T-Shirts Needed for Tie-Dye
Every second grade student needs a T-shirt to tie-dye! Please send your child with a clean, white, COTTON T-shirt by Monday, June 3! We will dye the shirts on Wednesday and send it home so it can soak in the dye for a few days before you wash the shirt. Your child should wear the tie-dyed shirt for Field Day on June 12, the last day of school.
Please Mark Your Calendars!
We will share our poetry at a Poetry Palooza planned for Tuesday, June 11th from 8:30-9:30. Please come and hear your amazing poets share their best poems! Plus you’ll see your child’s poetry book.
Plan to bring along a copy of one of your favorite poems to share with the children.
Important Year-End Information
• T-shirts due for tie-dye on Monday, June 3!
• The last fun lunch is on Friday, June 7th, and it is a free lunch courtesy of our amazing Lincoln PTO
• Poetry Palooza is Tuesday, June 11, 8:30 to 9:30. Bring your favorite poem to share with the students!
• Students will clean classrooms in the afternoon of Tuesday, June 11. School supplies will be sent home or donated at this time.
• Field Day is the afternoon of the last day of school, Wednesday, June 12, with a family picnic on the lawn during the lunch hour; students must bring a personal water bottle to ensure they are hydrated throughout the day. Please make sure your child wears our tie dyed T shirt on the last day of school!
Science - Insect Lifecycles
The children have enjoyed learning about insect lifecycles. They've discovered insects go through complete metamorphosis (egg, larva, pupa, adult) or incomplete metamorphosis (egg, nymph, adult). The children have also learned that insects have three body parts -- head, thorax, and abdomen -- compound eyes, six legs, antennae, and sometimes wings. Ask your child to sing you the song s/he learned to remember this!
The students have participated in many activities to support their learning. For example, they looked at plastic insects to determine what was wrong with them, and they discovered the legs were not coming out of the thorax as they should be and they didn't have compound eyes as they should. They also built a scientifically correct insect using model magic and pipe cleaners, and they completed two activities to identify an insect's lifecycle and determine whether it went through complete or incomplete metamorphosis. Of course, they continue to observe their insects and make scientific drawings. Ask your child to tell you which type of metamorphosis our insects go through.
Reading Workshop
We are reading Shoeless Joe and Me, by Dan Gutman. As we read, the children are working to write their thinking about the book. We are striving to think beyond the text and about the text! This is challenging for many children, but they are pushing themselves to think deeply about the reading. When students think beyond the text they are making inferences about the characters, making predictions and drawing conclusions, and supporting their thinking with evidence from the text. Students who are thinking about the text can say who is telling the story, whether we are learning about things through a character's actions, words, or thinking, and how the author organizes the information, such as in time order or through flashbacks, etc. The students have begun doing this type of writing about their independent reading book as well! Ask you child to tell you what s/he is reading and noticing!
Writing Workshop
The children have been very busy writing poetry and are hard at work publishing their very own poetry anthology. They can't wait to share this with you at the Poetry Palooza on Tuesday, June 11th!
Math
We've completed Unit 8 in Investigations. The children have become quite adept at solving subtraction problems to compare and to separate, or take away. They have solved many story problems and learned several games and activities that allow them to practice subtracting various quantities within 1000. The children took the assessments for the first and second investigations and did a great job.
We started Unit 7 in Investigations today. This unit focuses on concepts related to multiplication through repeated addition. The students created buildings with various numbers of rooms on each floor and various amount of floors. They created addition equations to determine the total number of rooms in a building based on this information. For example, if a building has 5 floors and 4 rooms per floor, the repeated addition equation would be 4+4+4+4+4=20. This conceptual foundation sets up the students to understand that this same building has 5 groups of 4, or 5X4=10. The children are having fun creating buildings and noticing the equations associated with them.
Word Study
The students have been learning the meaning of various prefixes and suffixes. They have been completing a packet to practice recognizing the meaning of words with prefixes and suffixes added to root words.
The word study patterns your children have learned throughout the year are intended to help them decode longer, more sophisticated words. As they read books with more difficult words, remind them to recall the patterns we've discussed and use this knowledge to sound out the word. Next week, the students will review the spelling patterns we've discussed throughout the year, and they took the final word work assessment.
Cursive Handwriting
The children are thrilled to have soon learned how to write almost ALL 26 LOWERCASE cursive letters! They are practicing their writing with the classic statement that uses all 26 letters: The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog! Very soon your children will bring home their cursive handwriting practice booklet, and you will see the great work they've done. In spite of popular opinion, a great amount of brain research supports the value of practicing handwriting! Please encourage your child to use cursive writing at home this summer by writing letters to relatives and friends.
