17 Oct 2016

Yr2 Weekly Update – 21/10/16

Welcome back from our Mid-Term break!  Although our week was short, we were able to pack in a lot of great learning. Our inquiry into how we express ourselves continued with further sharing of celebration bags.  Whether discussing with a buddy or explaining to the whole class, students had to think about why and how they celebrate. In addition, they worked together to determine what good speakers do so they could successfully help others understand their personal celebration.

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After any holiday, our students love sharing their adventures with each other, which they did by writing recounts.  One of our learning emphases has been zooming into a main idea rather than listing all of the activities in which they engaged.  In other words, they need to write a lot about a little. Students have also been exploring how to make word choices that are interesting, specific and varied in order to express their ideas more clearly.  As part of our phonics and spelling learning, students examined different ways to spell the long /e/ sound (e, ee, ea, y), and they looked for patterns that would help them know when to use each choice.

 

While reading about various celebrations, students have been posing questions of genuine interest.  They have also been introduced to the comprehension strategy of making connections between what they read and what they have experienced, read or seen in other places or texts.  They have made the discovery that having prior knowledge helps them make more meaningful connections.  In order to pique their interest in different text types and link to the idea of rich word choice, students have also been reading a variety of poems.

 

Math engagements continued to center around number strategies and data handling.  Some classes tried creating math questions for classmates to answer; they had to apply their own counting and addition strategies to solve the problems.  Other classes moved towards trying out and sharing addition and subtraction strategies.  Classes continued collecting personal data and showing it through human graphs. They were then challenged to find ways to improve their representations using other tools, including physical graphs, pictographs and bar graphs.

 

As always, we are excited to see where our Year 2 students take the learning next.

The Year 2 Team