Heading into week 12

Hello! We just finished week 11!
Announcements:

We have the read-a-thon on Monday. Students may dress up as their favorite literary character (no pop culture please). Please send you child school with  a flashlight and their favorite book (or two)! Monday is also the last day to enjoy the beautiful book fair!

Winter dress code will start Monday, November 14. Students will need to wear pants, or tights under their skirts.

There will be no homework on Monday, October 31 (you can take a sigh of relief!).

We will begin reading Boxcar Children next week, if you have not already, please send it in with your student!

Thank you to all of you that signed up to help me next week! I really appreciate it!

This week we measured and measured and measured some more! Here are some adorable pictures:

Parachutes in P.E. are just too much fun!

Here is a look at our learning this week:

Language arts: With Halloween and the Read-a-thon on Monday, we will learn spelling words in class on Monday but we will not assign spelling word homework for Monday night. We will do the spelling word homework in class on Tuesday. Students will still be assessed on those words on Friday. In literature this week we will start reading Boxcar Children. I am so excited to embark on another literature adventure with the students! In grammar, we will learn about common and proper nouns, and work then into sentences to make our writing even more beautiful and interesting!

Math: We will continue our unit on measurement this week, really focusing on comparing all the units we have learned. Please keep an eye on your child while they are working at home. When worksheets show objects that do not start at the beginning of the ruler - the students are getting very confused (i.e. the pencil that starts at the 3in line and goes to the 10in line the pencil is 7inches long, but the majority of students will say that the pencil is 10 inches long). We will wrap up this unit on measurement on Friday!

Science: Our water cycle unit will continue with the study of clouds, groundwater, and run-off. We will do another fun experiment and continue to record observations and new vocabulary words in our science notebooks. Ask you sweet scientist about our experiment with soil, rocks, and moss (and how AWFUL it smelled :] )

History: We will continue our study of India. Reviewing everything we have learned about the two main religions in India (Hinduism and Buddhism). A review guide will go home on Tuesday, and the test will be on Friday! We will start our next unit on China on Friday!

Thanks for reading the whole thing! Here is a of Chief, because I am a shameless dog mom.

Quarter 2!

We are in week 11 of school, and officially done with our first week of quarter 2 (insert happy dance here)!
We had so much fun this week, and packed our half days full of learning, exploring, and discovering.

Stretching our glutes to stay loose during math

Math Centers with three sweet volunteers!

What do you know and what do you wonder about the water cycle?

Subtraction practice with partners!

I LOVED getting to talk to you during conferences this week. Your children are amazing, and getting to share what we are working on brings me so much joy. You are your child's and my biggest cheerleader and I could feel the love this week! I am so thankful for your partnership this year!

Announcements:

Read-a-thon: On Monday, October 31 we will celebrate our read-a-thon with a Charlotte's Web theme! We have a jam packed day full of reading, snacking, crafting and fun! Please sign up here if you'd like to help, or if you'd like to donate something.

Book Fair: Tied in with the read-a-thon is a wonderful book fair! The book fair is put on by Usborne books, please click here to read more and see the schedule for when you can come shop!

Spelling bee: Please read this document for more information about the spelling bee! Here is a list of words!

Here is a look at our learning this week:

Language arts: We will continue writing and labeling interesting sentences using a noun, verb, adjective, and adverb! Students will learn about singular and plural nouns. We will introduce mover and shaker sentences (moving around words in a sentence so it makes it more interesting for the reader)! We will have 20 spelling words next week due to the short week. We will start reading Boxcar Children next week (10/31), if you have not already please purchase the book and send it in with your child!

Math: We are done with subtraction for now (it's ok to do a silent cheer), and are moving onto measurement! Students will begin by measuring in nonstandard units (paperclips, pencils, cubes) and then learn the importance of standard measuring units. If I wanted a couch that is 67 paperclips long, no one would know what I was talking about! We will practice measuring length and height, and do a really fun experiment launching paper airplanes and measuring their length on Wednesday!

History: We will continue learning about Ancient India! We ended the week being introduced to Buddha and nirvana, next week we will continue to learn about what Buddha stands for, and how to reach Nirvana. Ask you India specialist about the Festival of Lights and Prince Siddhartha. They should be able to tell you about this special holiday, and the price that searched for peace and harmony.  

Science: We will continue learning about the water cycle. We talked about solids, liquids, gases, and evaporation. Ask your scientist about the video we watched and how quickly molecules are moving in solids, liquids, and gases. Next week we will be making a terrarium and learning about condensation and precipitation.

