Happy Spring Break!

What a great couple of weeks it's been! It's been so wonderful being able to spend more time outside, and lots of exciting events happened in our class this week! We have been very busy travelling the world, searching for leprechauns, and becoming researchers!

Students did an awesome job on their geometry assessments! We are now in a (rather long) unit reviewing adding and subtracting numbers above 100, estimation, and working with money. Some great things to practice and review at home right now are counting back change, using a benchmark to estimate a number of items, and working with ungrouping when subtracting. One thing that students really enjoyed in math this week was working with estimation while figuring out the mode, median, range, and mean of estimates in our classroom. We will also be taking some time over the next few weeks to look at function boxes and discuss finding an unknown addition or subtraction rule.

I have had a great time travelling around the world with our class! So far, we have visited Antarctica (brrr!), Asia (ask your 2nd grader about the kite that he or she made!), Africa (did you know the world's largest diamond was found there?), Australia (mmm...fairy bread!), and Europe (just in time for St. Patrick's Day!) After the break we will tour North and South America. Thanks so much to Gretchen and Carrie for coming in to do a baking activity with the class in Africa! We really enjoyed the sweet cornbread! As you begin to help your child prepare for the geography assessment on April 1, some things to think about are the location of the seven continents and oceans (on the assessment, students will use a word bank to label a blank world map), as well as fun and interesting facts about each of the continents. Students should also be able to use a compass rose to answer questions about the cardinal directions.

We began our big animal research project this week. Students are working in pairs to research an assigned animal. We spent some time yesterday researching on the computer, and some time this morning taking notes out of books (the class is becoming very efficient at using the index in the back of a book to locate information!). I hope that you will take some time with your child to check out the National Geographic for Kids link to the side. This is the website that we used for research yesterday, and it has so much great information about many animals. Students especially enjoyed the short animal videos on the site!

We will take the Monday after spring break to review Daily 5...the second graders have gotten a little "comfortable" during the final trimester and seem to need a Daily 5 crash course. Reading groups will resume Tuesday. Students did not receive a new spelling sort this week. We are continuing to practice dictionary use in our classroom. If students are doing writing at home and you have a children's dictionary handy, please encourage your child to use guide words and alphabetical order to search for words.

I realized today that I neglected to send out a Scholastic order for the month of March...so sorry about that! I will send out an April order the day after spring break, and will try to squeeze in one more order this school year, probably at the end of April. Be sure to stock up with books for the summer months! I received several e-mails back stating interest in a summer book club, so stay tuned for information about that. Also, please let me know if you are interested in a tutor list for the summer months. I am able to offer tutoring, and I know that several other staff members tutor and would be great as well if you would like for your child to have some one-on-one practice in reading, math, or writing over the summer.

I hope that you all have a magnificent spring break, full of sunny days and fun times! Thanks, as always, for all that you do!