Week of November 16, 2009

This is Longfellow’s nonfiction week… so this week’s story map is to be filled out on the gold nonfiction form. If you would like to read a biography (also nonfiction), ask me for the biography story map form. Our Camouflage selection for this week is also non-fiction, but written in poetic form; its unconventional language (poetic imagery and expressions, uncommon vocabulary and sentence structure) make it more difficult to capture the facts. To help prepare for Friday’s test, for homework, students are to fill out a 2nd nonfiction story map on “How to Hide an Octopus and other Sea Creatures”. The vocabulary words for this story are: enemies, creature, fades, drab, design.

In math we’ve worked on counting out change in different ways, and using different combinations of base 10 blocks to represent the same number, reading analog clocks. The new things we are learning this week are how to make change by counting up, and doing frames and arrows when there are 2 different rules for the arrows. The most difficult aspect of these skills is concentration!

Our Tasting travels take us to Europe again: Switzerland! Our Social Studies learning also includes the early history of our country, about the Native Americans who were here first, then about how settlers came from England, to Jamestown and Plymouth Colony. Preparing for our Mayflower reenactment will really deepen our learning about life 400 years ago!

Homework—start talking at home about possible ‘products’ to ‘produce’ for Kindness Market (It’s a concrete way of putting our learning into action. It ties together what we've learned in our reading about Kindness; we use the math skills we've worked on as we make change, and doing this market helps us really understand what consumers & producers are (from our Social Studies book) when we, the producers, make things to sell to the consumers, or customers, at Longfellow School. This year's Kindness Market will be on Tue AM, 12/15); plan what you will wear for our Mayflower reenactment;
optional: be a salesperson and see who would like to buy an Uno’s Pizza! (The main purpose of this PTO fundraiser is to purchase televisions for every classroom—useful for videos, DVDs and to display computer material.)
Daily: Home Link (??), Read aloud for 20 minutes and fill in your November Book It; count coins, practice your spelling & vocabulary words; use the vocabulary words in your conversations! Math: practice telling time on an analog clock, have someone quiz you on “complements of 10” (the number to add to a given number to make the sum of 10; eg, 6 is the complement of 10 for 4.)
Due Wednesday: library book; Spelling workbook, pages 54-57; those doing challenge words, write a meaningful sentence with 5 of the challenge words instead of doing pages 56-57. Leave your sentences in the spelling workbook, at this week’s lesson.
Due Thursday: nonfiction story map on “How to Hide an Octopus” For Friday: Math study guide is due; timed tests on basic +/- facts; reading, vocabulary & spelling (long /e/ sounds) tests. Optional: Uno’s Pizza orders are due, including online orders.
For next Monday: Nonfiction story Map on a book you read at home, Mad Minute D1; Unit 3 Math test
For next Tuesday: Families are invited to come for our 10 AM “Pilgrim Children on the Mayflower” reenactment (note the earlier time). Students need to have their costumes & props here.
Planning ahead… The next creative, oral book report will be due during the week of Dec. 7
Important items also coming home today: spelling words; Salmon Kindness Market planner; Mayflower reenactment information; math unit 3 study guide

Week of November 9, 2009

Kudos to Jackson, Jane, Olivia & Julian for their kindness in bringing in a combined $27.49 for UNICEF! The timing was great, as we began our study of money in math – everyone had a part in counting the change!

Coming…
* tomorrow – the fall goals we set at conference time will be taped into your take-home folder, to serve as a reminder for you. I also plan to return graded tests & book reports soon.
* “Pilgrim Children on the Mayflower”, Tuesday morning at 10:15, 11/24. A reenactment by the Second Grade Historians in Room 203. Parents are welcome to come.
* 2^nd Grade Kindness Market, Tuesday morning, 12/15. This is a holiday market in which each family contributes homemade crafts to be sold. Buyers are 1st and 2^nd graders, Longfellow staff, and parents. The profits raised by this event are donated to a charity chosen by the children in the 2^nd grade classes. Past charities have included the American Red Cross, the Greater Chicago Food Depository, and the Oak Park Education Foundation. This Kindness market gives continued practice of the lessons learned in our Kindness reading unit, and also reinforces both our math (money) and social studies (economics) curriculum. More information will come next week. Some people find the Thanksgiving break to be a good time for making these crafts.

