Friday, January 29, 2016

Hi Families,

This morning we finished our unfinished work and one team was doing there lab report. Then we did morning meeting. I was the person of the day I did the calendar and the greeting was the high five greeting. Then we worked with the computers for a little while, after we went to snack. On the computers we did Xtra Math and we did Lexia and some people did Front Row. After, we had to read a paper about tigers. We read it then we had to underline information about the tiger and answer questions. Then when we came back from lunch we went to the computer lap with Mrs. O'hearn. We did a sound project then did typing tour which teaches us how to type and stuff. We came back and did pirate math. Then we did a math lesson on subtracting hundreds. Then we did a quiz on minusing two-digit numbers. It had six questions. After that, we did Friday free time. I read a book, other people made ramps for cars like our lab report, and some people got to use iPads, and Jenga, and a whole bin of games for us to play. Have a good weekend!

From,
Ezekiel

Reminders: Please check your child's home-school folder for important fliers and to read about your child's week in their home school journal.

Thursday, January 28, 2016

Hi families,

Today we had a mystery reader. Can you guess who? It was a woman. She is a teacher. She used to teach second grade, now she teaches fourth grade. Last year she dressed up as Elsa from Frozen for our talent show. It was Mrs. Bisenga! We took a big math test. It was easy. We used computers and a group did a lab report. We read a Scholastic News on Snow Leopards and talked adaptations. An adaptation is when animals are good at surviving in their own habitats.

From,
Garrett

Wednesday, January 27th, 2016

Hi Families,

We did math today. We are working on subtraction with tens and ones. Sometimes we had to cross out a ten and break it apart into ten ones. I did awesome and earned a Show What You Know ticket! We also computers. We did Xtra Math you do math facts on. The other thing on computers was Lexia core five. It helps us learn stuff and we have to sound out words and do fun stuff on Lexia Core 5. We had double specials and it was music and media. At media we got to check out books and we got to draw a picture. We watched a video on Class Dojo on the TV called A Secret About the Brain. It taught us to never give up and you have to make your brain get stronger by trying again and practicing.

From,
Matthew

Tuesday, January 26, 2016

Hi Families,

Do you want to know what we did today? I'm going to tell you. We did phonics sentences this morning. We are learning wh words like whale. Today we asked questions with wh words like what and which. Then we did morning meeting, and after that one group got to do there lab report with cars. My group did not get to do it yet, we will hopefully do ours soon! We then did snack. After snack, we talked about text features. Ms. P taught us how text features help the reader learn more. Then we read. Then we did a cutting and gluing activity with glossary and index. We had recess and lunch and art. We drew a landscape in art. In math, we did subtraction with decomposing tens. It was really hard.

I hope you have a good day.

From,
A friend in Ms. Petzold's Class

Hi Families,

This morning we wrote in our writing journals about our weekend. Then we had morning meeting. After that we wrote our own "I Have a Dream" speeches in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Then we watched a brain pop video about forces and motion. We learned about friction which is when two things rub together and it slows them down. We also learned a force is a push or a pull. Then we finished our first lab reports. We wrote the conclusions and results part. We wrote about if our hypothesis was correct and why. In reading, we learned about main idea and did a main idea activity. In math today, we started to learn how to do math vertically. We also wrote script for our animal videos. Have a great Tuesday!

From,
Juliet

Friday, January 15, 2016

Hi families,

It was a short day. We did a math quiz. We listened to the speech by Martin Luther King, Jr. called I Have a Dream. We wrote in our Friday journals (make sure to check them out in your child's home school folder). We had computer lab for special.

Love,
Krysta

Thursday, January 14, 2016

REMINDERS: Tomorrow is a half day. Dismissal is at 11:45 am. It is also HAT DAY. Students can wear a hat for $1.

Hi Families,

We had a wonderful day. We do morning meeting and Kevin was the person of the day. After that, we worked on our lab reports. We used a ramp and saw how far the car went on the floor on the tile floor. It went further on the tile floor than on the carpet. We practiced sorting facts and opinions. A fact is a true statement and an opinion is someone ideas or thoughts or beliefs. We learned about Martin Luthr King, Jr and read Martin's Big Words. We did a KWL chart to activate background knowledge -- looking at what we know, want to know, and learned.  In math, we practiced adding and used base ten blocks.

