Tag Archives: Miss McWoodson

Welcome to Week 3!

Hello Parents!

I hope you had a wonderful weekend! This week, we will begin differentiated homework in second grade. This means that each student in our class will still have the same expectation of homework (1 page of math and 1 page of language arts–reading comprehension this week), but the pages will look different.

In math this week, we are focusing on the following skills:

  • Different ways to write numbers
  • Different names for numbers
  • Problem-solving with tens and ones
  • Counting patterns up to 100

In grammar this week, we are focusing on the following skills (and this work will be done in Centers):

  • More practice with sorting nouns
  • More practice with common nouns and proper nouns
  • Alphabetical order

In writing this week, we are focusing on the following:

  • The elements of a complete sentence (subject & predicate)

I am looking forward to a great week!

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What Is A Sentence?

 

 

Good afternoon!

I’m sure you’ve noticed that your child has been taking home lots of writing! For the first two weeks of this school year, I wanted students to have the freedom to write a lot for a few reasons.

Related imageFirst, I wanted to test their endurance and see how long our class could work on silently drawing a picture and writing about a specific topic.

Next, I wanted to informally assess the students’ understanding of what elements form a complete sentence and how to put sentences together to make a paragraph. I’ve also been looking at spelling, grammar, syntax, and puncutation.

Finally, I wanted students to get used to the initial structure I have for Centers in our classroom. For the first several weeks, we will be working in Centers as a whole class, following a schedule of DEAR (Drop Everything and Read), Silent Picture-Drawing, Silent Writing, Group Word Work, and a Fun Center.

While some of our students are very comfortable with using telling sentences and asking sentences (statements and questions) to form interesting short paragraphs, many of us need some review and additional support around forming a complete sentence and using punctuation to separate our thoughts.

Here is a short video we watched in class today that reminds us of important parts of a complete sentence:

First Share Day!

Hello Second Grade Parents!

This is my first post of the 2017-2018 school year. I am writing to remind you that this Friday, September 15 is our first “Share Day” at Morning Meeting Circle (which happens every morning in our classroom from about 9:25 am to 9:40 am, depending on how long the rest of our Morning Routine takes).

This Friday, we are doing something special! Each student has been given one brown paper bag with their name written on it. (Please find it in the front pocket of their Home-School Binder.) I have asked them to fill this bag with at least 3 items–and no more than 10 items–that will tell us more about who they are (the part of them that we can’t see by looking at the outside!). Each student will get a chance to tell us about the items in their bag this Friday at Morning Meeting Circle.

Normally, Share Day will be every other Friday (so the next one will be on Friday, September 29), and I will try my best to remind you each week in our Weekly Newsletter. On a regular Share Day, students will be invited to bring one small personal item that is not too valuable (because they will likely want to bring it outside to enjoy with friends during recess… so, no smart phones or iPads/tablets, etc. please!) to tell us about at Morning Meeting Circle. Some examples of items students may bring are: a stuffed animal, a drawing book, a journal, a toy car, a doll, a football, Pokemon cards, a book, etc. Students will be asked to leave their share item in their backpack or in our “cubby” space (the empty bookshelf beneath the Parent Hub whiteboard) until Morning Meeting Circle. They will need to put their share item away until recess.

Please let me know if you have any questions! I am looking forward to learning more about your child!

Thank you,

End-of-Year Math Fun!

Hello! We have been busy in second grade getting ready for the end of the year, completing all of our required assessments, and learning everything we need to learn before moving onto third grade! This week, we have been working with introductory lessons to multiplication and division, focusing on equal groups. We already know that we use addition to put things together or make bigger numbers, and we use subtraction to take things away or make smaller numbers. This week we are learning that we can also use multiplication to quickly make bigger numbers and division to quickly make smaller numbers. Below are the videos we watched today to help us learn the basics of division — dividing our total number into equal groups. Happy Almost Summer!