Our second camouflage story is “They Thought They Saw Him”, a fictional story about how a chameleon escapes its enemies. The vocabulary words for this story are: swoop, ridge, wakeful, grip, glistens. Our spelling words give practice with the different spellings of the long /a/ sound, and the extra workbook pages focus on the important use of base words, prefixes & suffixes. Each student has chosen & we are now editing his/her best writing of the fall.

This week’s math activities focus on counting out the change in different ways to purchase different items, reading analog clocks, and connecting time to the events of our day, and collecting data which we represent in a bar graph.

Our Social Studies/Tasting travels take us to Antarctica… the only place we visit that is not a country! Perhaps your family would enjoy watching the video: “March of the Penguins”….

Our science study of erosion continues with investigating water & wind erosion. When the weather cooperates, we will do this on a little walking field trip to Longfellow Park’s sand area.

Homework
Daily: Maybe a Home Link. Read aloud for 20 minutes and fill in your November Book It Calendar (now available on the Longfellow home page); count coins, practice your spelling & vocabulary words; use the vocabulary words in your conversations!
Due Wednesday: bring your library book if you want to check out a new one! Spelling workbook, pages 50-53; those doing challenge words, write a meaningful sentence with 5 of the challenge words instead of doing pages 52-53. Leave your sentences in the spelling workbook, at this week’s lesson. For Friday: reading & vocabulary tests, spelling test on long /a/ sounds in words.
For next Monday: Story Map on a book you read at home, Mad Minute packet C2, gym shoes

I’m off today, enjoying an early Thanksgiving weekend with my children & sons-in-law.

Week of November 2, 2009

Last week’s book reports were well-done! I was impressed with how beautifully these 2^nd graders did, this first time giving an oral report to the class! Sharing their enjoyment of these stories inspires their classmates, so we’ll keep the projects here a few more days before sending them home.
I hope to get some photos of our wonderful Halloween characters in costume mounted onto my blog (webpage linked to Longfellow’s page). Our party was wonderfully sane, creative & enjoyable, thanks to our parent helpers: Lori (Julian’s mom), Annette (Kai’s mom), Joan & Don (Eleanor’s parents), Dragana (Nina’s mom), Alison (Joseph’s mom) and Tali (Ian’s mom)! We made & munched on vegetable skeletons and apple/nut/olive faces, and then ate ghosts!

Today we began a new reading unit, called “Look Again”. It’s about how we need to “look again” in order to see animals that are using camouflage. We will read a lot of nonfiction, or expository writing, including our first selection, “I See Animals Hiding”. So, in addition to learning a lot about camouflage, and how many animals use it, we’ll also learn the characteristics of expository writing, in preparation for the research & expository writing we will do later this year. The vocabulary words for this story are: unaware, slithering, wariest, natural, invisible. Our spelling words teach us about the funny schwa sound – a vowel sound in an unaccented syllable that is neither short nor long. In the workbook we are also practicing how to use more precise, interesting words in our writing, such as enormous instead of big.

Tomorrow is our Unit 2 Math test on the material we went over today (on the study guide). See the attached worthwhile Family Letter on Unit 3. We will work on: frames & arrows using 2 different rules; money; and “place value” using base 10 blocks; you can reinforce place value at home by using coins: 47 cents is 4 dimes + 7 pennies. The dimes are like our 10’s longs, the pennies are like the 1’s cubes. An important money skill to learn this fall is how to make change.

Our Social Studies/Tasting Travels take us to the land “down under”: Australia, home of Granny Smith apples.

Did you hear that our live worms arrived on Friday? So now we’ll observe to see if & how worms aid in the making of compost. In our study of rocks, we are learning about erosion.

Homework
Daily: Read aloud for 20 minutes and fill in your new November Book It Calendar; practice your spelling & vocabulary words & math facts (Every day do a Mad Minute worksheet and use your triangle flash cards.) See how many vocabulary words you can use in your conversation!
Due tomorrow: Be ready for the math test; optional: bring in your October Book It Calendar & UNICEF box (kudos to you if you collected for UNICEF on Halloween!)
Due Wednesday: bring your library book if you want to check out a new one! Spelling workbook, pages 42-45; those doing challenge words, write a meaningful sentence with 5 of the challenge words instead of doing pages 44 & 45. Leave your sentences in the spelling workbook, at this week’s lesson. For Thursday: reading & vocabulary tests, spelling test on the schwa sound
For Friday: Enjoy the holiday to honor our country’s Veterans; think of what you can do as a citizen of our country and of the world, to contribute to peace and the health of our planet.
For next Monday: Story Map on a book you read at home, Mad Minute packet C1, gym shoes

