4/7/2023 0 Comments Changes Are ComingHello Families,
This week we have had to opportunity to have Mrs. Carl with us for the entire week. Mrs. Carl will be stepping in as classroom teacher once I go out on my impending maternity leave. This will be tremendously helpful with the transition. Mrs. Carl is getting the chance to see and learn our classroom routines and procedures, she is learning the language that I use with students, and most importantly she is getting to know all of the children. Our hope is that this will make this upcoming change as smooth as possible. She will be ready to jump right in if I end up having to leave before my expected date. Last week, we celebrated our hard poetry work at our March All School Meeting. Our class taught the school about conversation poems, and we had a few students share their pieces. Next week, we will be wrapping up our poetry unit as we prepare to have another writing celebration. We will be setting up a poetry gallery in the hallway, and all of the second graders will have a chance to enjoy the work from other classrooms. During readers' workshop we have been talking about literary language. We've been learning about how authors play with language, and what it means if we find it in our books. We will be moving toward setting up book series partners next. This will be where we work in our final reading units of the year. Science has been focused on animals. Today we listened to frog sounds, and we tried to decipher which species of frog we were hearing based on their unique sounds. We discussed why some lakes might have more species than other bodies of water. Next week we will be thinking about adaptations that certain animals have. In preparation for that we are asking for students look around at home for recycled materials that can be used for their building next week. Please see the letter below for more details: Hello 2nd Grade Families! For the final activity of our Mystery Science unit on Animal Biodiversity, the students get to design a creation to fit a certain animal adaptation. This activity needs a hefty supply of recycled materials for the students to build with. We are looking for items such as plastic bottles, applesauce or yogurt cups, skewers/toothpicks, paper towel/toilet paper rolls, paper plates or anything similar to those items would be perfect for this project. Please make sure all items are clean! We will be collecting these materials next week so that we are able to complete the activity by next Friday. Thanks for all your support! Reminder: If still have the report card envelope that was sent home last week, please return it signed to school. We will use these one more time for our final trimester. You can keep all of the papers that were included inside. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend! -Hannah Duval
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3/13/2023 0 Comments Wrapping up Works of WaterWe are getting back into our routines after February break. Last week was full of review of routines and procedures as we get ready to start our final trimester of second grade. Before break we completed our final two Mystery Science explorations into water's affect on the land. We studied what can cause a landslide, and then in the following lesson we worked on strategies used to prevent these from happening. These are always fun, but MESSY, lessons, and the students enjoy getting their hands dirty and learning as they play. This month we will have a social studies focus. We are learning about how we fit into the world, and how individuals and countries can interact with one another.
Our ELA focus this month is writing poetry and reading with more fluent voices. We have been listening to lots of poems as inspiration, and we've been trying to look at ordinary objects with "poet's eyes" to see what else they could be. During readers' workshop we are paying attention to punctuation, scooping our reading into larger phrases, and we will work on noticing dialogue tags. We will put all of those pieces together to make our reading sound smoother and more like talk. We have started adding, and this week subtracting, three digit numbers. We are applying the same strategies we learned with two digit numbers, and this is helping us to manipulate these larger numbers. I have had a few families reach out to me regarding next year's class placement. I want to mention that I WILL be participating in next year's placement discussions. Classroom teachers play a major role in making balanced classes each year. We work with interventionists, special education teachers, and administration to think through our student groupings. The second grade team will be starting this process earlier than usual this year in preparation for my leave. That being said, a formal request for any parent input will be coming out soon. However, you are always welcome to email me with any information that you feel may be important to these discussions. While we cannot honor specific teacher requests, you may still have other pertinent information to share with me. We plan to start this process near the end of this month. Upcoming Dates: Tues 3/14- No School (Teacher Workshop Day) Fri 3/24- Report cards sent home Fri 3/31- All School Meeting at 8:45am- 2nd grade is hosting Dear Families, Lately, our science focus has been about how water changes the shape of our land. We started by learning how rivers form, and that they always run downhill towards the oceans. We then took that knowledge to see how sand ended up at the beach. We worked as a river a broke up our "boulders" as they crashed down mountain streams all the way to tiny pieces of "sand" at the beach. Last week, we learned where flash floods are most likely to happen. We used that knowledge to identify "Flash Flood Alley" in Texas. Later this week we will be creating models of land, and we will use water to see how land erodes and what land features it can create. Here are some pictures from all of our science learning so far. On February 8th, we celebrated our 100th day of school. We participated in many different activities throughout the day involving the number 100. This included a 100 second challenge. We had a list of tasks to complete in 100 seconds. Students estimated how many they thought they would be able to complete, and then we tested to see how many we could actually accomplish. The 2nd graders all created paper airplanes that we tried to fly 100 inches. Each class had their winner participate in a final fly off at the end of the day, and our John ended up being our 2nd grade paper airplane champion! We really enjoyed our fun day of celebrations. Tomorrow, we have our classroom Valentine's Day celebration. Thank you to all of the families who quickly filled up our sign up for this celebration. It is so appreciated! We will also be doing our next round of whole class enrichment tomorrow. We will see what fun challenge Mrs. Rodgers has planned for us! Next week is our final week of school before our February vacation. We will be having a school wide spirit week from 2/20-2/24. I will send a hard copy later this week, but here are the planned days. Upcoming Dates:
Tues 2/14- Valentine's Day Mon 2/20-Fri 2/24- Spirit Week Fri 2/24- Big and Little Dance (PTO sponsored) Mon 2/27- Fri 3/3- No School 1/27/2023 0 Comments Snowy days and Learning GrowthWe have had to do a lot of adjusting over the past two weeks to fit in our learning around all of this weather! It looks like we are in a calmer stretch now, and can settle back in to some normalcy. Last week we began our winter i-Ready assessments. We completed the math portion last week, and today most of us will wrap up the reading portion. This is the mid-year assessment, and the final round will be completed May.
