Snow Falls on WHE

We have had a very snowy week at WHE. Snow covered the school and roads and we settled in for a great week of learning. Our weekly reading theme has been Animal Survival. The snow really helped us get into the spirit as we discussed how animals could survive in such cold weather. The book "Goose's Story" kicked off our week. It is a great award winning short story that deals with an injured goose and how we can help.

This week was also the kick-off for our new Social Studies unit in China. We all had a great time learning the culture, geography, and art of this country. The Great Wall was of special interest to the class as we looked at several pictures of this 1,500 mile long structure. Mrs. Little does a great job of organizing our week and we were able to have a great celebration on Wednesday. We tried all kinds of Chinese food and were able to "practice" using chopsticks. We had a great time as we celebrated the Chinese New Year.

Math is taking another great step. We have started working on division. It's another skill that we are adding to our list. We are building on our mulitplication skills and have come a long way learning abour arrays. This is an exciting time as the second graders grow each day. The reading series is taking us on an exciting journey as we look at helping planet earth next week.

BRRRRR!!

Wow, It's been a while since I've posted a new blog. A lot has happened at WHE! We had a long 2 week Christmas break and finished a unit in our reading series. Our last day of school 2008 was a snow day. We celebrated with our belated Christmas party on Tuesday January 6th. The class enjoyed some great treats and had a great party with Christmas songs and a gift exchange.

We jumped right back into the school year with a unit on a dance school in New York. We are currently in the middle of a great reading unit centered around the book "Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type". It's a great Caldecott award winning short story that the class is really enjoying. All of our vocabulary, spelling, and phonics skills are centered on that book.

The cold weather isn't slowing down our math skills. Our new unit is really heating up!! We have started doing three digit addition and some subtracting of tens and ones. It is really a challenging unit that develops a lot of growth in our math skills. The calculator is an important tool in our new unit. We are learning and using many new skills.

We are also studying the moon and its phases in science. We did a great experiment in the all purpose room with the entire second grade class. We had the entire grade sit in a giant circle - we turned out all the lights - and had a light hit a ball in the middle of the circle. The grade then drew the phase of the moon from their perspective. We plan to post these along the hallway to show all the phases of the moon from crescent waning to gibbous waxing.

We moved our class room around over break and now have a dedicated reading center and writing center. The new quarter started this week along with a few schedule changes. We now have a writing block just before lunch that will focus specifically on a weekly writing skill. Last quarter's schedule placed writing just before dismissal at the end of the day. We are now focusing on a center for the last half hour. We will have a reading, listening, writitng, and computer center to close our day.

Report cards go home this week and the class is doing great. Our "Response to Intervention" plans are progressing. This ensures that all of the students get all of the help they need to grow and develop. I am really looking forward to what this great class can do!