Week of October 26, 2009

Like last week, this week will go very fast, with different special events. Mrs. Weise, our music teacher, has arranged for a wonderful children’s opera to be performed at Longfellow on Wednesday morning, paid for by our PTO (and all of you who support the fund-raisers!) And although we celebrate Halloween with a Parade and a party at the tail end of the week, Halloween excitement will pervade the children’s thinking. So… there is no Mad Minute homework this week! Instead, the Study Guide for Unit 2 of math will be due by Monday.

This week we will take our comprehensive Open Court unit assessments on our Kindness Unit, to see how your child is independently practicing the phonics, comprehension and literary analysis skills we’ve been working on. The vocabulary definitions that came home last Friday should be practiced daily, for the fill-in-the blank vocabulary test this Friday.
The first, oral book report of the year is to be presented to the class this week, preferably before Friday. This means to tell the class a summary of the book (I’ll have the story map outline posted, to prompt you); showing the class the book, and bringing in a creative project you made that relates to the book. Knowing that an oral report is a big deal for many second graders, I give a lot of support to them, especially this first time. Practice at home so you will feel more relaxed in front of your classmates! Parents, remember the Book Report info can be downloaded from the right side of my class blog.

In Math we will finish up Unit 2 on subtraction & “algebra”.
We’ll try to get to our Science activities on Erosion & Weathering this week; meanwhile, our compost is definitely quite active!
In Social Studies, we travel to South America tomorrow for our next Tasting.

Regarding Halloween: costumes will be put on at lunchtime, no weapons allowed. We will have a 4-hour academic morning, so bring a healthy snack to eat mid-morning, as lunch does not begin until 12:00. Please contact Lori Bradford, if you’d like to offer help for our party, (ldemain@sbcglobal.net; 708-763-0452).

Homework summary
Daily: practice Kindness vocabulary, read for 20 minutes
Due tomorrow: optional book orders
Due Wednesday: Spelling workbook, pages 38-41
Due any day this week: oral book report, with book & creative project
Due next Monday: Unit 2 math study guide

Week of October 19, 2009

This is our special Parent-Child-Teacher Conference week! Remember, school is dismissed at 11 on Thurs. & Fri! Please be on time for you conferences, as they are scheduled very closely together. Mrs. Taylor, in the office, has a copy of my schedule, in case you need to check the time of our conference. If possible, please bring your child with you, as s/he is an important part of our review & goal-setting. Let me know at the beginning of our time if you’d like adult time at the end; I can set your child up with headphones, listening to a story on tape. After the conference, you can see some of our fun Halloween Poems on display outside the classroom.
Also during Conference week is the Scholastic Book Fair, a worthwhile PTO fund-raiser, and a chance for you to encourage your child’s reading by buying good books! It’s a great theme: Reading around the World. In case there are books you’d like which aren’t for sale at the Book Fair, I’ve enclosed some book flyers. These optional orders will be due next week on Tuesday, 10/27, paper forms or on-line.

This week’s kindness story is non-fiction: “The Story of the Three Whales”. Kindness spreads and becomes an international cooperative effort! The vocabulary to know for Friday’s test is: lurk, trudged, plight, invincible, ordeal & surface. (The verb “surface” means “come to the top of a liquid). In our Spelling workbooks, we are working on “multiple meaning” words.

In math we’re doing some Algebra, actually pre-algebra! We’re continuing to work with these algebraic concepts that were introduced in 1^st grade: frames & arrows, What’s my Rule?, Name-Collection Boxes. (Parents, see the Home Links coming home this week for more info.)

We do not have a Tasting this week; instead we will use the time to organize & finish up our writing for our Tasting Book.

Our study of Rocks, Minerals & Soil is getting us into many other areas of science. We are seeing how when some things decompose to become soil, they go through a chemical reaction, producing gasses that expand the Ziploc bag! For the little “Mini-worlds” we created last week with the 2-liter bottles, we see “condensation” as evidence of the water cycle! Thank you so much to all who sent in kitchen & yard plant matter, and 2-liter bottles! This week’s science lessons are on weathering & erosion.

