We strongly recommend that parents attend the 2nd-3rd Grade Transitions Meeting at Cafe Lab, 6:00 p.m. tomorrow, April 30th. There you will have the chance to meet Principal Anglin, third grade teachers and the Learning and Counseling team. You will also have a chance to tour the renovated Blaine Hall, which isn't quite the same space you may remember if your child attended Nursery and Kindergarten at Lab. We hope you can attend the very important Transitions Meeting. It's a wonderful opportunity for you to get your questions answered. This is a parents-only event.
POEM IN YOUR POCKET DAY IS TOMORROW!
All of the children have a copy of a poem at school ready to read tomorrow. Please make sure they come to school wearing pockets to hold their poems all day. We will be reading our poems to people all over the school and to one another. We invite you to have a poem in your pocket tomorrow to read to your child and anyone else who will listen!
Keep A Poem In Your Pocket
by Beatrice Schenk de Regniers
Keep a poem in your pocket
And a picture in your head
And you’ll never feel lonely
At night when you’re in bed.
The little poem will sing to you
The little picture bring to you
A dozen dreams to dance to you
At night when you’re in bed.
So--
Keep a picture in your pocket
And a poem in your head
And you’ll never feel lonely
At night when you’re in bed.
VISION SCREENING
Yesterday all the children had their vision checked at school by a State of Illinois licensed technician. If there were any concerns about your child's screening, you will be notified by Nurse Julia Nutley. Children who wear glasses were not screened.
IF YOU LEARNED HERE GLOBAL PROJECT
Our global collaboration project is complete. We have shared videos about our life at school using an app called FlipGrid and have added extra information to pages in an app called Padlet. We were apart of the Red Cohort but you can access all the information from schools around the world at http://ifyoulearnedhere.weebly.com/
The ebook called is If You Learned Here: Schools of the World is also available to you as an epub file at the same website. To read the book, you will need an ePub Reader such as iBooks app on iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch, the Readium extension for the Chrome browser on a computer or Calibre for computer.
Our school's pages are toward the end of the book on pages 140-142 as well as the authors' pages on pg. 168. The book is 171 pages long! We hope you take time to read it with your favorite second grader. There is even a Padlet Guest Book to sign and leave your comments. We will be putting it on all the iPads in the classroom!
PHOTOGRAPHY PROJECT WITH MS. CINDY
For the last couple of weeks, Ms. Cindy has been engaging the children in a photography project using the iPad camera. Below is a description, in her own words. Ms. Cindy's last day with us will be next Friday. She has been here since October and we have all benefitted from having a third teach in the classroom. We will miss her greatly but hope she is able to return for our End-of-Year Potluck!
Our children are learning more about reading and writing in this year. Observing, describing, and making inferences are important skills for readers and writers. Especially when our children are learning about writing poetry recently, they need to use their eyes to see objects in a new fresh way. Taking photos can offer a great opportunity for our children to pay close attention to the ordinary objects they can see every day, from different angles.
Our photography project introduced different possible angles that can make photos look interesting. Our children looked for objects they like in our classroom and took photos by iPads. They had plenty of time to practice their photographing skills. More importantly, we were all surprised to see interesting new look of the object when we sat together to preview our photos. “The lunch box looks like a puppy from this angle!” “My wrinkled tissue is just like a blossom!” Great observation and detailed descriptions came up naturally during our discussion. To catch these amazing observations and descriptions, children are encouraged to write down their own scripts and poetry for their photos. Our children’s great works will be nicely presented with photos printed out and scripts and poetry posted right on the side.
Making inferences are one of the most important reading comprehension skills. Similar to reading books, children have to observe and look closely to the facts on a photo to make inferences with evidence. We presented children with some photos that catch an interesting moment and asked them to describe their observations and inferences. Looking at photos provide a more visual way to help our children to understand the differences between observation and inferences.
MATH
Last week, we learned about 3D shapes and did some interactive projects with the iPads. We learned about cones, spheres, cylinders, rectangular prisms, cubes, and pyramids.The children went on a scavenger hunt around the building to take photographs of 3-dimensional shapes in the real environment. The hardest shape to find was a pyramid but we found one on the North Playground. The photos of these shapes were then put into an app called PicCollage and labeled. Be sure to ask your child about the shapes he/she found. The children also worked on a mystery shape activity called What Figure Am I? and used the app Explain Everything to make a movie. These are slowly being posted on our twitter feed for you to see: @daysin2ndgrade
Both of your child's 3D shape projects will soon be added to the Evernote portfolios. Stay tuned....
This week we have been learning all about measurement, including types of measurement (time, temperature, distance, weight, volume, etc.), tools and units of measure. Our specific focus has been on measuring length and width in inches and centimeters and a discussion of feet, years, and meters. The children have been measuring objects to the nearest whole unit (no fractions yet) and we have discussed the importance of having a standard unit of measurement.
SCHOLASTIC BOOK CLUB ORDERS
One shipment of books is on the way and should be delivered any day now. We sent home another flier last week and those orders will be placed this Friday afternoon. Again, we thank you for your continued support of the Scholastic Book Club orders. For each dollar spent, we receive classroom points that are used toward books for our classroom library. If you misplaced the flier and would still like to order before Friday, you can view it online and view/order from other fliers as well.
Orders can be placed here:
https://orders.scholastic.com/L7MMV
THANK YOU
We'd like to thank our wonderful families for the generous classroom gift! We have started placing orders for new manipulatives, games, and supplies and hope the children will be able to enjoy them before the school year ends. We will be sure to post some photos soon!
Have a great week!