Monday News for 3/27th

After the big storm!

We have wrapped up our unit on Properties of Materials.  The children had a great time creating their glue recipes based on a materials' properties.  They were quite successful as well!   The children also learned about how heating and freezing can change the properties of a material and sometimes materials can be changed back and sometimes not.  If you and your child were able to complete the investigation at home, please make sure you have your child bring in their observation sheet to share with the class.  Thanks for your support with this!  Next up will be a science unit on Earth's Changes.  The children will be learning about the forces that can change the Earth's surface.

We are also finishing up our unit on Opinion writing.  The children studied a Famous American and then chose a character trait and needed to provide evidence that supported their opinion of their person.  We are in the process of creating another green screen where the kids will be interviewing one another.  We are hoping to have the children dress their parts and will be sending home more information on this as we get ready to film.

Enjoy the photos!

Reminders:

VSO Drumschtick

Parent-Teacher Conferences:  If you are not sure what your conference date and time is that you signed up for, you can click on the link and check.  I am looking forward to meeting with all of you!

Hinesburg Rocks:  Please don't forget to have your child bring in a rock to paint for this fun project!

Monday News for the Final Week of School!

Well it is hard to believe that we have arrived at the final week of school!  This week the children will be researching and studying a continent of their choice working in small groups.  The children will create posters to teach the rest of the class about their continent.  Other activities this week will be to continue to work on our marble run experiments.  Each child will be given a problem to solve by engineering a marble run that will perform specific tasks.  This is always a great deal of fun and it is always amazing to see how creative the kids can be with their solutions!  Other activities this week will include the children choosing a best piece of writing to type up in the computer lab, that will be placed in their writing binders that will be handed back to them when they graduate from 8th grade.  This has been an on-going tradition at HCS for many years.

Reading Plans:  Your child will be bringing home his/her summer reading plan and a calendar to keep track of their reading over the summer.  This is a school wide initiative to keep children reading over the summer so they do not slide backwards and lose valuable ground they have worked so hard to achieve over the past school year.  Please help your child record the amount of reading they have done.  Children will be given stickers to help cover Darth Vader for books they have read (ask your child about this) and can stop into school anytime with their calendar to place stickers on Darth Vader! At the beginning of the school year, your child should return their plan and they will be placed in a drawing to win prizes.  We are excited and hopeful this program will help to prevent summer slippage!

Other Activities:
Tuesday

• Used book sale!  Send your child with a few quarters to purchase used books for summer reading.
• Summer Birthdays Celebration - We are celebrating summer birthdays!  Please feel free to send in a non-sugary treat with your child if you would like.  We have many summer birthdays so don't feel like you need to send something in as there is bound to be enough to share!

Wednesday

• Class Trip to Papa Nick's - Every year we celebrate the end of school with a special trip to Papa Nick's for ice cream.  This will be our treat, so please do not send your child with money.  
• Move-Up Day 

Friday

• Field Day - Second Graders should wear a white t-shirt.  White t-shirts with writing on them is fine!
• Last Day of School! - Please be sure to look for your child's report card in their backpack.

Thank you for all your great support over the school year with all that you have done to support us with your kind and generous donations throughout the school year!  You have been a great bunch of parents!  Thank you also for sharing your wonderful children with us!  Have a great summer!  

News for Monday, May 30th

We hope you enjoyed a wonderful long weekend. We are happy it is cooling down a bit to keep our brains in full swing these final weeks of school. Thank you for attending our Aesop's Fable performance and for helping your child prepare for their role. They did such a great job!

A reminder that all library books need to come back on Wednesday. This will be our final day of library this school year.

Last week, as part of our motion unit, students created marble runs using cardboard tubes, masking tape and wooden blocks. Lots of great experimentation and discoveries were happening! This week, we'll focus on changing one variable of our marble run at a time, making predictions, measuring and recording data and drawings diagrams. On Friday, students will complete a science inquiry task to demonstrate their proficiency with inquiry skills. It should be a week of fun-filled learning as we continue to explore our marble runs.

Tomorrow, students will begin writing their personal summer reading plans. These may include where they plan to read, what they plan to read, and where they will get books. These plans will be displayed in the hallway. This Friday, all K-4 students will be doing a gallery walk to view and read all the amazing summer reading plans, hopefully getting some additional ideas. Please make sure you are encouraging and assisting your child with reading over the summer. It is such an important thing to sustain!

As the school year winds down, please let us know if you have any questions or thoughts.

