This past month Sarah has been increasing her presence in our classroom. She has developed great relationships with our students and helps tremendously in our day to day learning opportunities, routines, and curriculum development. She has been incrementally taking over some whole group and small group instruction in reading, word work, writing, and math. After Thanksgiving break she will begin her two leadership weeks. During this time Sarah will be in the primary teaching role for whole group instruction while I will be in the support role co-teaching with her. (Small group reading and word work instruction will remain the same.)
This week we wrapped up our matter unit. These were the highlights students shared about their learning:
- Matter is everything, even a tick.
- Liquid, solid, gas are states of matter.
- Matter is made of elements.
- Plasma is a fourth state of matter.
- Without matter the world wouldn’t exist!
- Solid changes to liquid
- Liquid changes to gas
- Gas changes to liquid
- Liquid changes to solid
- Our bodies are made up of solids, liquids, and gases
- Sometimes matter can change and change again
- Sometimes matter changes and can’t change back.
- The water cycle shows how water changes through the 3 states of matter.
Next week we'll begin an integrated social studies and writing unit on families and family traditions at home and around the world. We will be writing a short report about one holiday and the traditions we have to celebrate it with our families. There is a letter and survey about that hopefully you received yesterday. Please help your child fill out the survey and send it back by Monday November 30th! We'll use these as the planning work for our report writing during the month of December.
I am excited to say that the 2nd grade math curriculum blog page that I've been working on since September is finally up and running! If you have a second grader please check it out for information about the math curriculum and student achievement standards used here. There are also A TON of links for online games and activities you could do with your child at home to support our math learning here at school. The link to my 2nd grade math page (as well as Ben's 1st grade math page) are in the righthand sidebar of this blog. For those of you who have first graders please also note that Ben Weiss will begin his paternity leave next Monday and will be back after the holiday break in January. Long-time Rumney veteran Scottie Brower will be his long-term sub until that time. Welcome back, Scottie!
We began to look at some Thanksgiving books and poems this week and read Scholastic News articles about the lives of pilgrims and natives during the first Thanksgiving. We also practiced these fluency reading strategies: back up and re-read & read smoothly!
First and second graders published their next small moment story this week, illustrated them, and shared them by reading to their peers. We had an All School Meeting on Thursday. Since our Thanksgiving songs were such a hit at Primary Sing we got the news before math that day that we would also perform our Thanksgiving song again for the whole school at the ASM! We played math games with our buddies on Friday.
This will be the last post this month even though we still have school on Monday and Tuesday next week! In advance we'd like to wish you a happy and safe holiday.
-Theresa & Sarah
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