Important dates: May 9 - Whale Tales - In-school speaker May 11 - Field trip - Aquarium May xx - Poetry celebration! (Date TBA) May 17 - In-school whale speaker May 20 - Field trip - Whale Watching May 30 - Memorial Day - No School Hi families, What a whaley fun week! Students this week researched, sorted and mapped baleen and toothed whales, learned about echolocation and watched The Whale: The True Story of Luna, a documentary about a lost whale trying to find connections with humans in a community in the Canadian Puget Sound. Next week, we will look into pod behavior, captivity and watch Free Willy. Let me know if you would not like your child to watch the movie. I will find an alternative for them to discuss some of the issues in the movie. Our guiding question, "How can we as compassionate and concerned global citizens help whales?" will lead us as we continue our investigation. For the final project, each student will create a written report about a whale of their choosing. After finishing the report, they will create, in some form, a presentation to share the information they gathered. We will display them at the PBL night on June 16th. Reading - Students are in the midst of book clubs! Students have been avidly reading books and discussing with their group of 3 or 4. Students ask questions such as "Why did the author write this book?", "What do you predict?" and "How has the main character changed throughout the book?" Math - Shapes and Fractions! This week, we reviewed shapes, shape names and fractions. Vocabulary words included numerator (part of a whole) and denominator (whole, number of parts or number in a group). Ask your student to share some of the knowledge. What is the fraction of cake eaten if I eat 3 of the 4 pieces? Writing - Students had a mini celebration of their poetry, sharing with the class their favorite poem they wrote so far. Students have been working on line breaks, adding imagery, creating rhythm and taking big feelings from small moments. I will be sending out another round of permission slip on Monday. It is the back side of the first permission slip. Look out for it!
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Important dates: May 9 - Whale Tales - In-school speaker May 11 - Field trip - Aquarium May xx - Poetry celebration! (Date TBA) May 20 - Field trip - Whale Watching May 30 - Memorial Day - No School Hello families, Welcome back from spring break! Students warmed up with 3 new units! We started poetry, geometry, and got to look at all of our amazing book clubs! We had an exciting Friday, as it was the final day of Dwankhozi week. Students experienced art, food and play from Zaimbia in the morning. In the afternoon, the entire school got together to celebrate the amazing connection between the two sister schools, honoring Maurice and Ida. Writing: Students looked at old objects with poet's eyes - describing items in new ways. The also started playing around with line breaks, and how changing line breaks can affect the sound and rhythm of a poem. Math: Students reviewed 2-D and 3-D, explored the classroom looking for plane shapes and started their very own whale art using only shapes! Our next endeavor will be to break up shapes into equal shares, exploring the foundation of fractions. Reading: Students did a gallery walk of all the book club books, working on partner reading, retelling and coming up with agreements for how to run a book club. They worked really hard and came up with better agreements than I would have been able to alone! Pictures to come! Bonus at home work (not homework): PBL: Bring in an article about a whale! Be ready to present a brief summary of what you learned. Math: Find shapes in nature. Take a picture or make a drawing of the shape/s you found. Where did you find this shape? Was it repeated? Was it animal or vegetable or mineral? We will present these during math. Important dates: May 9 - Whale Tales - In-school speaker May 11 - Field trip - Aquarium May 20 - Field trip - Whale Watching May 30 - Memorial Day - No School Hi families, This week we finished up our measurement unit, comparing lengths in customary units. We celebrated our fantastic fiction! We celebrated our growth working together with a unity party! Yesterday, report cards went out. Look for them in your student's backpack if you haven't already seen it. Thanks to all the folks who already returned the envelope! With your student's report card, I also sent out aquarium and whale watching permission slips. Please return these slips! The total for both of these field trips is $62.00. We have scholarships available if needed. For the whale watching field trip, expect more forms! Today, we had the opportunity to have a guest author speaker, Liz Wong, author and illustrator of Quackers. She read us her story, talked to us and showed us her revision process, and drew some of her characters. We were so lucky! Look for a book form if you're interested in purchasing Quackers. To keep you busy over spring break, I sent refresher forms on how to log in to Reflex, Epic and Reading Horizons. Your students should be familiar with these programs. The directions can help you help them if necessary. Lastly, enjoy your spring breaks and see you in a week! Important dates:
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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 |