Farewell February. March into March!

Dear Second Grade Parents,

We are almost at the end of our units of study on poetry, measurement and economics.  It has been an incredibly learning experience for us all!

We learned about different types of poems; cinquains, diamantes, free verse, limericks, rhyming, and bio poems.  Illustrating and publishing these poems was a lot of fun.  We also got to share all our poems at our Poetry Cafe Day.  Each student got to share their poems with someone from another class.  Students then received 'feedback' from their peers.  The feedback is called, 'Three Stars and a Wish'.  What were three things you liked and one thing you wish the author could have done?  Peer feedback is a wonderful way that students can express the quality of each others work in their own language.  "One of the reasons peer assessment is so valuable is because children often give and receive criticisms of their work more freely than in the traditional teacher/child interchange.  Another advantage is the the language used by children to each other is the language they would naturally use, rather than "school language."  (Black et al, 2003)  It is important that students at ACS are skilled and effective communicators.  Giving and receiving feedback is a useful skill and one that we will keep practising in second grade.

Also on our Poetry Cafe Day, we ended our very enjoyable economics unit by creating a market place.  Students designed, created and marketed a product to sell.  Students used their salary (or as they are called in Ms Frazier's room 'Fun Time Frazier's) to purchase goods.  It was amazing to see how creative and innovative our students are.

Now March is here and we are excited to say that we are going to be learning more Science!  We will kick start our topic on 'Structure and Property of Matter' with a review of what Scientists do and on Thursday, March 5th, we will have a 'Discovery Time' in the MPR.  We will be exploring lots of different materials and tapping into children's natural curiosity and wonder.  We are going to have a fun few months discovering what different materials can do and what materials are appropriate for certain jobs.  We will 'analyze data obtained from testing different materials to determine which materials have the properties that are best suited for an intended purpose.' (NGSS 2nd Grade Science Standard)

In Math, we are finishing up our study on Measurement and Data.  We are about to begin our studies in Geometry.  The students will be learning to:

• Recognize and draw shapes having specified attributes, such as a given number of angles or a given number of equal faces.  Identify triangles, quadrilaterals, pentagons, hexagons, and cubes.
• Partition (divide) a rectangle into rows and columns of same-size squares and count to find the total number of them.
• Partition (divide) circles and rectangles into two, three, or four equal shares, describe the shares using the words halves, thirds, half of, a third of, etc., and describe the whole as two halves, three thirds, four fourths. Recognize that equal shares of identical wholes need not have the same shape.

The character trait for March is tolerance/acceptance.  Please be sure to talk about this trait at home as much as possible.

Thank you always for your valued and constant support.

Your partners in education,

The Second Grade Team