Grade2Bliss
News From Ms. Jessyca's Class
Holiday Time
We had another fabulous week in grade 2! Most of the class has now published their first piece of writing; a narrative involving maps! It was such a treat to work with the young writers through the entire writing process-conferencing, brainstorming, drafting, editing, and revising-be sure to ask your child all about it!
Next week is another exciting one as we will head to Mitad de Mundo for our first field trip! Thank you to the moms who are chaperoning. This is a great experience for the kids to see a variety of maps and their applications as well as understand more deeply regional differences within Ecuador. We also have our Reading Workshop for parents on Thursday! Please RSVP if you haven't already so I can prepare materials appropriately.
I will try to host 2 or 3 more workshops this school year to strengthen the school-home connection as well as foster a love of literacy outside of school.
Our class is going to host a booth at the upcoming Community Event on Saturday November 22nd here on campus! We are going to offer a Photo Booth to raise money for a cause the students will decide on during their global citizen unit that happens later in the year. We are in need of VOLUNTEERS TO WORK SHIFTS THE DAY OF THE EVENT as well as COSTUMES & PROPS (wigs, glasses, masks, boas, tutus, capes, etc.)-of the holiday variety or otherwise! This will be a great way to interact with our community having fun and raising money for a good cause! Please let me know by Tuesday of the this week if you can make it!
In reading we will be wrapping us our first chapter book read aloud Pirates Don't Wear Pink Sunglasses. Chapter book read alouds serve as a great way to build comprehension with lots of opportunities to retell in chunks. Even if your child isnt ready to read aloud chapter books, you can create a family time around a good book-in english or spanish. The act of building comprehension will translate! At the end of each chapter ask your child or children to retell what was read and predict what will happen next and why!
For our unit of Inquiry on Mapping our class will participate in a team geo-caching activity! We are all set to hide treasures for Ms. Mary Pati's class to seek and find! We will be wrapping up this unit with an assessment on Friday about different types of maps and their uses. For our next unit on Migration, I would LOVE volunteers who are from other cultures to come in OR skype with us and share about their home country/culture as well as ancestry. Please let me know by November 27th as scheduling these visits/interviews around the holidays will prove difficult.
In math we will continue investigating geometric concepts and reflect on our observations and connections to the real world. Last week our class went on a shape walk around school noticing how much our world is map up of shapes. We discussed dimension and will explore symmetry. We are sing calculators more and more to check our work or try other algorithms. We spend a large part of each day discussing the calendar, dates, time, money and value, patterns and solving equations individually, in pairs and as a whole class. We will begin to focus more heavily on word problems. We will learn a problem solving protocol where students will ask themselves a series of questions before actually solving for the answer. Examples of the types of word problems given in second are:
Rachel has 6 coins that equal 19 cents. What is the value of each coin she has?
Jerry wants to buy an ice cream cone that cost 1 dollar. He needs 25 cents more before he can buy one. How much money does Jerry have?
In writing next week we will share our published writing with each other in our first Share Chair of the year! We will celebrate this first round of publishing with a sort of "book release party"-simple but fun and a real world experience for a real published writer!! Students will continue on with using the process of writing to publish ideas into articulate messages and texts!
As many of you have already noticed and commented, the book fair books were expensive and limited for this grade level, so I decided NOT to buy books for each student as a holiday gift. Please if any of you can help me with ordering books from perhaps amazon, etc. I would really appreciate this. I wanted to buy each kids a special book to match both their interest and ability-the book fair didn't provide me that opportunity.
Thanksgiving is fast approaching and our school will continue the tradition of eating together on Friday, November 28th. Details to come via our Admin team and Thanksgiving Committee.
UPCOMING DATES:
A few calendar items for the Month and beyond!
November 20th our Field Trip to Midal de Mundo
November 20th is also our Reading Workshop for parents. 2-3:30, please RSVP by next week if you plan on attending!
November 21st our Zambiza Gift Drive begins
November 27th is a half day
November 28th Thanksgiving Celebration (whole school) more details to come!
December 3rd Quito Presentation/festival
December 4th Bullfight for Quito Days
December 5th Quito Day No School