From,
Kevin

It has been a very busy week!!!

Hi families,

We did word problems using lots of different strategies – using addition and subtraction. We wrote lab reports about science. We put a car down a ramp and find out how far it can go. We are comparing the tile floor and the carpet. The materials we are using are 4 dictionaries and a white board for a ramp. Also a hot wheel car and a meter stick. We are learning about the difference between facts and opinions in reading. It has been a busy week, sorry we have not added more until now!

From,

Noah and Lillyana

For homework, students only need to pick 3 of the word problems to complete. If they choose a problem with multiple parts, that still counts as one problem. Please let me know if you have any questions! 

Thursday, January 7, 2016

Hi Families,

We finished our phonics sentences this morning with our ch words. We did math. We were practicing subtracting the arrow way. We also read. We are practicing author's purpose this week. There are three type of author's purpose one is to entertain, to inform, and to persuade. In writing, some of us worked on finishing our All About Animal books and some of us did acrostic poems about winter and winter illustrations. We had gym for special and we did Geomotion and danced.

Have a great day!

From,
Suri and Rhianna

Anchor chart on fiction and nonfiction features

Why do authors write books?

Table of contents for our nonfiction books

Math work from today!

Creations from indoor recess this morning 

A group effort during indoor recess!

Tuesday, January 5, 2015

Hi Families,

Today we did calendar. I was the person of the day. Our phonics words all the "ch" sound in them. One of the words is chocolate. I think chocolate is yummy. We did art today. We made snowflakes for our moms and dads and our nanas. We write goals on snow globes and colored them. We did math today. We added by groups of 10s and subtracted by groups of 10. We got new desks. Also, when we came back from art we were confused where our desks were. I like my new desk. We read books. We talked author purpose. There are three reasons they write a book: to entertain, to inform (teach us), and to persuade.

Love,
Andrew

Andrew's new seat!

Happy New Year! Curriculum Updates from Ms. Petzold

Hi families,

I hope everyone enjoyed winter break! We jumped right back into learning today and I wanted to take a few minutes to update you on some of the new curriculum units we are embarking on.

First, in math, we finished our third unit right before break. Graded Module 3 tests should have come home in your child's home-school folder today attached to a blue rubric. Please let me know if you have any questions or if the test did not make it home. We began Module 4 today in class, and their homework is from lesson 1, module 4. I also sent home a daily homework helper sheet (on yellow paper), and the module overview (on pink paper). I will be updating the parent and family resources page at the top of this blog shortly with links to all module 4 resources. This unit focuses on solving addition and subtraction equations to 200, and also focuses on solving word problems to 100. The Eureka program is great at teaching students why we do certain things in math, instead of just teaching students an algorithm and having them apply it. Here is a link to the Module 4 overview page: http://greatminds.net/maps/documents/tips-for-parents/Eureka_Math_Grade_2_Module_4_Parent_Tip_Sheet.pdf

In reading, we are embarking on a new unit all about non-fiction books. Today we did a comparison between fiction and non-fiction stories. We will learn about non-fiction text features, the structure of a text and why it is organized that way, identify the main idea and supporting details of texts, and so much more. I hope some of your child's nightly reading can be centered around non-fiction texts throughout January, it is great to expose children to different kinds of texts!

With writing, we are currently finishing up our animal informational books. Students have worked so hard on these and they are coming out wonderfully. We took some time today to set some goals for the year, and will continue setting goals tomorrow.

With phonics, we have now studied all short and long vowel sounds. We are working on "h-brother" digraphs. A digraph is a single sound, formed by two letters. This week we are studying the "ch" digraph as in cheese or peach. Next week we will be studying the sh digraph as in sheet. Then we will study the th digraph, as in thumb. We will finish January by studying the wh digraph as in whale.

I hope this helps you have a little more insight into where we are currently in our curriculum. If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact me by e-mailing me at cypetzold@methuen.k12.ma.us

I hope you all have a happy, healthy 2016! Looking forward to talking to you soon!

Smiles,
Ms. Petzold