Writing: We have been thinking all about our audience in writing. As we write about nonfiction topics that we are experts on, students are keeping their audience in mind. Second graders are thinking also about how to include information with detailed descriptions and comparisons. At the beginning of a story, we are introducing our topics in an interesting way and making sure that each section also has a “hook” or a sentence to capture the reader’s attention.
Math: Our current math unit is measurement. Second graders have worked on measuring with inches, feet, and yards as well as centimeters. We’ve used rulers and yardsticks as measuring tools. We’ve also worked on converting measurements, for example, 2 feet is equal to 24 inches.
Social Studies: Since we have wrapped up our tree unit, it’s now time to study geography! Our first unit is called Me on the Map. We began by reading a book called Me on the Map which talks about our place in the world and our individual maps. We began by looking at our own home and our address. We then zoomed out and talked about our town. We discussed how some children and teachers in our class live in the town of Needham and others do not. The goal by the end of this unit is for children to identify the name of their town, state, country, and continent. Later on, we’ll study the seven continents and oceans and students will work on correctly labeling a world map.
Fundations: We have continued to study multisyllabic words and have also learned several new suffixes such as ish, ness, less, en, able.
Second Step: In Second Step we continued to work on empathy and showing compassion for others. We learned that when a classmate does something to us that hurts or upsets us, we need to figure out if it was an accident or done on purpose. We also discussed how when we hurt someone by accident (such as accidentally tripping them), we still need to apologize.
Our class enjoyed counting up all of the items to donate to the food pantry. Here are some photos of kids recording data about amounts as well as our visit to the food pantry.
What is a gift of kindness? What gift have you given to a classmate? What is a gift of kindness someone has given to you?
What activity did you do with your fifth grade buddy this week?