January has been a great month for learning! This is always a great time to 'cash in' on all the work done to create a safe and productive learning environment. The students are taking on more responsibilities, sharing ideas easily and digging into more critical thinking.
One example is our our engineering and technology unit that integrated writing lab reports with testing the strength and stability of different bridge types. Writing as scientists was very engaging! Students followed the Engineering Design process with a partner. Together the students learned about bridge types by reading, experimenting and watching videos. Then they recorded what happened in a lab report format that followed the scientific method. After exploring multiple materials they built some amazing prototypes of their designs! I can imagine many of the students will continue to Ask, Imagine, Create, Plan and Improve on many other Ideas!
In reading, we began a new unit that also focuses on going deeper in our learning. Reading researchers say the second grade is a year of huge growth. Students not only decode they start to question in amazing ways. We will continue to not just read but discuss books in a more meaningful way. Modeling these same reading habits at home is essential. Have your own family book talks! What are you predicting, wondering and learning?
In Math, we have been considering partnerships and teams and how odd and even numbers work. We have also been doing some 'skip counting' to add up numbers by 2s, 5s, and 10s. This has led to great conversations about multiplication too! We continue to internalize our math facts by using our strategies of adding one or two, doubles plus and minus one, using know addition facts to figure out a related subtraction situation and ten plus a number combinations. It really seems to help the child figure out a less automatic combination when they have multiple strategies they can actually name and talk about during math conversations.
We are all hoping the coughs, flu and stomach bugs will come to an end soon! Thank you for keeping your children home to get well and keep the school environment as healthy as possible.