Marble Party!

Happy Thursday! I hope that you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving and are staying warm on this first week of December! We remain very busy in 2nd grade...here is what we are studying!

In math, students continue to work on place value and two-digit addition (with and without regrouping). Students had the opportunity to design their own strategies, as well as to learn some new ones. Today, we made the connection between money (dollars, dimes, and pennies) and our math drawings (quick hundreds, ten sticks, and ones). We will contine to look at place value, money, rounding, and estimation for another few days.

We take the last three weeks of school before winter break to cover some topics in health. This week, students are studying ways to stay safe in different situations. Next week, we will take a look at how to stay well during the cold and flu season. During the week of December 13, we will discuss the dangers of drugs and practice different ways to "say no". Today, we were excited to have a guest speaker come to our classroom to review what we studied last week and the week before about Native American cultures!

I can't give you much information on our current writing project, as it is a holiday surprise...but, I can tell you that your 2nd graders are working very hard and putting together some great pieces. We continue our author study of Janell Cannon, and will be doing some work with cause and effect in some of her books next week. During our language minilessons, we are working on the use of prefixes and suffixes.

The big news in our classroom as that we have earned our third marble party of the year! After an almost unanimous decision, students will be able to wear pajamas to school tomorrow and bring a (small) stuffed animal to act as a reading buddy. We will celebrate the marble party (and the upcoming winter season!) with hot chocolate and a Janell Cannon video in the afternoon.

Thanks, as always, for all you do!