Ziploc Baggie Number Lines

I hope most families have been able to see and use the Ziploc baggie number lines the second graders made in math class this week. We will be keeping them in school while the students work through this chapter on subtraction. The good news is that they are so easy to make, hopefully some families will make them at home and use them as an extra tool to complete homework at night! Watch the video below to see the second graders in action with their new number lines.


Grapefruit Observations


Poppleton the Pig is one of my favorite characters in children's literature. This week the students read the story Poppleton and the Grapefruit by Cynthia Rylant. Ask your son or daughter to summarize the story for you! Each child completed a few different activities to go along with our reading.

First, the students made "open-mind portraits" of Poppleton. To do this, they needed to color and cut out an image of Poppleton and then attach paper silhoutettes to the back. On each paper they wrote about what happened in the beginning, middle, and end of the story. These will be hanging in the hallway outside our classroom.





The other activity the students did was to observe grapefruit with all of their senses. First, they looked at the grapefruit, touched it, and finally smelled it. Next, they listened to the sound of it being cut and the juice being squeezed from a segment. Last, everyone partook in a taste test. The students took notes in their writing journals on this experience. Some children enjoyed the grapefruit, while many others did not; just like Poppleton. You can watch the slideshow of all of the children's reactions to their grapefruit tasting in the sidebar.

Ask your son or daughter whether or not they liked the taste of grapefruit!

Exciting News!

The second grade played hangman at the end of the day Friday and uncovered this secret message:


I am so excited to share this special news with you and look forward to the exciting journey ahead of us!

Counting On

Our math unit in second grade begins with a review of several addition strategies. One of these strategies is called counting on. When counting on, you must start with the bigger number and count up from there to add the second number. In second grade, the students put up a fist for the greater number and then raise fingers to count on the second number. You can see Olivia and Antonio demonstrate this in the video below:


The students are practicing counting on along with other strategies to review their first grade addition facts. One of the activities we did to practice was a math memory game. This would be easy to recreate at home! I made cards that have math facts on one side and are blank on the other. The students line them up upside down and try to find to addition sentences that have the same sum. For example, 8+3 and 5+6 would be a match. You can see the students playing math memory in the pictures below!