Next week, we will be having our nonfiction reading and writing celebrations. We will share our hard work with the other 2nd grade classrooms. I can't wait to learn from all of these experts! We have wrapped up our second math unit of the year with some telling time and solving problems with money. Our first math journals will be going home soon, and we will start on our second journals that will go through the end of the year. Our SEL focus this month has been Gratitude. We have done a lot of brainstorming about what we are grateful for in ourselves and around us. We've also talked about how using gratitude can help us with regulating emotions when we are experiencing those overwhelming feelings. Below you will see a digital copy of a letter that will be going home with students today. We discussed some big news for our classroom today. Today I shared with the class that my husband and I are expecting our second child at the end of April. This does mean that there will be a long-term guest teacher in our classroom beginning on or before our return from April vacation. I will be out for the remainder of the school year. We have already begun the process of looking for certified teachers to fill this position, and there are some great options. The kids and I brainstormed about what they would like to see in a teacher while I am home. While I may not be able to guarantee that ALL of their extravagant requests are met, my goal is to find someone similar to my teaching style so that the transition can be as smooth as possible. The plan would be to have a few days of co-teaching before I go on leave to help with the switch. Until my leave begins we will continue with business as usual in our classroom. We will be continuing to learn and grow our skills. If you have any questions or concerns, please always feel free to reach out. Thank you again for your continued support. Hannah Duval 1/3/2023 0 Comments December FestivitiesHappy New Year to all of our classroom families! Before break we wrapped up our work with adding and subtracting two digit numbers. We are now taking a break from that heavy second grade focus, and for the this week and next we will practicing counting money and telling time. Before break we explored some United States symbols, and we spent some time learning about different celebrations that happen around the world. During this learning students were able to travel to the other 2nd grade teachers. Each teacher taught a different piece, and classes traveled as a group to each teacher. This is always a fun way to learn, and it changes up our regular routine. Our science focus for January will be exploring how water changes the surface of the Earth. We will be testing this with various Mystery Science experiments. During our ELA time we have continued our work with nonfiction texts. We have been searching for different text features in books, and then trying to recreate these in our own nonfiction writing pieces. We will continue this work through the month of January. In December, we also had our classroom spelling bee. Owen was our class winner with Kelsie coming in as our runner up! It was a bit of a back and forth battle in our final rounds, and everyone did a wonderful job participating. Owen and Kelsie will be preparing for our school wide spelling bee on Thursday, January 12th. This event will be livestreamed. Here are a few pictures from our celebrations before break. The first few are from our Elf Hunt that the 2nd graders participated in. We followed clues around the school to find each elf in order. The last photo is a group shot from our classroom celebration. Upcoming Dates:
Fri 1/13- Early Release Day Mon 1/16- No School 12/8/2022 0 Comments WHat's been happening latelySince we have returned from Thanksgiving break we have been discovering nonfiction texts. We started with "non text texts". Things like recipes, diagrams, and maps. Now we've moved onto our books and are learning new facts, and asking new questions as we're learning. In our writing, we have just started to incorporate some of the fun text features we're finding our books into our own writing. Students are adding in things like glossaries, fun facts, and diagrams. We will continue with this work through the month of December, and we will move into comparing two texts on the same topic to see how the details are alike and different. During math we are continuing our big work of adding and subtracting double digit numbers. This will be a large focus for us in second grade, and the students have been enjoying using their beaded number line tools as a concrete manipulative during this work.
