Our Caterpillars are Growing!

We have had a very busy week this week in second grade! Our larvae continue to munch away and are growing by the day! We continue to make written and picture observations of their growth. In science we are studying the stages of the life cycle and even made a life cycle using various types of pasta! The second important thing that we have been studying is the difference between butterflies and moths.
Good News!... Reading groups will begin Monday the 20th! We are very excited to begin and start getting into routine. I want to stress the importance of the reading group folder. The night your child brings this home they are to read it and return it the very next day. Our first and second grade policy about folders is that if they are not ready and returned on that next day, your child will be asked to turn a card.
In writer’s workshop we have been writing our first published personal narratives! The true stories about our lives have been fun to read and fun to write! This writing requires we put our sentence writing skills to work! This week we have also begun to finally plan and write our letters! This planning, writing, editing, making a clean copy, and addressing of envelopes will take us into next week. It is fun to hear the class talk about how fun it is to write and “snail mail” letters!
In math we have been super busy! We have been talking about equations and how “partner” numbers are interchangeable in what we call a fact family. This week each table brainstormed together all types of combinations of numbers that would equal a number given to them. After all of their brainstorming… each table worked together to write all of the equations on strips; those were then connected to make “equation chains”. This week we met a new math friend named Bob… Bob is an alligator who is helping us to understand greater than and less than. We have been working on place value to order numbers.
Just a small thank you for helping your child to complete and send back math homework! Each child gets an opportunity to share their strategies used on math homework, we call this math talk, each day with many different classmates using a cooperative learning strategy called Mix, Pair, and Share!

*If you have not contacted our room moms with your child’s contact information and would like to be a part of the class directory, please contact Amanda Elo at ajaveyard@yahoo.com. They are putting together a resource that can be beneficial for play dates, parties, and other get togethers.

Coming up… this weekend there is a butterfly tagging even 9/18 at the Baker Wetlands. The even will be from 7:30-11:30 am. This event is open to the public!