Artist in Residency

Greetings 2^nd Grade Families-

This week has been very busy! On Monday, we began an artist in residency with Susan Armington. Susan is a mapping artist and is working with the second grade classes to create a map of the Dodge Nature Center pond. The students have been working on making plants, animals and insects around the pond. In two weeks, a poet will becoming to help the students create poems that go along with their pond creation.

This week, we also began Word Work in Daily 5. The students have been using the iPod touches to practice skills of the week. The app that we have been using is called Montessori Crosswords. The students love it! We continue to listen to reading, read to self, and meet with me in small guided reading groups. 

Today we became Word Detectives! We first sorted 8 words into either –or or –ore groups. Students then got out their Word Detective Notebooks and searched for more words in their books. A little while later, we came back together and made a bigger list under each category. We then used our detective skills to find a pattern to help us remember when to use each. The pattern the students found was “If the “or” sound is sandwiched between two other sounds, it is –or” and “If the “or” sound is at the end of the word, chances are its is –ore”. We did find a few exceptions but for the most part, our pattern was always true.

In math, we have been reviewing fact families, addition and subtraction. Our math block gets cut a little short due to our Artist in Residency, but we are getting all of our work done J

Conferences have been fabulous so far! It is so nice to see all of the families again and let them know how their child is doing. It is important that we work together as a team, to make sure that our children are getting the best education possible.

I will not be blogging tomorrow due to conferences but will do my best to post again on Friday.

Friday is the Moreland Masquerade!!! Dress up and go Trick-or-treating on our trail through the hallway! I hope to see you there!!!!