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Important dates: Tuesday, June 20 - Whale Symposium (5:00-6:30pm) Thursday, June 22 - Field day Friday, June 23 - Unity Celebration - PJ's and a stuffy Monday, June 26 - Last day of school - 1-hour early dismissal (1:05pm) Hello families, Woo! Whales were a success all around. Students completed their whale reports on Wednesday in time for the school-wide PBL night. We were able to share our work and explore other classrooms. Thank you to all who were able to attend. For those of you not able to make it, Tuesday night next week, we will celebrate with just the second grade whale experts at the Whale Symposium from 5-6:30pm. Whale watching trip We saw orca whales! We saw a pod of transient orcas, so of which had not been seen for a couple years! We got to see a couple full grown males (6 foot dorsal fin!) and two calves (slightly yellow in color from jaundice). It was high seas (Rosario Strait was choppy!), but everyone was a trooper and the new boat was super safe. Staff were great and provided top notch cared for the students who felt a little woozy. Lots of things coming up next week, so check the QAE schedule! Important dates: Monday, June 12 - MAP testing (in the morning) Wednesday, June 14 - School-wide PBL night (5:00-6:30pm) Thursday, June 15 - Whale watching field trip! - Early start: 6:45am End: 4:15pm Tuesday, June 20 - Whale Symposium (5:00-6:30) Thursday, June 22 - Field day Monday, June 26 - Last day of school - 1-hour early dismissal Hi families, Do you know what has 18-20 teeth and lives around the equator? You will find out in the up coming weeks! Students have transitioned from research to writing a first draft of their report. In their first drafts, students take their facts and compile them into paragraphs, using full sentences and including headings and keywords for their glossary. This process is difficult as it requires students to take short, bullet-ed facts and write them in complete sentences in a sequence that makes sense to the reader. This is the bulk of the hard and gratifying work of PBL. Once the first draft is complete, every student gets an official teacher check for spelling and comprehension. After that, students move on to their final draft. This draft can include hand-drawn photos, maps, food chains or other illustrations that helps the reader learn more. Students have been working extremely hard, and are excited and nervous to share their reports. I am really looking forward to not only the all-school PBL night (selfishly because I get to walk around and see all the other grades' projects), but the Whale Symposium. By June 20th, these students really will be experts on their whales. Looking forward to seeing you there! Book-It Theater - El Deafo We are so fortunate for our reading committee! They set up 3 plays by Book-It Theater at the beginning of the year. Today, we got to see the final play, El Deafo. This story is an autobiographical-ish book about a girl with a hearing aid. The story follows her journey through elementary school and her search for a true friend (in addition to her struggles with hearing impairment). It was a great performance. Ask your student all about it! Math Students finished their time unit and are moving to shapes! Reading Book clubs are still in full swing. Ask your student what book they're reading! Writing Taking a break from opinion writing as students are writing their whale reports. Monday, May 29 - Memorial Day - No School
Friday, June 9 - MAP testing Monday, June 12 - MAP testing Wednesday, June 14 - School-wide PBL night Thursday, June 15 - Whale watching field trip! - Early start 6:45am Tuesday, June 20 - Whale Symposium Thursday, June 22 - Field day Hello families, Are you fast? Then you have a lot in common with the Dall's porpoise. Students started taking their hard-earned facts and creating whale reports this week! Students focused on research and writing an engaging introduction that includes fun facts and evidence that shows they are an expert on their whale. Students will continue to work on their first drafts, into next week. We as second grade teachers and really asking quite a bit! Stay tuned as the whale saga continues! Math On Wednesday, students finished up money. Thursday, we began time, counting by 5's around the clock. The biggest hurdle for students is to understand that the hour numbers actually have two meanings, both hour AND minutes. If you can, quiz your students or cover up your digital clocks at home (if you have analog clocks), see if they can count by 5's around the clock. A second hurdle is telling the hour as the hour is close to expiration (:45-:59). That darn hour hand sure does get close to the NEXT hour. See if you can start up a conversation about time with your student this weekend! Writing Our opinions keep rolling! Our next goal as writers is to make our letters stronger, longer and more convincing by adding more evidence from our books. Students talk about favorite parts of books, why they like characters and retell the story to introduce the book to their readers to add to their letters. Reading We started our fiction book clubs this week. This is a fun unit where students gather often to talk about what they like in their books (or don't like them) and to think about why an author chose certain craft moves. Important dates: Monday, May 29 - Memorial Day - No School Wednesday, June 14 - School-wide PBL night Thursday, June 15 - Whale watching field trip! - Early start Tuesday, June 20 - Whale Symposium Thursday, June 23 - Field day Hi families, Pacific Northwest Ballet Walking to PNB