Dr. Seuss' Birthday - Read Across America Day
Just a reminder that Dr. Seuss Read Across America Day is coming up on March 3rd.  On February 27th, two items are due to celebrate his birthday and Read Across America Day.  

1.  Olympic Rings - For every 5 books read, color a ring.  
2.  Paper Plate Medal - Create a paper plate medal of your child's favorite book to read.  It can be any book, not just Dr. Seuss books.  
Schoalstic Book Orders
In addition, if anyone plans on making a scholastic book order, please have it to me by the end of this week.  I would like to get the order in.

In-School Field Trip
High Touch High Tech: What's the Matter will be coming in tomorrow for our in-school field trip.  

We are very excited here at Valley View!  The second graders are lucky to have a chance to work with our new Macbook cart.  This is a portable laptop cart that currently has 6 MacBooks on it.  The district's hope is to fill the cart with a classroom set.  Each week, the class will have opportunities to be typing and researching using these laptops.  Today, we used them during our home-school journal time.  Take at look at us below!  

Coming up in Math, we are going to be moving into 2-digit adding and subtracting with and without regrouping.  This can be very challenging for students as it can sometimes require a lot of steps.  Watch below as I show you the steps we take in both adding and subtracting 2-digit numbers.  Also, here are some websites to help your child practice these tricky skills.  

Addition without Regrouping                       Subtraction without Regrouping
Addition with Regrouping                             Subtraction with Regrouping
Addition Number Sentences                        Subtraction Number Sentences

Cool Math For Kids
Cool Math for Kids with Regrouping

     In our reading unit, we have been talking about character traits.  I thought Martin Luther King Jr. Day was a great time to integrate reading, writing, and social studies.  Students already had a great understanding of character traits before this lesson.  So, I started with an introduction, who was MLK?  Students obviously had learned about him in previous grades as they clearly stated many facts about him.  After our discussion we watched a video on MLK.  It provided more details about MLK's life.  Next, we made a list of character traits King portrayed.  They had made a list with many ideas from trustworthy to caring to helpful.  The writing portion of this lesson was to prove that MLK really portrayed these character traits.  They had to use a written text, facts from the movie, and their prior knowledge to write an expository paragraph explaining why MLK was a certain character trait.  Below are two videos of some groups working together on this project.   The final project is still being worked on and I hope to hang them in the hallway for the month of February, African American History Month.

After reviewing our expository writing, we needed help with narrowing our topics.  When writing about a certain topic, the students would write down every fact they knew about it.  We completed a series of lessons that focused on this skill.  We discussed BIG ideas were ideas like dogs, elephants, school, and vacations.  Then after reading resources, both digital and traditional ones, students learned more about their animal and were taught how to narrow a topic to be more specific.  The example you will see in my lesson here is the importance of an elephant's trunk.  Click here to see our SmartBoard Notes.  Below are their final projects.  We are still working on it, but I think they are becoming excellent writers!

From their website:  "Class Dojo is a classroom tool that helps teachers improve behavior in their classrooms quickly and easily. It also captures and generates data on behavior that teachers can share with parents and administrators...Instantly reinforce good behavior... Engage students in minutes... Get hassle-free reports and data"  Check out their website here: http://www.classdojo.com/about.  

This is a new behavior system for us that started just before our winter break.  The kids have responded well to it and have embraced it.  Now that they have a good grasp of it and how it works, I have decided to give you access to their information so you can follow their behavior from home.  It gives some more specific information on positive and negative behaviors your child displays in class.  Please feel free to check it out and let me know what you think.