Can you believe it's OCTOBER? September flew by in a flash! Here is a little glimpse at our learning in the last week of September:

Students have been working extremely hard to master regrouping. We took colorful notes, and even took turns being teachers to our friends!

Students have been working hard to earn lunch with the teacher on Thursdays, look at this amazing group I got to eat with!

Here is a look at our learning for the first week of October!

Language Arts: Next week we will review everything we have learned in the first quarter of school. Nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, oh my! We will create and classify sentences, and add new adjectives to our vocabulary (this teacher is tired of hearing awesome, nice, and cool as adjectives to describe friends!). We will read Pippi Longstocking, and continue to practice commas in a series. We will wrap up our Charlottes Web unit by writing a eulogy for Charlotte. The students will have to stretch their minds to see from another's perspective. We will not be starting our next literature book until later in October, but next up is Boxcar Children!

History: This week we will continue to learn about the rich culture of India. Students will learn that Hinduism is a widely practice religion in India and we will explore the caste system. Please ask your scholar to show you India on the map and describe some of the important geographical features, particularly; the Himalayas, the location of the Khyber Pass and Mojenjo-Daro, as well as neighboring bodies of water.

Science: We will take some time to review the life cycles we've learned about so far. Your scientists will take a test on Thursday. A review guide will come home with them on Tuesday evening. They should be able to describe the stages of life for a chicken, frog, butterfly, and plant!

Homework Survey

Homework Survey

It is our goal that homework serves as a fruitful extension of the rich learning that takes place at school.  Let us know how homework is going by filling out this survey. If you have multiple children at Archway Arete, we kindly ask that you complete the survey separately for each of them. Your feedback is deeply valued and will serve to improve our practices.  

The upcoming week 8 of school!

Hello 2C families!
What a great week we had! I know I say something along those lines every week, but look at these sweet faces? How lucky am I to get to play, teach, and learn with them daily??

This week we did typing for the first time! We will regularly be practicing typing on Monday afternoons!

Thursday was Mrs. Lacsa's birthday! We treated her like the wonderful princess she is!

The students have been working SO hard at adding numbers with renaming!

Math is always more fun in groups, with oversize dice being thrown around!

Announcements:

• There is no school on Friday!
• Reading logs looked great this week! I have made some notes for changes that need to be made to reading levels, thank you for your patience with me this week!
• Underdog Rescue - we are still collecting dog toys, treats, and food for our September Service project for Underdog Rescue
• Read-a-thon will take place on October 31, students will be able to dress up as their favorite literature character or historical figure, more information to come; I just wanted to get this on your radar!

Here is a look at our learning for week 8 of second grade!

Language arts: Students will recite the poem we have been working on, Something Told the Wild Geese independently in front of the class! I am looking for great posture, and eye contact with the audience during this recitation! We also finish Charlottes Web this week, Charlotte has been acting very strange and we will find out what Wilbur's fate is! We will continue building interesting sentences in grammar. We have learned so many parts of speech so far! Ask your grammar pro to sing you our newest jingle about article adjectives!

Math: We have been talking a lot about renaming 10 ones as 1 ten and 10 tens as 1 one hundred. In math this week we will work on renaming one ten into 10 ones with subtraction. We will learn a rhyming change to help us remember; if there's more on top, no need to stop! If there's more on the floor, we have to go next door and get 10 more! This is a challenging unit, but with diligent practice and patience, we will have successful mathematician on our hands in no time!

History: We will start a journey to a new country; India! Ask you world traveler to identify the country on a map and tell you whey the Indus River was important in the formation of the ancient Indian civilization.

Science: Can you believe we have been lepidopterists (through studying butterflies), herpetologists (through learning about frogs), and even ornithologists (when we learned about the lifecycle of a chicken)? We are continuing with our study on life cycles growing into our next topic: the life cycle of a plant! We will be doing an experiment with a lima bean. Time to add botanist to our list!  

Week 7

Hello! Happy Friday! We had an AMAZING week, full of discovery, wonder, and just a LITTLE bit of vinegar stink!

Students have been working so hard to master renaming!

Our EGG-speriment Part 1! We learned about the parts of the egg, and held the egg with "soft hands"

Wednesday math centers! Students, teachers and parents had so much fun with this small group time!

We had a BIG debate over whether animals can talk. This was the side that voted that animals COULD NOT talk. The argument was they can communicate, just in a different language, things got a little heated :]

Egg-speriment part 2! The egg shells totally dissolved in the vinegar! Leaving a weird looking and soft feeling egg behind! The classroom still smells like vinegar!

