Classroom Spotlight!
Mrs. Tadiello's Second Grade Class!
It may be freezing outside but, Mrs. Tadiello’s second grade students are on fire!
This first full week of 2019 meant the start of some fabulous new units of study and the students in room #24 have been up for every new challenge thrown their way. Check out some of this week’s highlights…
These amazing second grade readers are really getting to know characters in some of their favorite books. 2T has been learning about how authors give clues to show what characters are like by describing the things that characters say and do. Since characters have inside traits and outside traits, sometimes we need to think a lot about what a character’s actions might be telling us about their personality. 2T also learned that characters often have big feelings that change throughout the story in response to their actions. That means it is super important to “stop and jot” throughout a story. This helps us keep track of everything that is going on with our characters!
The best part about studying all these great characters is that we can use all the craft moves we’ve noticed as we begin to write our very own realistic fiction books. 2T students have collected lots of life experiences and begun to change them just a bit to create realistic small moments for their fictional characters. They’ve also been noticing how dialogue can be used to bring stories to life. We’ve spent lots of days playing with all the punctuation that authors use to make dialogue easy to read. These kids have imagined their own fictional characters and are beginning to write about them walking and talking through real life situations of their own creation. It’s safe to say that 2T has “Writing Fever!”
These super scientists have taken all they’ve learned from their study of properties of matter and are now beginning to study rocks and minerals. This week, we observed the properties of three rock types; basalt, tuff and scoria. We used hand lenses to get a closer look at the properties of each type of rock. Then we tried rubbing them together and placing them in water to simulate the effects of weathering.
Math has taken 2T into the wide world of 2-digit subtraction. We have been exploring many different strategies for subtracting and have learned that tools like number lines, 100s charts, base ten blocks and drawings are really great for helping us learn to subtract.