Every second grade student needs a T-shirt to tie-dye! Please send your child with a clean, white, COTTON T-shirt by Monday, June 3! We will dye the shirts on Wednesday and send it home so it can soak in the dye for a few days before you wash the shirt. Your child should wear the tie-dyed shirt for Field Day on June 12, the last day of school.
Please Mark Your Calendars!
We will share our poetry at a Poetry Palooza planned for Tuesday, June 11th from 8:30-9:30. Please come and hear your amazing poets share their best poems! Plus you’ll see your child’s poetry book.
Plan to bring along a copy of one of your favorite poems to share with the children.
Important Year-End Information
• T-shirts due for tie-dye on Monday, June 3!
• The last fun lunch is on Friday, June 7th, and it is a free lunch courtesy of our amazing Lincoln PTO
• Poetry Palooza is Tuesday, June 11, 8:30 to 9:30. Bring your favorite poem to share with the students!
• Students will clean classrooms in the afternoon of Tuesday, June 11. School supplies will be sent home or donated at this time.
• Field Day is the afternoon of the last day of school, Wednesday, June 12, with a family picnic on the lawn during the lunch hour; students must bring a personal water bottle to ensure they are hydrated throughout the day. Please make sure your child wears our tie dyed T shirt on the last day of school!
Science - Insect Lifecycles
The children have enjoyed learning about insect lifecycles. They've discovered insects go through complete metamorphosis (egg, larva, pupa, adult) or incomplete metamorphosis (egg, nymph, adult). The children have also learned that insects have three body parts -- head, thorax, and abdomen -- compound eyes, six legs, antennae, and sometimes wings. Ask your child to sing you the song s/he learned to remember this!
The students have participated in many activities to support their learning. For example, they looked at plastic insects to determine what was wrong with them, and they discovered the legs were not coming out of the thorax as they should be and they didn't have compound eyes as they should. They also built a scientifically correct insect using model magic and pipe cleaners, and they completed two activities to identify an insect's lifecycle and determine whether it went through complete or incomplete metamorphosis. Of course, they continue to observe their insects and make scientific drawings. Ask your child to tell you which type of metamorphosis our insects go through.
Reading Workshop
We are reading Shoeless Joe and Me, by Dan Gutman. As we read, the children are working to write their thinking about the book. We are striving to think beyond the text and about the text! This is challenging for many children, but they are pushing themselves to think deeply about the reading. When students think beyond the text they are making inferences about the characters, making predictions and drawing conclusions, and supporting their thinking with evidence from the text. Students who are thinking about the text can say who is telling the story, whether we are learning about things through a character's actions, words, or thinking, and how the author organizes the information, such as in time order or through flashbacks, etc. The students have begun doing this type of writing about their independent reading book as well! Ask you child to tell you what s/he is reading and noticing!
Writing Workshop
The children have been very busy writing poetry and are hard at work publishing their very own poetry anthology. They can't wait to share this with you at the Poetry Palooza on Tuesday, June 11th!
Math
We've completed Unit 8 in Investigations. The children have become quite adept at solving subtraction problems to compare and to separate, or take away. They have solved many story problems and learned several games and activities that allow them to practice subtracting various quantities within 1000. The children took the assessments for the first and second investigations and did a great job.
We started Unit 7 in Investigations today. This unit focuses on concepts related to multiplication through repeated addition. The students created buildings with various numbers of rooms on each floor and various amount of floors. They created addition equations to determine the total number of rooms in a building based on this information. For example, if a building has 5 floors and 4 rooms per floor, the repeated addition equation would be 4+4+4+4+4=20. This conceptual foundation sets up the students to understand that this same building has 5 groups of 4, or 5X4=10. The children are having fun creating buildings and noticing the equations associated with them.
Word Study
The students have been learning the meaning of various prefixes and suffixes. They have been completing a packet to practice recognizing the meaning of words with prefixes and suffixes added to root words.
The word study patterns your children have learned throughout the year are intended to help them decode longer, more sophisticated words. As they read books with more difficult words, remind them to recall the patterns we've discussed and use this knowledge to sound out the word. Next week, the students will review the spelling patterns we've discussed throughout the year, and they took the final word work assessment.
Cursive Handwriting
The children are thrilled to have soon learned how to write almost ALL 26 LOWERCASE cursive letters! They are practicing their writing with the classic statement that uses all 26 letters: The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog! Very soon your children will bring home their cursive handwriting practice booklet, and you will see the great work they've done. In spite of popular opinion, a great amount of brain research supports the value of practicing handwriting! Please encourage your child to use cursive writing at home this summer by writing letters to relatives and friends.