Homework
Daily: Read aloud for 20 minutes and fill in your October Book It Calendar; practice your spelling words & math facts (Every day do a Mad Minute worksheet and use your triangle flash cards.) See how many vocabulary words you can use in your conversation!
Due Wednesday: bring your library book if you want to check out a new one! Spelling workbook, pages 34-37; those doing challenge words, write a meaningful sentence with 5 of the challenge words instead of doing pages 36 & 37. Leave your sentences in the spelling workbook, at this week’s lesson.
For Thursday: Note early spelling test on short /o/ or words that have the /aw/ sound as in hawk For Friday: reading & vocabulary tests
For next Monday: Mad Minute B2, gym shoes.
For next Tuesday: optional book orders due
For next week, Mon – Thurs: Give an oral book report (see guidelines… attached) Note: This is a new routine! The attached Book Report information is also linked on-line, just to the right of the current class newsletter.

Next week on “Halloween” 10/30… we will have an extended morning (8 – 12 noon), so I suggest bringing a healthy snack to eat mid-morning. Lunch will be from 12- 12:55. Students who bring a costume for the afternoon will have time to change after lunch. All families are invited to come watch our Parade at 1:10.

Volunteers are needed to help with our party! Please contact Lori Bradford, (ldemain@sbcglobal.net; 708-763-0452) if you can help in any of the following ways:
* to come at 11:55, to help students with their costumes,
* to supervise a station at our party, about 1:50, following the parade.
* If you’re a “crafty” person, who could head-up a crafts station?
* If you play the guitar, or can help lead singing of UNICEF’s “Halloween Carols”.

Thanks in advance to Joseph & his mom who will make cookies for our party.

Week of October 13, 2009

I hope everyone enjoyed the long, chilly weekend. I did something I’ve never done before—slept in a tent in Wisconsin’s below freezing weather—I was well-prepared & slept well!

Good timing! The Painted Lady butterfly emerged in our classroom this morning! We had watched this catepillar eat, grow & then make a chrysalis around itself. And this is what happens in our Kindness story this week, “Butterfly House”. This week’s important comprehension strategy is learning about point of view; this story is written in the first-person point of view. The vocabulary to know for Friday’s test is: larva, nectar, chrysalis, transformed, drift. This week’s spelling words all have the short /i/ sound. Congratulations to all who earned challenge words, and to all who spelled all 10 words correctly last Friday!

We are learning about nouns, verbs and adjectives, to make our writing more “colorful”. For practice, we’re writing a “formula” poem about Halloween which uses a variety of nouns, verbs & adjectives.

In math students are earning a stick of Doublemint gum by automatically saying the answers to a stack of doubles facts in 45 seconds or less. Working for automatic recall of basic addition & subtraction facts, we’re also practicing the different addition strategies we learned last week, and are beginning to apply them to subtraction. Ask your child to explain what a “fact family” is.

Today’s Tasting takes us to the Middle East and North Africa, focusing on Egypt.

We’ve had fun in Science learning about & comparing properties of rocks & minerals. This week we explore the composition of rocks by dissecting a cookie “rock” (Thank you to Eleanor & her mom!) Then we take a little break from rocks to start the process of making our own soil (& learning about composting).

Homework – Parents: please return your form confirming the time of your conference; also, you can still send in kitchen & yard plant waste, and 2 liter bottles any time up until Thursday.

Daily: Read aloud for 20 minutes and fill in your October Book It Calendar; practice your spelling words & math facts (Every day do a Mad Minute worksheet and use your triangle flash cards.) See how many vocabulary words you can use in your conversation!
Due Thursday: bring your library book if you want to check out a new one! Spelling workbook, pages 30-33; those doing challenge words, write a meaningful sentence with 5 of the challenge words instead of doing pages 32 & 33. Leave your sentences in the spelling workbook, at this week’s lesson.

