Second Grade News
December 2019
Dates to Remember
12/17 - Holiday Chorus Concert @ 6:30pm
12/19 - Day 2 Specials
12/20 - Make-Up Day
12/21 - 1/5 - No School
1/6 - Return to School
1/20 - No School
1/28 - Second Grade Winter Celebration
1/29 - Teacher Workday
Module 2: Fossils Tell of Earth's Change
Students started the module by participating in a close read-aloud of Stone Girl, Bone Girl to explore the Unit 1 guiding questions: "What do paleontologists do?" and "How do characters respond to major events?"
In Unit 2, students make a pivot to informational texts and engage more deeply in the study of fossils. Students' learning is centered around the Unit 2 guiding questions: "What can we learn from studying fossils?" and "How do readers learn more about a topic from informational texts?"
In Unit 3, students will shift from learning about fossils to taking on the role of being paleontologists from a narrative perspective. They will do this primarily through the creative of their performance task: a narrative that captures the moment they discover a fossil as a paleontologist!
Habits of Character
In this module, students are working to become effective learners by developing the mindsets and skills for success in college, career, and life.
So far in quarter 2 we have learned:
Skip counting in multiple contexts
Skip counting by 5’s and 10’s with 3 digit numbers
Telling time to five minutes
Using arrays to find totals using repeated addition
We are primarily working on place value in math right now. Please see the Math Help for Parents link below. Under the heading "Strategies That Students WIll Learn" in the document below the two skills that would be most valuable to work on are 1. Breaking apart numbers and 4. Comparing Numbers.
Math Help for Parents -
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1D_W-pnaLHbvZNeaAxcIv1m-6ZCWdzfnv/view
Play a Game to Help at Home!
Place Value War
Basic Version
- Use a standard deck of playing cards with the 10s, Jacks, Queens, and Kings removed. Aces count as 1.
- Deal each player 3 cards.
- Players use the cards to create the largest 3-digit number possible.
- Players show their cards, and the player with the greatest 3-digit number takes all the cards.
- Play continues with 3 more cards for each player.
You could easily vary this game to use 2-digit, 4-digit, or even larger numbers.
Advanced Version
- Same standard deck of cards with the same cards removed.
- Each player still gets 3 cards.
- Remaining cards are placed face down in the middle of the table.
- After each player looks at their cards and determines their greatest 3-digit number, the fun starts! Taking turns, each player has the option to…
- Stick–keep their 3 cards
- Swap–remove one card from their hand and take a new card from the pile in the middle of the table
- Steal–trade a card from their hand for a card from any other player’s hand (without looking at what card they are picking)
- After all players have had a turn to adjust their cards, players show their cards and the greatest 3-digit number wins.