The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything. We've been learning that when you retell it's important to also talk about the characters. This led perfectly into sharing our costumes and the books that went along with them. Students talked about their character and about a favorite part in the story. In the afternoon we practiced fact families with some Halloween themed math centers including Candy Corn Fact Families, Monster Fact Family Puzzles, and Frankenstein Fact Family Cards. 

I hope you all have a safe and happy Halloween! 

 

 

Pumpkin Day

Hooray, hooray for Pumpkin Day! 

Today we finally got to dig in to our pumpkins and count the seeds. Yesterday each team measured their pumpkins, made a prediction, and planned their group work. Today we carried out our plans. Most teams chose to count by tens and assigned jobs. After counting up the seeds in each pumpkin we learned about place value and used manipulatives to find the total number of seeds in all our pumpkins. There were 2,848 seeds! The day was filled with many other pumpkin activities, including snacking on our pumpkin seeds in the afternoon. 

Thanks to all who were able to send in a pumpkin for us to use! We appreciate your support.

 

 

 

 

Domino Addition

In our second math unit we are focusing on addition strategies, fact families, and story problems. We've been using dominoes to practice more efficient addition and subitizing. We've learned lots of new games with dominoes, including the classic game. If you have dominoes at home, try playing a game with your first grader!

 
 

 

Fire Prevention

Today was Southeast's fire prevention day! We learned about fire safety at home, looked at the different parts of a fire truck, and practiced stop, drop, and roll.

Checking for Understanding

One of the most important skills that we will practice this year in reader's workshop is monitoring understanding and rereading as needed. This is a skill that we learned about in our first week of school, and that we'll continue practicing throughout the whole year. We learned that readers can check for understanding as they read by stopping now and then and asking themselves questions like "who is the book about?" and "what has happened in the book so far?" This skill will support all of our comprehension work this year. Last week, students each got check marks with the words who and what on them as reminders to check for understanding. You can prompt students to monitor their comprehension at home by asking these two questions throughout the book as well!

Reading Partners

We've added a new piece to our daily reader's workshop. Students now practice independent reading along with partner reading each day. We've learned about how reading partners sit with each other, how they hold their books, and the voice that they use to read. Throughout the year reading partners will support each other by practicing reading skills, sharing books with eachother, and talking about their reading.

Studying Seeds

In science right now we are studying seeds. We started by learning about the parts of a seed. To see these parts for ourselves we dissected lima beans. We learned that seeds have seed coats, embryos, and food. Last week we learned about how seed travel. We learned that there are many ways seeds move to new places including by wind, water, and animal. We looked at examples of different seeds from outside and thought about how they traveled. Then students made their own helicopter seeds.

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Butterflies

Last week we were lucky to have some monarch chrysalises donated to our classroom. We spent the week watching them change as the butterflies prepared to come out. The chrysalises became clear and we could see the butterflies inside. On Friday we got to watch a butterfly emerge and dry its wings. In the last few moments of our week the butterfly was ready to go outside and we got to release him. Students will learn much more about butterflies in the second grade monarch unit, but we enjoyed the chance to watch this process!