Holidays and Vacation

I hope everyone enjoyed their holiday celebrations. I have posted some pictures from my family's Christmas celebration. I had a wonderful day with my family. Some of my favorite traditions were unwrapping presents on Christmas morning, making the Yule Log for dessert, eating a roast beef English dinner with my family at my parents' house and pulling English crackers and wearing the paper crown. I was so lucky to get a pair of snowshoes for Christmas. We also have a new baby in our family. My great nephew Calvin was born two weeks before Christmas and spent Christmas Day with us.

Caroline putting the angel on our Christmas tree.

This week I am up in Maine relaxing with my family and friends. I am hoping for some snow so I can try out my new snowshoes. I would love to hear what you are doing this week. If you would like to share about your holiday celebration or what you are doing during vacation you can add a comment to the padlet below. You can add a picture if you would like too. I look forward to reading your comments. Enjoy your vacation week!

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Holiday Traditions

Please enjoy this video of our favorite holiday traditions in 2K. I hope you all have a wonderful holiday and enjoy some family time during vacation. Happy New Year!

File_000 from Louise Kennedy on Vimeo.

Geography Game Show

Last Friday we were very fortunate to have an excellent in school field trip. Second grade students participated in a geography game show presented by Neal Nichols. Mr. Nichols combines his artistic talent with his geographical knowledge to teach students about geography around the world. After a whole grade interactive presentation, Mr. Nichols visited the second grade classes individually to teach them even more about geography and drawing. Click on the picture below to go the Geography Game Show website to learn more about this program that was funded by our awesome PTO.

Watch Mr. Nichols draw the continent of Africa in 15 seconds.

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Hour of Code

Code.org was founded in 2013 with the mission to provide access to computer science coding and programming to students of all backgrounds. The Hour of Code was created as a worldwide event to encourage all students across the world to engage in just one hour of code - to help inspire and spread access to computer science programming.

Second Graders at Fuller Meadow have been very excited to be learning the Hour of Code in Computer Class with Mrs. Pazdzirony. The students in 2K were so excited to earn their first certificate for their first coding class. You can learn more about the coding by going to the website https://code.org/learn . The students are very excited to try coding at home also.

Click the picture below watch a video of our Middleton Students participate in the Hour of Code.

Click the picture below watch a video on "Hour of Code"

Bar Models

During the past few weeks Mrs.Kennedy's Super Stars have been learning a new math strategy for solving words problems. This strategy that  is introduced in second grade is called Bar Modeling.  It is a visual representation used to solve addition and subtraction word problems, comparison word problems, and two step word problems. The students used a graphic organizer and  a bookmark with the steps to help learn and internalize the steps involved in solving words problems using bar models. Learning this strategy has taken a lot of perseverance  and hard work on the part of the students in 2K. This is a strategy that students will continue to use through 6th grade.  Below are two videos showing examples of bar modeling.

 

2.OA.A.1 Represent and solve problems involving addition and subtraction.

Playing Dreidel

Happy Hanukkah! This week we read some Hanukkah stories and discussed some Hanukkah traditions. We ended the week by playing the dreidel game. 

Tree Decorating

One  of  Mrs. Kennedy's classroom traditions is to decorate an evergreen  tree each year outside with edible ornaments for the animals. This tradition was inspired many years ago from the story Night Tree by Eve Bunting. The students in 2K were so excited to carry on this tradition this year. Thank you for making sure that your child had an ornament to hang on the tree. I'm sure the creatures that live outside will be happy to find some treats during the cold winter months. The students also used their predicting skills while we were reading this story. Many children had to adjust their predictions as we were reading and thinking about this realistic fiction story.  Click on the picture to listen to this story.

click picture

RL2.1. Ask and answer such questions as who, what, where, when, why, and how to demonstrate understanding of key 

RL2.3. Describe how characters in a story respond to major events and challenges.details in a text.

SL2.2. Recount or describe key ideas or details from a text read aloud or information presented orally or through other media.

Family Holiday Traditions

During December we will be talking about different holiday family traditions. Our discussions will be a springboard for  a personal narrative writing piece telling about our different traditions. Please share a family holiday tradition on the padlet below.

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