Trick or Treat

Halloween is on the loose at White Hall Elementary. We had a great week with Halloween crafts and pumpkin studies. Our class read a great book called Farfallina and Marcel for our weekly language unit. We learned about friendship and wrote a letter to a friend describing our Halloween Costume. We studied bats in science and introduced plural possessive nouns. It was a tricky subject for second graders and we really started connecting the parts of a sentence.

In math we started a new unit discussing measurement and how we use it in the real world. Our week concluded with a great Halloween party with scary monster music and fun games. A great time was had by all as we kicked off the second quarter of our school year.

A Short Week at WHE

With the celebration of Columbus Day Monday and an SIP on a shortened Friday, WHE learners had an atypical short week. Our Language Arts Unit took us to coastal Australia as we learned about Harbor Seal Pups. We discovered many endangered animals as we took our LA unit one step further and discovered endangered species all around us. Our science unit coincided with this study as we learned how to "save a whale" if we ever come upon one in White Hall. (The class decided that it would be unlikely).

Our math unit took us deeper into money and time. We have been telling time to the 5 minute mark for some time and now we have started telling time to the exact minute. We are all surprised at how easy it came to us. The Promethean board has been indispensable as we use it in all facets of our day. With our new "egg" activotes we have been able to all participate in great math units with time and money. We look forward to developing our skills with this new technology.

FALL IS HERE!!!

Cool weather has hit the North Greene area and the class is breaking out the sweaters and long sleeves. We have completed our first unit in our language arts curriculum and started a new unit with a book called the "The Tiny Seed" by Eric Carle. We also completed unit 2 in math and made many new discoveries with addition and subtraction. The class is beginning to correlate these skills and anticipate a new unit where we discover some new skills including shortcuts in our addition and subtraction along with measuring skills.

We had a shortened week due to our regional teacher's institute. This bi-annual institute is held at Jerseyville High School and includes teachers from Macoupin, Greene, Calhoun and Jersey counties. It promises to be an interesting day. Next week is also shortened as we celebrate Columbus Day on Monday. We did a few Columbus related activities on our Promethean board this week.

Our class will receive our "ActiVotes" next week. This will add another dimension to our Promethean Board and will allow us to get immediate feedback from our students as we introduce new topics and teach 2nd grade skills. It's my intention to keep every student engaged as we develop as second graders. Our team has put together a list of skills that each student will understand at the end of the year and we push hard to ensure success for each student. If you're around WHE, come and see me for a complete "goal" list for our students.

HOMECOMING WEEK

WHE's second grade had another great week as we studied immigrants in our country and worked on a story called "My Name is Yoon". It was a great introduction to our differences and our similarities. We added some new "fact family" skills to our math repertoire. We've concluded our work on animals and their homes and culminated this unit with an internet study on reptiles and their habitat.

We celebrated North Greene's homecoming this Friday with a blue and white day and our annual homecoming parade - GO SPARTANS!!!

It's hard to believe that it's already October and we have just finished the first of our six units in language arts. This year is really flying by and our class has really picked up on all of our procedures and activities in second grade. I am really proud of our class and how well we're progressing. Hope to see you all at the football game.