Good Afternoon,
I am excited to be back in the classroom next week. I hope you all have a great weekend. Here is Parker's post for this week.
I am writing as I finish up the last of my two solo weeks in Tom’s room. It has been no less than a truly wonderful experience––I’ve been honored to teach your children these past two weeks. Thanks to each of you for your wonderful kids.
In Math this week, first graders completed the Number Corner Assesssment 3 on Tuesday and Wednesday, which reviewed students’ number sense, time telling, and the geometry we have covered so far. On Thursday and Friday, we returned to addition and subtraction, working on addition skill of “Making 10 and some more”, e.g., 8+4=(8+2)+2. Students have been exploring problems like this with adult or baby penguins, which has been enjoyable for all. Mad Minute continues, with each student, again, making progress. I am amazed at how each student’s computational fluency is increasing day by day.
In Writing, students learned a new skill to add more details to their information books: assuming the role of a curious reader by asking questions of their topic, and then answering these questions in their writing. Students focused on volume in their writing––looking to stretch their capacity to produce lots of details and elaborating on their topics. I told them that I had read that six, seven and eight-year olds can produce a five page booklet in one day of writing, and they took that challenge head on! They produced volumes of work, which we shared at the end of Writing on Wednesday. Tom will continue this unit next week, when students will learn more techniques to structure their writing through chapters and tables of contents. This has been a great opportunity for each student to share their expert knowledge––indeed, they are each an expert on something!I have been reading “Juana and Lucas”, an illustrated chapter book about a girl growing up in Bogota, Colombia, as a class read aloud this spring. On Wednesday, we started a project inspired by Juana’s illustration of her father—a hand-drawn portrait of him accompanied by all the things she finds special about him. Students chose someone special in their life, outside of school, about whom they care a lot, and illustrated this person, and wrote details about the things that make this person special. Students will take this work home today. They turned out really well––and this was meaningful for many students to think about.
I will be in Tom’s room next week, helping out here and there, as well as visiting some other classrooms before I leave WES for the year on April 15. I hope you all have a wonderful rest of the school year.
Best,
Parker
Ms Figdor's Math Update:
This week in second grade math we explored polygons. We discovered that shapes are named by their attributes. This week we took a deeper look at triangles and quadrilaterals. We learned that all triangles have three sides, three angles, and three vertices. However, even with these common attributes triangles can look different. They can also be described and named by the length of their sides and the size of their angles. For example, a triangle with no equal sides is called a scalene triangle, a triangle with two equal sides is called an isosceles triangle, and a triangle with all equal sides is called an equilateral triangle. We sorted triangles and quadrilaterals by these attributes. For example, quadrilaterals with right angles versus those with none. During the number corner this month we will be exploring fractions and building fluency with our addition and subtraction facts. Next week during math we will focus on area and learn how to find the area of various polygons.
