Classroom Summary for October 28 - November 1

Here's what we did this week...

In Miss Varrell's Fundations group this week we discussed what parts of speech are. We learned that in second grade we are responsible for understanding nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. Throughout the year we will learn more about these parts of speech. We spent most of our practice time working with vowel and consonant suffixes: suffixes that change a noun from its singular form to its plural form (-s, -es), suffixes that change verb tenses (-ed, -ing), suffixes that show comparisons (-er, -est), and suffixes that need a base word to drop its silent e before attaching the suffix (-ed, -ing). But that wasn't all! We also learned some new vowel pairs: oo, ue, ew, and ou. We will begin Unit 5 in our Fundations program next week.

In Miss Varrell's reading group we continued our use of the comprehension strategy known as making connections. We learned that there are three ways that we can connect with a text:

• text to self 
• text to text 
• text to world

We focused on text to self connections this week but we found that as we read in our independent readers we were making text to text connections without even thinking about it! We will continue to add to our classroom comprehension strategies chart over the next several weeks. For a preview of other comprehension strategies that you can use at home, check out this link.

In Writing Workshop we continued to expand the ways we get ideas for writing by using lists. We wrote a list of friends in our writing notebooks so that we could write a story about friends when we need a new topic to write about. We listened to the story Miss Tizzy which was author Libba Moore Gray's idea for writing about friendship. We used Miss Tizzy as a model and wrote our own friendship stories. We also made sure to pay particular attention to describing our friends and spelling words correctly that use the Fundations rules we have learned so far: base words with blends, digraphs and suffixes.

In our enVision math program this week we completed Topic 4 which focused on repeated addition number sentences and story problems. We reviewed the term array and learned how to read an array and write a matching number sentence for it. We also looked at a new version of a math mat that shows repeated addition frames. We discussed the difference between columns and rows. A row is a line of items that is positioned horizontally, or left to right. A column is a line of items that is positioned vertically, or up and down. We will continue to use arrays, columns and rows throughout the year.

In science we took our knowledge of trees and translated those facts into some informative writing. We used our Venn Diagrams to collect the facts we wanted to write about and used a paragraph frame to help guide our nonfiction writing. Miss Varrell modeled how to write in the frame with an overhead projector so that we could all see how our writing would look when we translated our notes into complete sentences on the paper. When we are finished with our writing we will hang up our efforts in the hallway for all to see!

Weekend Challenge Activity: Make a Venn Diagram to compare two types of candy that you got for Halloween (if you didn't go trick-or-treating, compare two flavors of your favorite ice cream). Use your Venn Diagram to create an informative piece of writing! Use this link to print out your Venn Diagram.

F.Y.I.

• Here is a request from Ms. Pavlicek at our fabulous Science Center: Hello! The Science Center uses pine needles for bedding on the bottom of our outdoor bird of prey enclosures [sic]...if you are doing a fall clean-up and and can bag any pine needles (free of debris-a little is ok)..it would be much appreciated :) Send to Science Center...thanks!
• We greatly enjoyed our Halloween celebration on Thursday afternoon. Thank you so much to Mrs. Shortell, Mrs. Arokiaraj, Mrs. Poland and Mrs. Pandey for sending in our super Halloween tableware so that we could celebrate the day in style. :) 
• Parent conference reminder cards were sent home earlier this week. Please confirm your time by checking yes (or no) and return the card to school as soon as possible. Thank you.
• If you did not receive a purple sheet asking if you would like to be listed in the Pine Glen handbook, please let me know and we will make sure you get another one sent home. 
• Book order flyers for November were sent home this week. Money and orders are due next Friday, November 8. Book orders take approximately 1-2 weeks to arrive. 
• Thank you to the Boston Red Sox for putting bigger smiles and wider yawns on our faces this week. We really enjoyed listening to and singing along with 'Red Sox Tunes' Wednesday afternoon while we worked in math. Congratulations to the new World Champion Boston Red Sox!