 Marble runs

News for Monday, May 23rd

Please remember our play on Wednesday evening at 6:30 pm.  The children should come down to the classroom by 6:15. If for some reason you cannot make the evening performance, there will be a dress rehearsal Wednesday morning at 9:05 in the gym.  This week we are finishing up testing in both math and reading.  We will begin our Motion unit this week with lots of active exploration making this a great end of the year science unit!  The children are working on creating summer reading plans.  They will be displayed in the hallways throughout the school and will be sent home at the end of the school year.  More information will be coming home about your child's summer reading goals.  The goal for creating summer reading plans will be to help prevent summer slippage in reading.  

Reminder:  All library books will be due for the year on June 3rd. If your child has any library books, please help your child make sure they are returned to school.  Thanks for helping with this!  

Making paper seeds to show different ways they can disperse. So fun! 

Weekly News for May 16th

 Students measure their pea and corn plants to compare their rates of growth.

The warmer weather was a nice treat but it looks like we are back to cooler temperatures!  Hopefully by the end of the week we will be back to more springtime weather!  Spring means that we are in the middle of assessing students.  We are finishing up reading assessments this week and will begin assessing students in word study and math this week.  Speaking of word study, this will be our last week of word study homework.  We will be taking this time in class to spend time more time on our last big science.  Our final science unit will be on motion.  This is a really fun unit where children will be learning about the laws of motion through play.  The children will be exploring by building tops, cars and marble runs.  This is a great opportunity to learn about conducting fair tests by adjusting variables, and collecting and displaying data.  The children will be making observations and finding evidence to support their claims.

Other News:

Please don't forget our play on May 25th.  If for some reason your child will not be able to make the evening performance, please let us know in advance so we can make other plans for their part.  Every child has a part in the play, so it would be helpful to know before the evening if the play.  Thank you for your help with this!  

All library books are due back on Wednesday.  Thank you!

Have a great week ahead!

Weekly News for May 9th

This week, we will be giving each student in the class a benchmark assessment for reading. It is always great to see how far students have come as readers during second grade, and this assessment provides a snapshot of their growth. The information gained from this and other end of year assessments will be passed on to third grade teachers at the end of the school year, so they can begin thinking about the needs of each learner entering their classroom in the fall.

Each student has been given a part for our second grade fable play that will take place on Wednesday, May 25th. On that day, there will be a morning dress rehearsal and evening performance at 6pm. If you are not able to make it to the evening performance, you are welcome to attend the morning dress rehearsal. We will let you know the time of this show as soon as it is finalized. In the meantime, we will be rehearsing in the classroom, in music class, and with the second grade as a whole. We will continue to read and learn about story elements and morals of fables, as well as write our own fables. In May, our work with Tracy, the Flynn teaching artist, will be creating unique versions of some of  Aeosop's Fables and acting/dancing them out.

Last Tuesday, Recycle Rhonda, the School and Youth Outreach Coordinator for the Chittenden Solid Waste District, came to our classroom to help us get our composting worm bin started up again. Please enjoy the pictures from this event! Have a good week.

Monday News for May 2nd

Wow!  It is hard to believe that May has arrived!   With the arrival of May, the children will begin practicing and getting ready for the second grade play, Aesop's Fables.  There will be a daytime performance for the younger grades and an evening performance for parents on May 25th @ 6:00pm.  Please be sure to mark your calendars.  The children have been learning songs in Music class that they will be performing in the play.  These songs are very catchy so don't be surprised to hear your child humming and singing these songs.  I know I can't seem to get them out of my head!  This play is perfect for supporting learning goals in both reading and writing.  Currently the children are all reading fables and learning the characteristics of fables so they can eventually create and write their own fable.  The children are learning all kinds of morals which lend themselves to some wonderful conversations at reading group and whole class discussions.

On another note, the children will continue to have word study, however there will no longer be weekly spelling tests.  Instead we are focusing on writing words in dictated sentences and in student writing.

In Science we are studying plants. Last Friday, the children sampled various vegetables and learned about different edible plant parts.  They also planted peas and corn that they will measure and make comparisons on their rate of growth for math.  The children will also be conducting experiments, controlling variables and measuring and recording results.  The garden will be a big focal point of our unit with lots of hands on opportunities.  If you would like to volunteer some time to help with the Hinesburg garden, please let us know.  The success of the school garden depends on many helping hands!

We will begin testing children in reading the second week of May.  This time of year can be challenging for children with many after school activities which translate to later bedtimes.  Children also begin to understand that the school year will be coming to an end and that change is in the air. This can create anxiety in many children. We have found that if you are able to stick to a regular bedtime routine this will help your child have a more successful end to their school year.

As always, please feel free to give a call or e-mail us if you have any questions.  Have a great week ahead!

Seed and Sample Day

Kids played so well together during building time on Friday morning before vacation

Champ came for a visit. Some students gave him such a speedy high-five, I missed it!