Week 22

                                                       

                                             Grade 2 Weekly Newsletter

Important Dates

• Jan. 30 - Open House for PreK/KG (8:30 am - 12:30 pm, ES Library)
  
• Feb. 7 - ES Math Family Night (4:15 pm - 5:15 pm)
  
• Feb. 8 - ES Family Picnic (PreK: 11:00 am - 11:30 am; KG-Gr. 5: 12:10 pm - 12:50 pm)
  

Core Value Books

The core value for December and January  is INTEGRITY. We will be sending home the core value book with the theme of integrity: The Smallest Girl in the Smallest Grade. Please read it with your child, then return it to school for the next student to take home. 

Mathletics

Students have customized lessons on Mathletics, please encourage your children to go on Mathletics to complete activities. Do not hesitate to send an email to your kid’s teacher if they have any problem working in the website.

Positive Discipline

One of the most important jobs that we have as parents and educators is to help children become more independent and self sufficient.  Having kids create routine charts is one way to help them learn life management skills and ways to accomplish their goals.  Routines will booster self confidence and can also make a parent's life a little easier as well.

If you would like more information about the benefits and also the best ways to help kids develop routines, please go to Routines on the Positive Discipline website by Jane Nelsen.  

Another resource for information on decreasing nighttime and morning struggles is A Simple Strategy for Smoother Mornings and Evenings by Debbie Zeichner, LCSW

What’s Going on This Week in Grade 2

Readers’ Workshop

In the Series Book Club unit, students compare and contrast characters across texts. This week students will support their ideas about characters by finding evidence in the text. They will notice how characters are complex and will sometimes act out of character. Students will identify patterns of recurring behaviors and notice changes in these patterns. 

Essential Question:

• How do the patterns I notice help me understand the series?
  
• How can I work together in helpful and meaningful ways with my reading partner?
  

Some suggested discussions to do at home:

• Read texts closely to determine what it says explicitly and make logical inferences from it.
  
• Cite specific textual evidence to support conclusions drawn from the text.
  
• Acknowledge differences in the points of view of characters.
  
• Describe how characters in a story respond to major events and challenges.
  
• Describe the overall structure of a story, including describing how the beginning introduces the story and the ending concludes the action.
  

Writers’ Workshop

In the Reading About Writing unit, writers write opinion pieces about the books they read in which they introduce the book, state an opinion, supply reasons that support the opinion, use linking words (e.g., because, and, also) to connect opinion and reasons, and provide a concluding statement. This week students will gather more evidence from the text to support each of their opinions and they will publish their opinions for all to read.

Essential Question:

• What makes opinion writing more persuasive?
  

Some suggested activities you can do at home:

• Recount or describe key ideas or details from a text read aloud or information presented orally or through other media.
  
• Tell a story or recount an experience with appropriate facts and relevant, descriptive details, speaking audibly in coherent sentences.
  

Math- Module 5: Addition and Subtraction Within 1,000 with Word Problems up to 100

Students will reflect on their End of Module 4 Assessment. They will fill out their Two Stars and a Wish where they notice which concepts they are strong in and which concepts they need to work on. We will begin Module 5 this week.

Some of the objectives are:

• Relate 10 more, 10 less, 100 more, and 100 less to addition and subtraction of 10 and 100
  
• Add and subtract multiples of 100, including counting on to subtract.
  
• Add and subtract multiples of 100 and some tens within 1,000.
  

Essential Questions

• How can strategies help me to quickly add and subtract?
  
• How do I explain my mathematical thinking and why is that important?
  

Key understandings of Module 5:

1. I can add and subtract numbers from 0 to 1000 using different strategies based on place value and regrouping.
   
2. I can mentally add or subtract 10 and 100 from any number from 100 to 900
   
3. I can explain why various addition or subtraction strategies work using numbers, drawings, or objects.
   

*Don’t forget to check out Eureka Math at https://greatminds.org/

*Module 5: Topic A, Lesson 1-7 Parent Tips Letter 

Science 

We are working on our unit: Leap into Space. Students are gathering information on the movement of the earth and moon. This week we will discuss how the earth spins on its axis.

Essential Questions: 

• What do we know about our place in space?
  
• What is our solar system and how do we fit in it?
  

Some suggested discussions you can have at home:

• Discuss the solar system using unit vocabulary:
  

stars, star color, star brightness, moon, lunar, sun, sun's position, sun's size, solar, Earth, Earth's rotation, cycles, revolve, position, orbit, axis, phases, sky patterns, phases of the moon, solar system, telescope

• Discuss how patterns in the sky remain stable but appear to move because of the Earth’s motion.
  

Circles

Focus: Displaying integrity especially when working with others, in the classroom, at school, at home, and in the community.