2nd Grade MP3 Campus

School Data is open on the 1st for parent reviews. These are due by the 5th. We hope the cut and paste grade level newsletter will be helpful to supplement your remote learning plan reviews. Thank you for submitting in a timely manner and if you need help please reach out to your SLPC.

Topics: Fact fluency for sums and differences within 20, thinking flexibly with numbers, arrays, skip counting

Activities: Students focused on foundational facts as well as mastering the derived facts by using strategies such as make a 10 and pretend a 10. Students self-assessed their current fluency level and also worked with the teacher to assess their current level of strategy use and basic fluency. The class as a whole made fantastic growth both with strategy identification and usage and with increasing their fluency level. Other math tasks this month included pictorial algebra problems, story problems, fact families, and introducing the idea of arrays and identifying them within our classroom and daily lives.

Teacher Tip: "Think Addition" is a great way to prompt your student to use their strong addition fact knowledge base to help them solve subtraction problems.

Teacher Info: Mrs. Kurashige, skurashige@meridian.wednet.edu

Topics: story ideas (not too big or too small), spelling resources (Word Wall, personal dictionary, word lists), 5 Star rubric goals (start sentences with a capital letter, end sentences with an end mark, space between words, proper letter formation, writing makes sense), editing marks, informational writing vs. stories, graphic organizers

Activities: Students continued to work hard on our story writing unit in this review period. They took their mini books through our writing process and enjoyed sharing their work. A big focus has been spelling resources. Students are now using their personal dictionaries and word lists to support their spelling. We have also been adding sight words to our word wall.

Now our focus has turned to information writing. We explored many informational books and talked about why they are different from the stories. Students have each chosen an animal that they want to write a report on. Students are now using a graphic organizer to organize their information.

Teacher Tip: Ask your student to score a piece of their writing with the 5 Star Rubric. Please do not hesitate to reach out if you need another copy of the rubric!

Teacher Info: Mrs. Giesen, jgiesen@meridian.wednet.edu

Topics: Our learning objectives this month were the following: Experience solid materials as pieces, grains, and particles, observe the behavior of small solids in various settings, combine and separate solid materials of different particle sizes, compare the behavior of solids and liquids in similar settings.

Activities: Students made oobleck to explore a substance that exhibited properties of both a solid and a liquid. Oobleck is a non-Newtonian substance; that is a substance that changes its properties when pressure is applied. Students worked in centers that explored small solids. Students separated solids and learned that solids can be very small. Students observed the properties of solids when they put them in bottles and shook, rolled, and tipped them. Students used printed “screens” to assess which size they would need to separate a variety of solid mixtures. Students explored a variety of liquids and solids to see if they would soak, slide, or pile up. They discovered that solids and liquids can share some properties. The learned new properties of solids such as: has shape, can pile up, can spread, and slide. They learned new liquid properties such as: wet, soak, slide, can be stirred and spreadable.

Teacher Info: Mrs DeWaard, hdewaard@meridian.wednet.edu

Topics: Transmission of motion, transfer of energy, digital tools and technological systems, use of motion and tilt sensors, programming sounds to coordinate with movement, explore WeDo Construction Kits. Vocabulary - motor, sensors, gears. Engineering and Design process.

Activities: Specific Builds: Finish Line

Engineering and Design: Students create programmable models to demonstrate the knowledge and operation of digital tools and technological systems. Describe how energy changes from electrical (the computer and motor) to mechanical (physical movement each model) Modify design and programing to solve problems.

Finish Line: Build and program a mechanical device that will move a flag back and forth which is activated by a motion sensor as car crosses the finish line. Students designed and built gravity forced vehicles and explored ramp configuration to simulate drag car races.

Challenge Project: Paper Span Bridge- Students worked with a partner to design and build a paper bridge to hold a maximum amount of weight. Constraints: use only the supplies provided to the team (5 sheets of copy paper, 6 inches of tape, and scissors). The bridge structure must be at least 8 inches (width of a sheet of paper) wide, span 15 inches and be suspended at least 5 inches off the table. Analysis of each structure’s success was based on the maximum weight the structure was able to hold.

Challenge Project: 12 Card Tower- Students worked with a partner to design and build a free-standing paper tower for maximum height. Constraints: use only the supplies provided to the team (12 4x6 index cards, 12 inches of tape, and scissors). Structure must be free standing (cannot be attached to anything).Analysis of each structure’s success was based on the maximum height of the structure.

Teacher Tip: Robotics, Engineering and Design Topics and activities can be included in your independent Science Class review.

Teacher Info: Mrs. Brannen - lbrannen@meridian.wednet.edu

Topics: Owl at Home, phonics/language art skills, reading comprehension, informational reading

Activities: Through our use of phonemic awareness lessons, students are mastering their ability to isolate sounds, replace sounds to create new words, rhyme words and identify syllables. Reflecting on Arnold Lobel's works, students started a study of the book, Owl at Home. Dialogue scripts between Owl and the narrator were created to allow students to work as partners to cover the five stories found within this book. These have been a fantastic opportunity for working on fluency and expressive reading! Students even had the chance to read aloud to an audience when they shared with the first graders. Additional language arts skills related to these stories included sequencing of events, more work with rhyming words, alphabetical order, antonyms, compound words and vocabulary. Reading partners also used 24 "poke" cards to read and answer comprehension questions about the stories. As a means to work on reading informational text, students worked on a non-fiction unit called "All about Owls". Through independent reading and a power point presentation, students learned more about the unique physical features of the owl, predator/prey of the owl, life cycle of the owl, etc. This unit included students reading about the Great-horned Owl, the Elf Owl and the Snowy Owl and then independently recording three details about each that stood out. Imagine their surprise when they even found an owl pellet on the playground during their recess time! The month concluded by making our own owl puppets. These, too, can be used with the scripts to retell the story!

Teacher Tip: Students are sometimes motivated by reading logs or reading incentives. You can use this "little owls" form to keep a record of books read independently in the next month. Keep up the great reading! https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Little-Owls-Reading-Log-Freebie-1032569?st=b505e4a2a268a7882c9db063e972f942

Teacher Info: Mrs. Elgersma- gelgersma@meridian.wednet.edu