It was great to see the campers as we all returned from our Christmas Break last week! So many great stories of fun and relaxing! Many activities including time spent with family, movies watched, books read, video games played, alarm clocks turned off, presents opened, and holiday activities attended and planned! We worked hard to get back into the swing again and remind ourselves about routines. It had been over two weeks since we had ordered a lunch, sat in a desk, put our name on a paper, walked in a line together, and had to wait for a snack at 10:30!

We have been exploring the genre of non fiction this week. We have worked with many non fiction stories already this year but our reader's eye is focused sharply on the specific traits of these books, how to best dig out the information offered, what types of books fall into this genre, and how can we share what we learn in a meaningful way. The campers and I worked on how to plan to read a non fiction book by checking out the title first, browsing the table of contents, and then making plan of how to read the pages. Many non fiction books have a lot going on on each page, and as a reader we have to plan how to best work through each page. We also talked about how to choose a non fiction book: do you want to become and expert and earn about a new topic or are you gathering more information about a topic you know? This can guide you as you choose the just right fit book for your purpose.

I am super excited that this also ties into our writing unit of informational writing! The campers will work to become expert how to writers as well as scientific and information writers. We started off by writing about what we feel we are experts about. This is our baseline for our unit. We will work to add to this text and revise it as well as read and write about other topics we are wondering about.

Mrs. Patterson is helping us with this writing and reading genre by helping us dig into the non fiction section of the library. We worked with the how to book section whit week and our teams are hard at work on their own how to paragraphs. These will teach the other campers how to draw their team mascot. After having really explored the how to books, they discovered some structures that were very important to a how to book and also were not always found in other non fiction books. Next week we will see how clear their how to's are!

Check out your camper's SeeSaw portfolio! We have new items added!

Friday the campers and I worked hard on using non fiction to develop a deeper understanding of a topic. Together we brainstormed known facts about Martin Luther King Jr. We came up with quite a few! Next we used our first information source and reading each section carefully added new information we learned and also confirmed or adjusted things on our known list. When developing a deeper understanding you often use more than one resource, we added our Scholastic News as a second source. Again we added new facts and confirmed and adjusted what we knew. Lastly, we discussed with a partner and then the class how all of our new and known knowledge made us and others feel about our topic: Martin Luther King Jr. It was surprising that non fiction might make us have emotions like a chapter or enjoyable book might. We added our thoughts to our chart as well. Lastly, the campers shared their knowledge by writing about Martin Luther King Jr. Lots of great learning, thinking, and sharing in this time together! So proud of the campers perseverance and commitment to see this learning time through to the end! You can see our ideas on SeeSaw! We will work next week to get the writing there too!

We have completed unit 4 on multiplication and division. Much of our work was done with exploring how these two operations are related to each other and how knowing that can help us solve both kinds of problems. We also worked on looking at the multiplication families from 0 - 6 and closely looking at the power numbers of 0, 1, 2 , 5 and 10. Though we are moving on to place value, we will continue to work on multiplication during our math block.

We have begun to move through the facts of multiplication at an individual pace. Some of the campers have a little work to do yet on subtraction as well. Each day we will spend 5 - 10 minutes with practice, fast math, and fact fluency interviews. The campers will work on their own to practice using their carabiner cards, take fast math exercises, and once a week check in with me on their facts. The goal of the combination of these activities is to have the campers understand the facts on their own and how they relate to other facts, become fluent with the basics of calculation, and have strategy to find the answers when calculating. You can find your campers' cards in the pouch in their binder! Great practice options are below!

Here is the link to Kakooma, Math Magician, and Math Fact Practice! Play Kids Games.

http://www.gregtangmath.com/games.html?game=kakooma# Kakooma

http://oswego.org/ocsd-web/games/mathmagician/cathymath.html Math Magician

http://www.playkidsgames.com/games/mathfact/mathFact.htm Math Fact Practice

Math Fact Practice us new to us. You can choose the operation, even mix them up, the level of difficulty, and the time.

Everyday Math website for great practice in fact fluency and math skills. Usernames and passwords are inside your camper's binder.

https://em-ccss.everydaymathonline.com/g_login.html

Lots to celebrate this week!

*Cougar Crew Member: Congratulations to Elizabeth E. and Kate B. for their nomination this and last week!

*We are the top class in second grade for reading minutes!

Martin Luther King Jr. Day: January 18th no school