Terrific Tuesday, 5/11

Happy Tuesday, Everyone!

Wow! What an awesome music performance! Thank you so much for all your hard work. It was so great to have so many family members there to watch and listen! Nice work, second graders!

It's hard to believe that this is our last full week of school! While we only have 7 days of school left, we still have A LOT to learn!! Summer is just around the corner and that is very exciting. That said, it is important for the students to remain focused and to know that we will be learning a lot of great information on each of those 7 days! Parents - please join me in reminding your child to stay focused and respectful. Please remind your child to continue to always do his or her best work! Thank you!

Our Math Madness Week is off to a great start! We're learning about money, calculator work and place value! We learned how important it is to remember our friend Zero The Hero when we write money amounts! Kids - be sure to tell your parents how to write 7 cents and 70 cents in dollars and cents notation. They are quite different! Zero is our friend and he is important!

We are busy in Writers' Workshop this week as the students are all in slightly different stages of their essay writing. We are learning about the importance of drafting, editing and re-writing. We will be putting the books together at the end of this week and the beginning of next week. They're going to be great!

In Making Words we practiced contraction families and suffix rules. The class is really starting to get a good grasp of many of the different contraction families and I am excited to see that the children are using the contractions in their writing. You're doing a great job! It's great to use contractions! Keep up the good work; you'll be experts in no time!!! (Get it?!?!). We learned quite a few rules and tricks of suffixes today. Kids - be sure to tell your parents what's special about words that end in "y" and why "give" and "find" follow their own rules!

Last week 3 students received prizes for being the first 3 students to correctly answer all the questions on my blog. Who will get the prizes this week? Please comment on THIS BLOG ONLY with your name and your responses to the questions. Please make sure your answers are in complete sentences. Good Luck!

Have a fantastic week!
Mrs. Johnston

Friday Is Our Favorite Day!

Happy Weekend, Everyone!

I feel like a broken record each time I say this; another week just flew by! We were busy all week learning about the history of Mother's Day, word choice and voice in poetry, measurement and essay writing!

The beginning of the week was filled with learning all about Marvelous Mother's Day! The kids did a great job reading to find out all about Mother's Day. They worked hard on their writing to make their Mother's Day presents. Moms - the kids' writing is so sweet! I hope you enjoy your gifts! Happy Mother's Day!

In guided reading we had fun learning about Shel Silverstein and his silly and funny poetry! This week we focused on voice. We read "A Cat, A Kid and A Mom" to learn about the importance of voice in poetry. Today we got to write our own version of "The Kid!" Next week we will study another poem. We will combine our knowledge of word choice and voice to write a whole poem.

Our Eric Carle essays are coming along! The children are learning how to use the notes that they took each day of our book studies to create one essay. Each day we focused on a different paragraph of the essay. Today we worked on the conclusion. Over the next few days, we will edit our essays. Once the final essays are complete, they will be combined with the graphic organizers from the study to create one Eric Carle book for each student! This project has been a lot of work and I am so proud of the kids for sticking with it! Soon we will have 25 wonderful books to share!

We finished our measurement study with our chapter 9 math test yesterday. The children did a great job demonstrating their knowledge of area, perimeter and types of measurement. We will continue to review taking careful linear measurements. We began Chapter 10 today and we focused on money. We had a lot of fun with our table race game. Kids - be sure to tell your parents about the table races! How did your table do? What was the prize?

To my students: I can't believe there are 9 school days left! I have so much to teach you and you have so much to learn! It's going to be a lot of fun these next few days! Keep focused and keep working hard. You can do it!

REMINDER: Our music performance is Monday, May 10 at 1:10 in the MPR. Kids - be sure to wear your colored shirt and bring a baseball hat/mit for the baseball song! Parents - I hope you can make it to the performance!

A big THANK YOU to the 3 children who correctly answered all the questions on my blog this week. I hope you enjoy your prizes. :) This week 4/25 children participated. Next week I hope that 25/25 (or 1 WHOLE CLASS) will be up for the challenge! Be sure to check my blog early in the week and see if you can answer all my questions.

You know how I love to give prizes to my friends who participate in the questions, so I'm going to give you another chance to win a prize! Here are some weekend questions for you:
1. What did you like best about math this week? Why was it your favorite?
2. How is your Eric Carle essay coming? Which paragraph do you think is your best one? Why is it your best?
Please post your comments on THIS BLOG ONLY by Monday afternoon and you will win a special prize! Good Luck!

Have a stupendous, fantastic and awesome weekend!
Mrs. Johnston