I hope you enjoyed the long weekend!  Since this is a short week, this is just a quick update to let you know what's going on in our classroom.  The plan for this week is to finish up Unit 6 in math and take our unit assessment early next week.  We will be continuing to learn about multiplication and division, specifically helping students understand the concepts.  We are not 'memorizing' facts yet, we need to build a foundation first.  On the back wall of our classroom you will see the students multiplication projects they created last week, they turned out AMAZING!  If you have a few minutes, please stop in to check them out.  We also have some work from our last unit in the main hallway near the office so if you are walking past don't forget to glance at it.
In social studies we will be creating maps of a community in small groups.  Students will be sythesizing what they have learned about maps and landforms and putting it together as a group to showcase what they know.  More information will come as this develops more.
If you have any questions, please let me know!

I can't believe how long it's been since I last updated!  I don't think I've ever been this long between updates.  It's also hard to believe that our school year is already half way through!  There are some really exciting things happening this half of the school year.  First, you may have noticed that in our specials rotation we now have Spanish!  Over the break our Spanish elective became full time, so now all of our students have the opportunity to learn a second language.  This is very new, so please bear with us as we work out the kinks in the specials rotation.
Next, over the coming weeks in math we will be learning about the concepts of multiplication and division.  This is one of my FAVORITE units to teach in second grade!  We begin by introducing multiplication as the addition of equal groups.  Then we learn about arrays and how they can help us add those multiple groups.  There are some wonderful BrainPop Jr videos about equal groups and arrays that we watch, if you'd like to watch them at home together the username is: williamroberts and the password is: bobcats
In social studies we are continuing learning about maps, but also learning about landforms and bodies of water shown on maps.  A big expectations for 2nd graders is that they understand a globe (specifically the equator and hemispheres) as well as being able to understand how maps work. We have our Flat Stanley day coming up this Friday (the 18th) where students will be sharing the stories they wrote over break.  After this sharing we will be inviting everyone to send off their Flat Stanley in the mail.  As we get replies and photos we will be posting them in the main hallway near 2nd grade for everyone to see!  We also have a presentation about 'Jump Rope for Heart' on Friday, that will be coming up in February.
This last week we had a presentation about Egypt.  It was really fun to see another part of the world through photos. We have had a lot of conversations about the different continents, so it fit in really well with what we have been learning about.