For Friday: reading & vocabulary tests, spelling test on short /i/ words
For next Monday:: Story Map on a book you read at home, Mad Minute packet B1; gym shoes

Week of October 5, 2009

New homework--Starting in October: Story Maps! Most weeks, each student is to fill out a story map on a book read at home during the week. These story maps are useful in several ways: they encourage your child to choose books that are at the right reading level; they help keep the focus on comprehension; they help your child learn to summarize. I generally send home the attached yellow form, designed for fiction. However, if your child is reading nonfiction, have him/her exchange the yellow form for a gold one, which is designed for nonfiction. The last week of the month instead of working on a story map, each student will prepare to present an oral Book Report, with 3 components: telling a summary of the book, showing the class a creative project the student did related to the book, and showing the class the book (& leaving it here for 1 week, so fellow students can browse or read it).

We have another folktale in our Kindness unit this week, “The Paper Crane”. An important comprehension strategy we’ll apply to this story is looking for causesàeffects. This week’s vocabulary is: serve, guest, manner, stranger, unusual, overjoyed. Know the meanings of these words by Friday’s test. This week’s spelling words all have the short /e/ sound: bell, fed, nest, send, test, yet, went, then, next, them. Congratulations to all who earned challenge words

The students have written some impressive stories on how they have been persistent in learning something that was difficult. Their writing and illustrations are displayed on the hallway outside our classroom. You’ll be able to view them the next time you’re here (Parent-Teacher Conferences??).

In math we learned a “Beat the Calculator” game. Our goal is to learn addition (& subtraction) facts so automatically, that we can figure each out faster than a calculator! Last week we worked on “fact families”, doubles & “near doubles”. This week I will teach a short-cut for adding 9, and we will do more practice with all of these. As soon as students have memorized the Doubles facts, they will earn a stick of Doublemint gum. (I’ll time them orally.)

Social Studies: The theme of this week is Asia -- our Tasting tomorrow will include food from & facts about Asia, and this week’s story, “The Paper Crane”, is set in Asia! This week we will also finish our first unit of Social Studies, on urban, suburban & rural communities; neighborhoods & groups. To better understand our Columbus Day holiday next Monday, we will read and discuss some biographies of Columbus as well as a story written by a Native American descendent of the Taino people whom Columbus encountered when he arrived at Hispaniola.

On Wednesday we start our first Science unit on Rocks, Minerals, Soil and Fossils. This week we will learn the difference between rocks & minerals, and spending time classifying them. One way we’ll classify them is by comparing how hard the mineral is.

Homework – Parents: please fill out & return the attached form so I can schedule our Parent-Child-Teacher conference at a convenient time for you.

Daily: Read aloud for 20 minutes and fill in your October Book It Calendar; practice your spelling words & math facts (Every day do a Mad Minute worksheet and use your triangle flash cards.) See how many vocabulary words you can use in your conversation!
Due tomorrow: Home link (any time a Home Link comes home, it’s due the next day); Wednesday: International Walk to School Day! Also, remember to bring your library book if you want to check out a new one! Spelling workbook, pages 26-29; those doing challenge words, write a meaningful sentence with 5 of the challenge words instead of doing pages 28 & 29. Leave your sentences in the spelling workbook, at this week’s lesson. For Friday: Conference request form due; reading & vocabulary tests, spelling test on short /e/ words (Let’s all spell all 10 regular words correctly!)
Saturday, if you haven’t been before, I encourage you to go to the Oak Park Farmers’ Market, on Lake Street, by Elmwood. This will give you a better understanding of our Social Studies vocabulary: “market”
For next Tuesday: “My Rock Collection” homework sheet (It’ll be passed out on Thursday & involves finding 2 rocks, then using the classification skills we learned in class). Also due: Story Map on a book you read at home, Mad Minute packet A6; remember your gym shoes!

Attention Parents: The big white “gift wrap” envelope that came home a week and a half ago was an important fundraiser for our PTO. The PTO does such wonderful things for the students and the school, so I hope you will do what you can to make this a successful fundraiser—thank you!

Cookie-bakers? Part of next week’s study of rocks is a simulation of dissecting a rock to discover the components – we are to find different fruits and sweets embedded in a cookie. Please let me know if you would be able to bake 20 cookies for our “science investigation”.

We will have an educational Halloween Party on Friday, October 30, following the Longfellow Parade. I am looking for a parent to be my “point person”, coordinating volunteers & tasks for the party. Please let me know if you are available to supervise a “station” that day, and/or coordinate plans.

Fyi: On my blog is a volunteering form, the result of a teacher In-Service I attended Thursday after school. I was learning how to create on-line forms, so fill it out if you’d like….

Enjoy the Columbus Day holiday!