Updates and Announcements:

• Take home readers will begin to go home with each student on Monday, along with a reading reflection log. Instead of needing a parent initial I will know student have read each night because they completed a page in their log.
• We are running low on tissues, hand sanitizer, and disinfecting wipes, things are not desperate yet, BUT if you have an extra box or two lying around I will gladly take it off your hands!
• Thank you to all who were able to attend Math and Phonics night! I talked a lot about math games to play at home, and referenced a very helpful document. You can find that here! I apologize it is not the highest quality of scanning, but the material is gold :]

Here is a look at our learning this week:

Language arts: We will continue working on Spalding phonograms and spelling words. Please be practicing the phonograms with your child each evening! In grammar we will learn about adjectives and article adjectives. We have been learning fun, catchy songs to help us remember the difference between all the parts of speech. Ask your grammar professional to sing their favorite song to you this week! We will continue to practice the poem Something Told the Wild Geese. We watched this video this past week, and the students love the chorale version of it! In literature we are deep in Charlotte's Web, we will follow the family as they attend the fair, and we will keep our fingers cross for Wilbur as his fate is still unclear!

Math: In math we will work on regrouping ten ones as one ten. While doing homework have your child articulate what they are doing (my answer is 14, so I will rename 10 ones as 1 ten, and leave 4 ones). We will work on recognizing even and odd numbers. We will also be adding 3 numbers together! The students are doing great with mental math, I am so impressed by the hard work and dedication.

History; This week, we will continue to journey through Japan, learning about the rich Japanese traditions in art and nature. Students will play a review game and take home a study guide for the unit test on Friday!

Science: In science we will be fluttering into our next science activity! Can you guess what it is? The butterfly life cycle! Ask your young scientist if they can identify the stages of life in animals we've learned so far: a chicken, a frog, and now a butterfly!

Week of September 12

Hello!
What a great week we had!

We played a "Heads Up" style game with nouns! Students had to ask questions and give clues to figure out what word was on their head!

Every Friday we do something called TouchPebbles, which aims to get the students ready for seminar later in their education. We read stories and I ask questions that make us think, and sometimes don't have a correct answer. Today before TouchPebbles we took a minute of self reflection about our classroom participation. We then partnered up, and have each other feedback on our partners class participation! This took A LOT of courage, honesty, and friendship. I was SO proud of the way criticism was given and received by such young hearts and minds.

I would say statement like: My partner does not always listen when others are talking. Students would change their fists to a thumbs up if they agreed, or a thumbs down if they disagreed.

We had a wonderful grandparents day assembly! The students loved getting to see their grandparents! It filled my heart right up! I LOVE grandparents and was lucky enough to have some amazing ones in my life. We lost my Grandma last year, but I gained so much from her, and am so happy to see that so many of my students have wonderful grandparents active in their lives!

Announcements:
This week we will have math and phonics night on Wednesday night! The night will last from 6:00-7:30 and is designed to be a workshop to equip parents with tools to help their students at home! We'd love to see you there!

We also have picture day on Thursday! Order forms went home in the Friday Folder! Students will be photographed individually (class photographs will be in the spring) and will need to be in their usual uniform dress.

Here is a look at our learning this week

Language arts: We are continuing our reading of Charlotte's Web! This week we will follow the animals as they travel to the fair. Students will continue to take on the perspective of reporters and write newspaper articles about the amazing things happening with Wilbur!
Each Friday students who got their reading log signed that week get to put a sticker on our reading chart! Please be signing the reading log in their planner each night!

Math - We are exploring what happens when too many ones are in the ones column. We will learn to rename those ones into tens. For example if add two numbers together and the ones column has 12 ones in it, we would need to rename those ones into 1 ten and 2 ones. Students are doing great in math and are working so hard on their math facts! I appreciate the diligence in practicing at home!

Science: Next week we will continue our study on the lifecycle. We will do a fun EGG-speriment, and then move into the lifecycle of a frog! Students will learn about metamorphosis. Did you know that there are thousands of different kinds of frogs in the world and they don't all look alike? At the end of next week see if you student can answer these questions:
- Do you know what a group of frogs is called?
-Frogs live on every continent except _________.

History: This week in history, we will dive into Japan's unique geography. We will learn what landform makes the country special, and talk about traditional Japanese cuisine. We will also compare American schools to Japanese schools. We are going to have so much fun celebrating the Japanese culture!