I trust you enjoyed a great weekend with your children. I heard from several students that they had busy weekends and anticipated plans. It is an exciting time of the year, especially for young ones and it's certainly easy for them to become overtired quickly. We are trying very hard to keep a routine flowing in second grade while still enjoying the advent season and the anticipation of the Christmas celebration.
The big thing to keep in mind for the upcoming week is the New Danville Christmas Program. The program will begin at 7pm on Thursday, December 11th. We ask that students arrive in their classrooms no later than 6:45pm. Students should come dressed in their Christmas best. :)
One other item of note regarding spelling: I have reassessed all students' spelling development. I am so proud of how much progress they have made! I have adjusted spelling groups and assigned spelling words accordingly. Your child may or may not be assigned a different "color" of word (the color are strictly for me to keep track of spelling groups and are not indicative of a student's spelling level). I have done my best to put students in a group relatively close to their level of spelling development. If you have questions or concerns regarding the new words that come home this week or your child's spelling development, please contact me.
A Peek At Our Week:
- Bible --- We have started our ABC Advent books to help us prepare for the celebration of Christ's birth. We are taking a break from the Moses story for the month of December (though we will be finishing up a few pages of our Ten Commandments class book). Activities for Bible will help students to focus on what Christmas truly means.
- Language Arts --- Our phonics focus for the week will be on r-controlled vowels and silent letters, while grammar will focus on present-tense verbs. Students will work on summarizing the main points of their texts.
- Math --- Students will continue working on 2-digit addition. Now that they have a solid base of strategies for mentally adding 2-digit addition, we will provide a bit of extra framework for their addition by utilizing a pencil and paper record. Please bear in mind that the strategies taught will feel foreign to you at first when you help with homework. I am not teaching traditional addition (adding ones and then tens, carrying the ones, etc.) yet. Fear not! I will teach that later in the year.
- Social Studies --- We will be comparing and contrasting how Christmas was celebrated in the past with how Christmas is celebrated in the present.
All of the students helped me to brighten up our room for the Christmas season... even though our tree isn't very reflective of this time of year, the lights certainly are!
Each student created a "shining synonym" light bulb.
There was glitter galore!
Earlier in the week, students teamed up to add 2-digit numbers mentally using the parts and total diagram from earlier this year.
After finding the answer mentally, some students decided to check their answers using the class number grid. Way to use those strategies!
Knowing that we would be working on 2-digit addition again next week, we took a short break from all of the adding to explore measurement and the difference between inches and centimeters.
Students measured the height of their chairs in both inches and centimeters to compare the results. We also measured the height of our desks and the width of the classroom doors, but with all of the excitement of comparing the measurements I did more conversing than snapping of pictures. ;)
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