from the bus, the kids were more amped up than I had seen them in a long time. They were running and wiggly and excitedly chatting. I think some were nervous: "Ballet! Ahhh....I'm not gonna like this." Some were excited: "I've been to the Nutcracker so many times before!" However, regardless how students were feeling at the beginning, it was clear in the end it was a huge success. From one of my most reluctant, this was their response at the end, "I liked evry thing because I love dancing." Discovery Park Great success! We saw so many cool things. "This was the best field trip!" "My favorite part was seeing the octopus." Students dug, scooped, uncovered and poked (gently) many cool animals and plants at our low-tide Discovery Park trip. Check out some of the photos below. Whale PBL We really got rolling this week in our whale research. Students are now roughly half way through their research. They have been working so hard, reading dense material and sorting through it all to find the important information they need to know all about their whales! We will continue our search next week, working on writing facts in our own words by making a movie in our minds of what we read and figuring out tricky words by making connections and looking at context. Math Money problem solving! How many lemons (2 for $1) and limes (4 for $1) could you buy with $2.75? Students worked on money word problems, counting and combining money. Writing Look in your mailbox soon! Students have vigorously been writing about their favorite books. This week, we started addressing our letters to readers outside of our classroom. This is important because now students have to explain more parts of their books, such as plot and character traits, that their classmates may already have been familiar with. Important dates:
Wednesday, May 24 - Field trip - Pacific Northwest Ballet (bring sack lunch) Friday, May 26 - Field trip - Discovery Park (bring sack lunch) Monday, May 29 - Memorial Day - No School Wednesday, June 14 - School-wide PBL night Thursday, June 15 - Whale watching field trip! Tuesday, June 19 - Whale Symposium Hi families, Whales "I found out that whales ears are inside their heads." "Did you know a blue whale weight 360,000 pounds?" Our main focus this week has been becoming whale experts! Last week on Friday, students chose a wide range of whales from all around the world! From the arctic (narwhals, belugas) to the antarctic (pygmy right whale), large (blue whale) and small (Dall's porpoise), pack hunters (orca whales) and solo swimmers (fin whale). The first thing they did to get to know the intricacies of their whale was completing a scientific drawing of their whale. Inspired by Austin's Butterfly, students completed many drafts, getting feedback from a partner after each draft. These whale experts then added labels and coloring to finish. Next, we moved on to the serious business of getting to know our whales! For the project, each student will research their own whale and create a whale report. In addition to this report, students will also create a presentation aid to go along with the oral presentation for the Whale Symposium. Some students have chosen a whale that others have chosen, thus some students will sometimes be working with a group. Others decided to venture out on their own and will primarily work independently! Either way, each student will have their own report about their whale at the end of the year. Students started by receiving reliable, kid-friendly resources about their whale to familiarize themselves and to practice their novice note-taking skills. As they get to know more about their whales, they will continue the researching process using iPads and online resources. Students are enthusiastic and engaged in this project. Ask them what they have learned so far! Math Students have been busy counting pennies, nickles, dimes and quarters through games and problem solving. Have your students count the change in your pocket for practice. OR, for the real stumper, tell them how many coins you have, and they can guess the amount based on number of coins and the type of coins. Writing What do we love to do as social beings? Give our opinions! Students started their opinion writing unit by writing about reading. Students picked favorite books and wrote a letter to the class, telling the class why the characters in that book are amazing! Students are practicing using evidence and the word BECAUSE to support their opinions. We will continue this next week! Important dates: Wednesday, May 10 - Early Release Wednesday, May 24 - Field trip - Pacific Northwest Ballet Friday, May 26 - Field trip - Discovery Park Monday, May 29 - Memorial Day - No School Hi families, Whale PBL Students watched The Whale, a documentary about a male Orca called Luna. Luna was stranded by his family and the documentary follows his journey looking for connection from nearby humans. From this movie, students discussed whale behaviors, threats to whales, and human interactions with nature, specifically whales. Students also looked at the food chain of whales, researching Important dates: Wednesday, May 10 - Early Release Wednesday, May 24 - Field trip - Pacific Northwest Ballet Friday, May 26 - Field trip - Discovery Park Monday, May 29 - Memorial Day - No School Hi families, We kicked off our PBL (project based learning) of whales! Already this week we had so much learning going on. Monday, we had Laurie from Whales Scouts come present about the resident orcas living in our very own Puget Sound. Tuesday we had a blubber experiment (students put their hands in icy water with and