The second graders have completed the theme “Amazing Animals” in their anthologies. The stories included Officer Buckle and Gloria, Ant and the Great Ball Game. Students practiced comprehension skills, including drawing conclusions and cause and effect. Currently, students are reading stories from a new theme, “Family Time” and are practicing skills such as making generalizations. After completing this theme, the second graders will take a break from our anthologies to study fables.

Some “critical thinking” skills that we have been practicing are understanding pictures , comparing word meanings, identifying main ideas and identifying relationships.

April is National Poetry Month and the students are studying poetry! The students are learning how to see the world with a poet’s eyes; being keen observers and using not only our 5 senses, but also our hearts and our imaginations. The students are also learning about line breaks and how to hear the “music” in poems. They will learn more about thoughtful word choice and poetic language, and how to use comparisons to convey feeling. As a culminating project, the students will work with Mrs. L. to select poems by either Jack Prelutsky or Shel Silverstein. They will practice reading their poems with expression and fluency and insert their recorded recitals into a power point presentation accompanied by a digital drawing.

Math

The students have been learning about time. They have practiced telling time to five min. before and after the house, determining elapsed time, using a calendar and identifying equivalent expressions of time. Currently, the students are learning how to collect, organize and analyze data. The students are practicing giving surveys and collecting data and organizing it in either a tally table or a graph. Some graphs that the students are studying are pictographs, venn diagrams, bar graphs, line plot graphs and coordinate graphs. In our next chapter, we will study measurement and probability.

Social Studies

In social studies the second graders learned about economics in a unit called “People at Work.” The students learned about goods and services, producers and consumers, raw materials and factories, income and how to earn and use money and volunteerism. The students also learned about how businesses depend on each other, and trading and bartering. We are looking forward to our next field trip to TD Bank on Black Rock Turnpike in Fairfield. The students will participate in a community service program called “Wow Zone!” In addition to receiving a tour of the bank including the safe where all the money is kept, the students will learn about how to responsibly manage their money. They will practice using an ATM machine, and fill out their own deposit slip!

Currently, the students are studying some concepts of geography. They have learned about some different landforms and bodies of water specific to the United States. They have compared maps and globes and are learning how to read maps. They are also learning about many different kinds of maps, including a political map, a land and water map and a grid map.

Next, we will learn about natural resources: what they are, the difference between renewable, nonrenewable and inexhaustible resources, and talk about pollution and the importance of conservation. We will be participating in many related activities, including visiting Sport Hill Farm with the kindergarten, and celebrate all that we learned on Earth Day on April 22nd!

Science

After studying weather and how the seasons change, the students learned about what causes the seasons to change, as well as what causes day and night. We also learned about why there are 24 hours in a day, 365 days in a year, and 30 days in a month! Do you know?

After that, the students learned about how the planets got their names. Did you know that Jupiter, the largest planet, was named after the Roman god of all gods? (Or, according to Greek mythology, Zeus) And that Venus was named after the goddess of love and beauty? Also, do you know what the three rules for being a planet? Do you think Pluto should still be a planet?

Our next unit is connected to our social studies unit on natural resources and conservation. We will conduct a soil investigation and learn about composting by making mini-composters using recycled tennis ball canisters.

The theme in our anthologies these months has been “Around Town”. Many of the stories, including Chinatown, Big Bushy Mustache and Jamaica Louise James, had a multicultural element. In addition to practicing our comprehension strategies, such as asking questions, making predictions, summarizing, etc., we learned and practiced applying some comprehension skills, such as making judgments, outlining main idea and details, making inferences and drawing conclusions. Before we begin a new theme, “Amazing Animals,” we are taking a break to study fairytales! What is your favorite fairytale? Mine is “Rumpelstiltskin”!

In writing, after learning more about the parts of a fiction story and writing our own, the students did an author study of Angela Johnson. As we read many of her stories, such as The Sweet Smell of Roses, Do like Kayla and The Leaving Morning, we learned about comeback lines and elements of expression, such as ellipses. To apply what we learned, we revisited “small moment” stories and learned ways to lift the level of our writing, incorporating the important skill, “Show, don’t tell”. Ask your child to share what they know! Currently, we are studying the parts of a fairytale, such as “Once upon a time,” good vs. bad, fantasy or magic, happy ending and elements of three. After reading many different classic fairytales and funny, original versions of such classics, for example, The True Story of the Three Little Pigs, the second graders are writing their own. Our next unit of study will be “All about Books”.

Math

After studying double-digit addition and subtraction with and without regrouping, the students are now studying geometry. They are learning more about the difference between plane shapes and solid figures. They are also learning more about the concepts of congruence, orientation, symmetry, and fractions. As an extension activity for home, encourage your child to identify objects that approximate geometric solids (such as cylinders and cones). And keep studying those math facts! In Chapter 8, the students will study time, data and graphs.

Social Studies

The students recently finished up their study of culture. They learned that groups of people express their culture in many ways, including dress, music, games, language, etc. To celebrate the holidays and our cultural differences, we created a class book of holiday traditions. We also learned more about Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks and made a class book of “Martin’s Big Words”. As an introduction to our study of fairytales, we read many multicultural versions of the classic fairytale, “Cinderella,” such as the Korean Cinderella, Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters (African) and The Rough Faced Girl (Native American.) Unit 6 deals with economics. The students will learn more about goods and services, producers and consumers. Are you following the Olympics? Discuss this current event with your child. GO TEAM USA!

Science

The students have been having a blast learning all about matter! Did you know that everything in the whole universe is made up of matter! In addition to learning about the three states of matter, the students learned about some properties of each state and how adding heat and taking it away can make matter change states. We learned about reversible and irreversible mixtures and were “kitchen chemists,” making jello, play dough and waffles. Do you know what “oobleck” is? It’s an irreversible mixture of water and some “mystery matter”—ask your child for the recipe to make some at home! In our next unit we will study weather. How fitting, considering the severe weather we have been having!

Special thanks to Mrs. “L”, Mr. Mitchell, and Alexis of 8th grade for all of their hard work putting together this presentation of our bird study. We hope you enjoy it and learn some interesting facts about birds!  Click here to view our Field Guide.