Weekly Update for May 15th-19th

Hi Families,
​
Wow, only 4 more weeks left of school! We had yet another great week of learning. We dove deep into our study of insects, both in Literacy and in Science. We wrapped up our sixth math unit. Our reading specialist and I began administering some end-of-year assessments to see how much students have progressed. We’ve all been very busy!

​Important Upcoming Dates

• Thursday, May 25th: 2nd Grade Field Trip to Fenway Park in Boston. Our class is allowed 1 additional chaperone. Please email me if you are interested, and I will draw a name from a hat next week.

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Students checking out our terrarium of future butterflies (currently all in chrysalis form)

​Community Building
This week we revisited some expectations on sharing, learning, and collaborating. Students did well to adjust their actions. For example, some students were having trouble being a respectful audience and taking on the role of a listener instead of a contributor. I reminded students that ongoing commentary during instruction, share sessions, or presentations makes it difficult for others to focus on what is being said. Students course-corrected effectively.

Literacy 
We continued our informational unit on Insects this week. Highlights:

• Read aloud 2 informational texts about insects: “Social Insects: Ants and Termites,” “Insects that Glow and Sing,” and “Armored Tanks of the Insect World;”
• Learned and practiced new insect vocabulary words, such as “emit,” “bioluminescence,” “adapt,” and “mimicry;”
• Answered literal, inferential, and evaluative questions about each text, such as, “Why do male grasshoppers sing to female grasshoppers?” and “Why is it important for beetles to have two sets of wings?” 
• Practiced fluency with a decodable story, “Ross Gets Help,” relay reading as a class and with a partner.

Writing
We used our writing time to deepen our understanding of insects. Highlights:

• Planned an informational narrative about life as an insect, organizing our thoughts into a graphic organizer;
• Wrote sentences about an imaginary insect that uses mimicry (when an animal copies features of a plant or animal);
• Learned about syntax (the structure of a sentence) and using adverbs to describe verbs –practiced using adverbs and adjectives in sentences.​

Phonics
We began unit 14 of Fundations on the sound /ou/, which is spelled with “ow” or “ou.” Highlights:

• Learned to “flex the vowel sound” in words in which a vowel or vowel team could make different sounds;
• Practiced reading and spelling single-syllable and multisyllabic words with “ow” and “ou,”  such as “shower,” “grown,” “count;” and “rebound;”
• Learned new trick words and compared their sounds to their unexpected spellings: Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday;
• Played a silly charades game where students acted out words with the “ow” or “ou” spelling to practice reading them from a list.

For at-home Phonics information and practice:

• Current:  Fundations Home Support Packet for Unit 14
• Review: Fundations Home Support Packet for Unit 13

Math
We wrapped up our work in Unit 6 on Geometry, Time, and Money. We finished the last section (D) on Money. Highlights:

• Found the value of various combinations of coins both less than and more than $1;
• Solved addition and subtraction story problems in the context of money;
• Represented story problems using situational drawings to capture the premise and improve understanding;
• Used addition and subtraction to solve one- and two-step story problems;
• Played a Ms. Kimball-original game to practice fluency with finding the value of coins and skip counting by 5s, 10s, and 25s.

For at-home Math information and practice:

• Current: Illustrative Math Family Support Materials for Unit 6
• Review:  Illustrative Math Family Support Materials for Unit 5

Science
We continued our unit on Organisms and Their Habitats. Highlights:

• Watched and discussed videos of animals and plants in habitats;
• Learned that plants and animals depend on each other; for example, plants need animals for pollination and seed dispersal while animals need plants for food, shelter, and places to lay their eggs or nurse their young;
• Explored a colony of leaf-cutting ants (on a video) and examined how they work together for the greater good of their colony.

Check out some student work!

Below are some samples of the imaginary insects students came up with that use mimicry to protect themselves.

​​Thank you for taking the time to read the entire update! Please reach out with any questions. Have a great weekend!