Monday, November 12, 2012

Good afternoon!

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend! 

This week's IA: Art

Next week's IA: Music

We have so much exciting learning going on right now.

Reader's Workshop

One of the comprehension strategies we are working on right now is determining importance. We know that readers need to be able to decide what details are important and what details are unimportant but interesting. We practice this skill while we read persuasive books and while we read articles about the Starlighting. While your child is reading at night, as him to tell you what details he thinks are important in the book he's reading. 

Writer's Workshop

This week, we are beginning a new genre study. We will be learning about and writing persuasive letters. Just in time for the holidays :) We're learning how to apply what we learned when writing personal narratives, to our persuasive letters. For example, we know that writers write about what is important to them. So, our letters will be written about a topic that is important to us. Also, we know that writers stick to one topic. Our letters will be very entertaining and we can't wait to share them with you!

Math

This unit, we are reviewing skills around money and time. These are both very important skills for second grade. Please encourage your child to help you with simple time and money problems at home. Maybe ask her to tell you when the clock shows what time to eat dinner, or get ready for bed, or leave for school. Of course, this would be better practice done on an analog clock :)

Expedition

Our second case study has been launched. To continue our in depth study of community, we will be learning about how the Castle Rock Star and Starlighting define community. On Saturday, your child will be collecting data about community by interviewing the people who attend the Starlighting. We are going to work with the Castle Rock Chamber of Commerce to help generate questions for our interview. Then, once we have conducted the interviews, we will compile the data and then share it with the Chamber. We are very excited for this fieldwork. In addition to gathering data, we will be teaching the community about the history and importance of the Star and Starlighting ceremony. 

To gain more background information, we participated in a Gallery Walk. This consisted of reading various newspaper articles about the Star and Starlighting. Some of the articles date back to the 1930's and 1940's.