Welcome Back from Thanksgiving Break!

Dear Parents,

I can't believe we've made it to the last week of November!  I hope that you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving Break!

The week before Thanksgiving, our class enjoyed reviewing nonfiction text features by "performing" Text Feature surgery!  Students were asked to go through nonfiction magazines to cut out examples of text features of text we've been studying, like heading/subheadings, photographs, captions, charts or diagrams, and bold faced words.  Students also were asked how these text features help them better comprehend the text!  To see all of our text feature surgery pictures, check our class Shutterfly site later this week!

On the Friday before break, the second grade worked on STEM projects related to the founding of Georgia, which we'll be learning about next in Social Studies.  Students were asked to review/research the five regions of Georgia, imagine they were settlers who needed to create a settlement in one of the regions, and use necessary materials to build a settlement!  Here are some of the team STEM creations:

Our class newsletter for the week was e-mailed out this afternoon, and you can also find it under News You Can Use!  Please read it carefully to see what we're learning about this week!  I'll post this week's spelling sight words and rule of the week under Homework Resources.

I'm looking forward to finishing second quarter STRONG over the next three and a half weeks!

Mrs. Kidd

Monday News

Dear Parents,

Thank you to Mrs. Toma and Mrs. Shah for volunteering as parent collaboration helpers today and doing an Adventures in Art lesson with our class while I was in 2nd grade collaboration.  The class loved learning about Piet Mondrain, and I appreciated planning and data discussion time with the other second grade teachers!

We are in need of more donations for Thanksgiving food baskets for Fair Oaks Elementary.  All donation items need to be sent in by Wednesday mornings, when baskets will be collected and prepared for delivery to Fair Oaks.  Fair Oaks Elementary is our sister school...and is not far from East Side.  The students and families at Fair Oaks may not have access to enough food throughout the holiday, without the donation of baskets from our school.  Please help out if you are able!

Here's what we've been doing in class:

In math, we're working so hard on adding and subtracting 2-digit numbers!  Here's a look at the strategies we've been learning and using!

In Social Studies, we're learning all about economics and the distribution/allocation of goods and services.  We're learning about scarcity, first-come/first-served, majority rule, sharing, and lottery.  A study guide all about economics was sent home today in your child's HOOT binder!

In Reading Workshop, we've been learning all about nonfiction text features--how to locate them and how they help us to better understand nonfiction text!  We'll be doing "text feature surgery" later this week!

While on maternity leave, I prepared STEM BINS for our class to use for extra enrichment/challenge opportunities during morning work, after finishing other work early, and more.  These bins provide challenge and extension opportunities for students to build, create, construct, and problem solve.  I introduced the STEM BINS to our class last week, and the kids are already LOVING them!  Thank you to the parents that have already donated refill supplies for some of the bins...we can't wait to learn and grow with these this year!

As we draw close to Thanksgiving Break, please know that I am so thankful for each of you and your amazing children!  We have a great class.  I hope that you have safe travels and a restful, wonderful break next week!

Love,

Mrs. Kidd

Monday News!

Dear Parents,

Please don't forget that tomorrow is Election Day, which is a student holiday!  Enjoy an extra day with your kid(s)!

Please sign-up on our class Shutterfly page to donate items for our Thanksgiving basket and STEM Bin supplies.  Our school will be making Thanksgiving food baskets again this year for families at East Side and our sister school Fair Oaks Elementary, who are in need of food during this holiday season!  Over the past few weeks, I have been putting together STEM Bins for our students to use during morning work, free time, and for enrichment!  I will post pictures of our STEM bins soon, but we are in need of extra supplies to use as refills when the consumable supplies are used up!

This week, we'll be studying the same spelling pattern and sight words as last week, as we did not have time in my opinion to practice enough in class last week.  I did not feel like our class was quite ready to be tested over this rule last week, because due to lots of schedule changes, we didn't have enough instruction time for that skill in class!  We'll practice more this week and test on Thursday!

Please check out this week's edition of The Weekly Hoot, which you can also download from the News You Can Use!  Students have been asked to do some research for their EXPERT books at home this week!  Please do some research on-line at home or even take your child to the library!

Copies of our addition and subtraction strategies are being sent home to help you better understand the place value based strategies we are learning in class.  You can download an additional copy of the strategies under our Homework Resources tab!

I'm looking forward to another great week with the Outstanding Owls!

Mrs. Kidd

What a Week!

Dear Parents!

We had an AWESOME week in second grade!  Our Fall Party and Centers were GREAT...thank you to all of those who sent in donations and/or came in and volunteered to help out and spend time with our sweet class.  Thanks to our great room moms for organizing the afternoon for our owls!

We've been learning new addition strategies for adding 2-digit numbers.  These are based on the place value concepts that we've been learning all year.  While these strategies may be new to us adults, they build strong mental math skills and true understanding of the concepts of addition and subtraction.  Explanations and examples of these addition strategies were sent home on Friday to help with next week's homework!

We have been learning all about energy and how energy makes matter move and change.  We made flipbooks all about energy in class!

We started our first EXPERT BOOKS.  Students chose topics they know all about and can teach others about!  We have started writing chapters, or paragraphs, that have a clear topic sentence, three supporting details, and a concluding sentence.  While it takes some practice for students to include these elements in their writing, this format will help students to organize their thoughts.  Better yet--this corresponds to work we will be doing in reading workshop as we move towards identifying the main idea and supporting details of nonfiction text!

In Reading Workshop, we started learning all about nonfiction text features!  It's important that students learn how to locate the text features AND more importantly, how to use them to dive deeper into the comprehension of nonfiction text!  We'll be learning about:  table of contents, headings, subheadings, photographs, captions, timelines, maps, diagrams, charts, bold/highlighted words, glossaries, and more!

It's been a GREAT week!

Mrs. Kidd