Welcome to 2017!!!

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Welcome back to a new year!  It was a great December, full of celebration and fun! Now, as January chills our bodies, our minds must heat up with lots of new learning!

Math:  We are onto Unit 4, which now combines all four operations (+-x/) in solving story problems.  We are learning beginning algebra and how fun that can be!

Writing:  We continue to write personal essays and we are learning the formal structure that supports writing a good essay.  Literary essays are the final portion of this unit which we are aiming to get to by the end of this month.

Reading:  In combining our unit of informational reading with our social studies unit on government, it makes for some great classroom discussions on how our government works and why we can have faith in it!  We also get to see how informational writing has different structures used to convey information to the reader.

Science:  Mr. Bowen is teaching away on the Sun, Moon, and Earth unit!  Ask your students about what they are learning and let me know if you have any questions!

Keep up that reading every night and MobyMax fluency practice!  We are seeing great gains in all of our students!  Thanks for sending me such a SUPER-DUPER bunch of KIDS!!

Fall Update

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img_0775Here’s What’s Going On!

First and Very Important:

Study today/tonight for our economics test tomorrow!  Lots of vocabulary terms to know and explain.

Next:

Halloween Party is October 31, from 2:20 – 3:20 pm.  

Costumes can be brought to school in a bag.  We will dismiss for recess that day at 2 pm so students may go out for recess and/or get their costumes on for the party.  Parents are welcome to set up for the party at that time. Please, no weapons, clowns, or ultra scarey costumes should be worn at school.  Thanks!

Curriculum Update:

Math: Unit 1 test is done.  Data binders should have come home for parents to peruse.  The goal behind these binders is to help your student self-monitor their growth through the year and feel proud of their accomplishments.  We are on to Unit 2, which is multiplication.  Watch for parent explanation sheets of methods to come home.  Hopefully, we may get a few student explanations filmed for the blog too!

Reading: Q is the level your student is considered proficient at this time of year.  Be sure your student is exercising their reading muscles nightly for at least 20-25 minutes!

Writing: We have turned in a published personal narrative and now we are on to our favorite! Writing realistic fiction! Students are off and running, developing characters and believable plots for their stories.

Science: After our econ test, we start our science unit off with the study of matter! We’ve got lots of great hands on experiments coming up!

Finally:

Just want our parents to know what a great group of kids we are!  We have been getting “Outstanding” Awards from Mrs. Reagan and other teachers, and lots of compliments too!  Everywhere we go, we want to show that we are “Gentle Giants” – leaders who make good choices without needing a lot of reminders.

Have a great few weeks!

 

A New Way to Study Vocabulary

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We have been learning tons of new vocabulary in our economics unit in social studies.  Words like “profit”, “scarcity”, “supply”, “demand”, “consumer”, “producer” and more can be hard to remember. Today we invited Mrs. Huizenga’s class to come and play Quizlet with us, a cool computer game we play in teams to learn the vocab.  Here’s a snippet of what it’s like to play! We have a blast!

 

Quizlet from Lynn Quigley on Vimeo.

 

Bill of Rights

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Here is a fun Bill of Rights video posted by someone named Kristy Edgar.  Sadly, we don’t know which middle school made this video, but they did a great job!! It’s a great way to understand how the Bill of Rights protects us as Americans every day. Enjoy!

Livin’ in the USA!

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Screen Shot 2015-03-21 at 7.19.06 AMHello quadbloggers, students, and families!  Just a quick post to make you aware of a new page that has been added to our classroom blog!  It’s our “Regions of the USA” page.

What Are Regions?

 

Our 4th graders have been learning about the 5 major regions of the United States in social studies. Our country is so big, it can be divided down into smaller regions and this makes it easier for us to study and learn about the culture, climate, landforms, natural resources, products, and landmarks of each area.  Some geographers divide it into even smaller regions. The 5 major regions we have studied are the northeast, southeast, midwest, west and southwest regions of the U. S. We worked hard to research lots of neat facts about the area we were each assigned. We also learned some awesome new technology skills as well!

Cool! How Do I Get There?

Just use our page guide (as the image at the top of this post shows) to click on the page and then you will see each student listed in our class. Click on their name and you will see the hard work each student did creating a google slide presentation. 

Market Day a Huge Success!!

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Thursday, February 7th, was a day of much excitement as the second graders had their Market Day.  Market Day is the culmination of an economics unit in social studies, where the students are learning about the general ideas of wants and needs and how communities provide goods and services to fill those.  Students design a product that second graders may need, and after approval from their boss (Mrs. Q), they go into production making these items.  Market Day involves creating an open market atmosphere, where the entire second grade becomes producers and consumers!  Some students sold all of their product right away, creating a scarcity.  Other students eventually sold everything, and yet others, never sold out and had to put their items on sale.  Every group made a profit!  Thanks to all of the donations from parents!  It was a great day!

To see our catalog click here: Market Day

Market Day!

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Market Day is the culmination of our Economics Unit in social studies!  It is one of the students’ favorite activities!  Students learn about producers and consumers and what it takes to use natural, human and capital resources to make their product. We talk about scarcity and profit as the students make decisions about how much to sell their product for.  Students learn a lot about cooperation in a group and how to really work hard to get work done.  The end result is that we throw open all second grade classroom doors and students get to market their wares!  We even have sales and scrolling advertisements!  Below are some pictures from our day!

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Diversity Day Reminder

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TN_no_thailand_9Parents,

Just a reminder that tomorrow, Monday, Dec. 13, we are celebrating Diversity Day!  In social studies, we are studying about our country and how we are a “melting pot” made up of many ethnicities.  Your child is invited to bring in anything relating to his/her ancestor’s backgrounds!  Pictures, food, money, clothing – all items are welcome to bring to share in our celebration of our commonalities and our differences!  We will have a show and tell of sorts, and find the countries of our ancestors on our big classroom map.  Thank you for sharing your family’s culture with us!!