Before Thanksgiving, we wrapped up our science unit on material properties. Now we have started a social studies focus on US Symbols. We will be rotating with the other 2nd grade teachers starting this Friday to learn about different symbols. This past Monday, our class had a chance to go visit Mrs. Rodgers. We had a whole class enrichment session where the students began to program some robots! Next week, we will be having our class spelling bee. This is round one for the spelling bee that takes place across the country. A practice list went home for this already. I explained to the students that studying was of course optional, but I know there are some who love to prepare for this annual challenge. Our class spelling bee will be happening next Thursday, December 15th. This Friday, December 9th, first trimester report cards will be coming home. Please sign and return the envelope, because we will reuse those each trimester. As always, if there are any questions or concerns please feel free to reach out. -Mrs. Duval 10/31/2022 0 Comments October Photos and Conference Sign UpsWe have photos, photos, and more photos from some recent celebrations. But first, conference sign ups. Parent/teacher conferences will be on Wednesday 11/16 and Thursday 11/17. When you sign up for a slot you will be asked to indicate your preferred type of conference. You can choose between in person, Zoom, or a phone call. If you do not see a time that works for you, but you would still like to meet, then please reach out to me and I will do what I can to accommodate you. You can sign up for a slot here: Upcoming Dates:
Tues 11/8- No School-Teacher workshop Wed 11/9- Veteran's Tribute at CWES- Reverse Parade. Our class's time slot coming soon. Fri 11/11- No School- Veteran's Day Now enjoy some pictures from our trip to the Weare Fire Department and our classroom Halloween celebrations and parade. 10/18/2022 0 Comments October Learning and CelebrationsIn our past couple of weeks we have been really getting into some dense learning. During math we have started to discuss different types of word problems. We have to tackle each type of problem differently, and knowing how a fact family works has been helping us do that. During word work we have been practicing with bonus letters, and we've been trying to solidify our blend knowledge. For some students hearing both sounds in a blend (for example the BL in the word blend) can be difficult. Last Friday, we continued our work with the properties of materials by talking about insulators and conductors. We used different materials as "mittens": foil, Styrofoam, and fabric. Then we tested whether or not we could feel the difference between a cold and hot bottle of water. This week we will be exploring the melting properties of a few different substances. This Thursday, October 20th we will be headed over to the Fire Station for a visit. We will be learning about fire safety, and we will get to explore some of their tools. Our class will be leaving right after lunch, around 12:45, and we should be back to the school around 2:00. I am still looking for a couple more permission slips for this trip, so please get those back in as soon as possible. Thank you! On Friday, October 28th we will be doing our annual fall parade at the school. Students may choose to wear their school appropriate costumes for the parade and the school day if they wish. Students will have time to change into costumes before the parade if they choose not to wear costumes all day. We will be having a special classroom snack before the parade. If you would like to sign up to send in something for that event you can use this link here: Thank you in advance for contributing! This year we do not have food allergies that we need to be cautious of in our classroom, and we have 18 students. At the end of the month I will be sending out the sign up for parent conferences. These will be taking place the week of November 7th and 14th. You will have the option to choose from an in person conference, a phone call, or a Zoom meeting. I look forward to meeting with you all!
10/3/2022 0 Comments September ExcitementHello Families, Last week we had a wonderful trip to the Palace Theater. The second graders all did a fabulous job attending the show, and we found a lot of differences between the movie and the performance. Last week we also started our official reading and writing workshops. We will be learning about how we can make our reading "grow like beanstalks", and in writing we will be focusing on personal narratives to start the year. As a class, we have been working on our partner talk skills. There is a lot of partner work in our workshop times, so it is important that we learn how and keep practicing to work in partnerships. Our math has focused on mental math strategies with addition. This week we will move to mental math strategies with subtraction. The family letter from our math journals will come home at the beginning of each lesson to give some more insight into what we're practicing along with strategies to reinforce the skills at home. On Friday, we began our first science unit where we will explore the different properties of materials. Our first investigation involved creating a hat to protect ourselves from the sun on a desert island. It needed to have a stiff brim to keep the sun out of our faces, and we wanted it soft and absorbent enough on our skin to help soak up the sweat. The trick was we only had what washed up with our lunch box! The students had a lot of fun creating and building during this challenge. Just a reminder that there is no school this Friday 10/7 for a Teacher Workshop Day. There is also no school on Monday 10/10 for the holiday. I hope you all have a wonderful week!
9/14/2022 0 Comments Upcoming EventsHello Families,
We have been hard at work here adjusting to our second grade learning. Today we started our fall math i-Ready assessment. Most students paused about half way through the test, and we will have tomorrow morning to finish up. Next week, on Thursday and Friday we will do the reading portion. Last week, you should have received a permission slip for our 2nd grade field trip. On Thursday, September 29th we will be going to the Palace Theater in Manchester to see The Little Mermaid. Please return those permission forms as soon as possible. If the $18 cost causes any financial hardship, please don't hesitate to reach out. We have systems in place to assist with any need. Next week, on Thursday, September 22nd we will have our CWES Open House. The school will be open from 5:30-7:00 with various booths available to visit, along with the BOOK FAIR! Our 2nd grade presentations will begin at 6:00, but you are welcome to come visit the classroom at any point during the evening. I hope to see many of you there! We have some special projects that we have started working on, and we are excited to show them off! -Mrs. Duval |
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