without "blubber", 2 plastic bags lined with Crisco) , and Thursday we had a baleen vs. toothed activity ("How do baleen and teeth work")! Our word wall is already filled of keywords we will need to be experts on the topic. More to come next week. Ask your student 2 words that they learned this week about whales. Math We started a short unit this week of Mental Math. It is a review unit, a time for students to practice their addition and subtraction strategies in their heads. Playing games and repetition is a great way for students to get practice! On Thursday, I sent home one way to practice. It is called a "Pluzzle", a plus math question and a puzzle put together. Play with your child at home and see if they can stump you! Writing We continued our non-fiction writing review focusing on text features (specifically explaining with pictures) and conclusions. Today, we took our second grade checklist and evaluated our writing, looking at strengths and challenges, and making goals for the remainder of our non-fiction writing unit. Reading In our non-fiction book clubs, we looked at how non-fiction text features help us understand more about our non-fiction topic. Authors give a lot of cues and clues to what they want to teach us. Understanding what the text features are and how they work, increases what students can learn from a non-fiction book! Important dates:
Monday, April 24 - Earth Day Assembly Wednesday, May 10 - Early Release Wednesday, May 24 - Field trip - Pacific Northwest Ballet Friday, May 26 - Field trip - Discovery Park Monday, May 29 - Memorial Day - No School Hello families! Welcome back from spring break! Students came back refreshed and ready to learn. They are really showing the accumulation of their growth this week. They are working and following directions independently, trying out more sophisticated writing techniques and becoming aware of themselves as learners and friends. It's a wonderful time of the year! Math We finished up our metric measurement unit. In this unit we covered addition and subtraction word problems, measuring with cm and plotting data on a line plot. Overall, students did really well on line plots, addition word problems and measuring. A goal for the end of the year is to pay close attention to word problems and increase our fluency in subtraction problems. Writing We are starting our second unit of non-fiction writing. We reviewed important text features that mentor authors use and thought of creative ways to start our stories. Reading In conjunction with our non-fiction writing, we have kicked off our non-fiction book clubs! Students group together in groups from 2-4 to read the same non-fiction book. The groups get to pick their group name and practice discussing their reading and solidifying their learning from their discussions. Students are excited to learn and dive into their books! Whale PBL We kick off on Monday! Stay tuned. I would still love one or two volunteers for Tuesday afternoon if anyone is available. On that note: SHOE BOXES! Elizabeth Arzani is asking for shoe boxes for a whale-related art project. If you have any bring them in. Thanks! Important dates: April 10-14 - Spring Break - No School Wednesday, May 24 - Field trip - Pacific Northwest Ballet Friday, May 26 - Field trip - Discovery Park Hi families! I love my job all the time, however, there are some weeks where I really feel fortunate to be teaching your kids. This week was one of those weeks. We had so much fun going on the Museum of Flight field trip, celebrating poetry and trying out a new game called Exquisite Corpse with Ms. Shaw's class. Museum of Flight I had never been and I was blown away (no pun intended)! There are a ton of hands on activities for kids, airplanes to walk through and even a small airport security playground for the students. Students had plenty of time to explore the museum, touching buttons and learning some physics (probably without knowing it). The education portion of the program was well done. It started with a parachute activity, followed by three stations: a whirligig station, balancing math station and a hands on "flight" testing area. The trained educators worked well with students and our students were very engaged in learning and playing. Check out the photos below. Poetry Celebration Students finished up their poetry unit with a poetry celebration. Cheers to the students who got in front of peers and parents to perform their poems (alliteration?)! It was great to see students try out different literary language in their poems and then perform them, building their speaking and listening skills. Poetry books went home yesterday, so ask your student to share their favorite one or two! Exquisite Corpse Students participated in a fun writing game. Students choose a theme (ie. friends, music). Then each student gets a blank sheet of paper and writes 2 lines on that theme. After writing, students fold over the paper until only one line in shown and passes it to a neighbor. It is then the neighbor's job to write two more lines about the story using only the one line! It's a great activity, suitable for a level of writers. Try it at home over break! Ask your student how to play. Blubber Activity Still looking for 1 or 2 volunteers Tuesday, April 25 to help out with a "blubber" activity. It's really fun and the kids love it! Let me or Steph Yurcisin know. Thanks! Have a great break! |
Ms. ThibautOne of the second grade teachers at QAE. Read this blog and stay up-to-date on classroom activities. Archives
March 2017
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Ms. Thibault's 2nd Grade | Class Blog |