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Have you heard the buzz about second grade?
Language Arts and Social Studies:
We’ve already been in school more than 100 days! As we pass this yearly marker, we see how far we’ve come and anticipate how much more we will travel during second grade!
Many of our classroom experiences teach and reinforce multidisciplinary skills. After successfully growing lima beans, and documenting their growth in our science journals, students heard the story of Jack and the Beanstalk, They then had the opportunity to write their own beanstalk tales. What wonderful, insightful stories were told by our second grade students.
Second grade students also share stories they read in their small reading groups, by taking part in “readers theater.” This activity allows each student to have the benefit of reading to all their classmates, who become the audience. And then each one becomes the audience while someone else has the opportunity to share his/her book. Our students read and write daily.
We continue to build vocabulary each time we read new material, and we explore ways to expand our word usage in our writing. Students are encouraged to use the dictionary to spell words correctly, and to find interesting new words to use. Second graders are making wonderful progress in writing personal memories, and I hope they were able to share their stories with their families over Pesach.
After learning about Chinese New Year, students are able to locate China on a map, compare the years we count on our secular, Hebrew and Chinese calendars, and tell stories and traditions of Chinese culture. Students particularly had fun making Chinese dragons, and writing stories about them. Maps are an important part of the last term of second grade, and students will be making many maps in class during the last few months of school, from maps of their bedrooms and classrooms, to their neighborhoods and the world.
Second grade students will be drawing their freedom maps of their own neighborhoods and sharing their knowledge of the historical importance of such maps in the United States during the 1860s. They continued exploration of the ideas of freedom from slavery as we moved toward Pesach and after Pesach, as we celebrated Israel’s 65th year of Independence. Throughout the remainder of the year we will continue to enjoy exploring maps.
Our final term includes writing about animals and habitats, and about community workers. We look forward to sharing our community worker projects with our families and friends in May or early June.
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Hebrew and Holidays
Students will read a few more stories in their Madregot Modern Hebrew storybook before the end of the year. They will read a short story about a boy who lives is in the Israeli and we will write a letter to him it will help them connect to the ideas of Yom HaZikaron - Israeli Memorial Day. They will end the year, around the holiday of Shavuot, with a story about why God gave the Torah on Mount Sinai. As with each of the stories we read, we begin by previewing new vocabulary through oral Hebrew, worksheets, writing, and games. Students strengthen the vocabulary they have learned thus far as well as continue to acquire new vocabulary. They complete each story with a creative project that allows them to demonstrate and expand upon what they learned.
Torah
We continue to follow Adam’s and Hive’s story in the Book of Genesis. Students are expected to translate pieces of the Torah text into Modern Hebrew. The Students understand, and discuss sections of Torah text in their original biblical Hebrew.
Tefilot
The Second graders continue to lead each other weekly in both morning and afternoon services. This term students learn Al Broch. Students will be able not only to read and sing all the words of the prayer, but to understand major concepts of the prayer.
STEM - Science, Technology, Engineering & Math:
Second grade has the honor of being the first lower school class to begin robotics during our science and math units! What fun we are having with this ever-expanding part of our curriculum. Partners of second grade students have already mastered the art of building their own Lego robots. Our robots quack, flap, kick, turn, go forward and back, and move from side to side.
In more traditional mathematics our work with money and time will continues throughout the new term until the end of the school year. We have explored arrays, area and perimeter and will continue working with these concepts. Word and story work remain an important part of our daily math practice, as we find and reinforce applications in everyday contexts.
We are adding and subtracting multi-digit numbers, and we are regrouping both in addition and subtraction. The children build on their understanding and rapid recall of addition and subtraction facts through discussion and practice of problem solving strategies, game playing, and coin combinations.
Come visit second grade and experience how exciting learning can be!
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