​​After celebrating the holidays with our beautiful Winter Concert, second grade students were very excited to share their non-fiction stories with their guests at our first writing celebration of the year. This writing unit was coupled with our non-fiction reading unit. As readers, students were asked to pay attention to details in books and think to themselves, "What is the book trying to teach me?" They asked questions to further develop their curiosity and learn more. After reading many non-fiction books by different writers, students realized, "Wait! I can try that, too!" As writers, they set goals for themselves and made a plan to teach their audience about a topic about which they know so much. They became expert non-fiction writers who began by creating a table of contents to guide their chapter writing. Then, they set out to work on drafting fact-filled chapters on their topics.  Students revised and edited their work to create a high-quality book. Today, we all had the pleasure of listening to our second graders share their hard work and they felt proud as they read like experts. Afterward, it was fun to share a morning snack and wish everyone a wonderful winter break!

Second Grade spellers are thinking about common homophones this week. We have learned that homophones are words that sound the same, spelled different, and have different meanings. These words highlight that a sound can have two or more ways to be spelled. For example, the /ow/ sound in the words flour and flower. Spellers have also learned that we need to know the meaning of the word in order to spell these words correctly. For that reason, we have practiced using common homophones in jokes and comparing sentences. What do you call a piece of wood with nothing to do? A bored board! Students have had fun playing with homophones. Look out for more examples next week when the homophones get tricky when coming in threes. For example: to, too, and two. There is so much to know in order to get our tricky language right! 
Brookside has also been gearing up for our winter break by celebrating the upcoming holidays. Last week we celebrated Hanukkah, spinning dreidels and savoring our gelt. Students loved reading storied about cherished traditions shared by our friends who celebrate the Jewish holiday. This Friday we were also excited to celebrate the Christian holiday of Christmas with our classmates. We have decorated trees put presents under the tree. We are also looking forward to wishing our friends who celebrate the African holiday, Kwanza, a year of joy, togetherness, and peace at next week's Holiday Concert. See you there!

Second graders were asked the following question: If you want to solve a subtraction fact that you don't know, what strategies could you use? We practiced with subtraction facts to provide a context, such as 12 - 6, 15 - 8 and 16 - 7.  The students were encouraged to refer to the strategies that have been taught in class and to identify the math tools that they like to use such as number lines and number grids.  Our class discussions revealed the following strategies:
* thinking about addition to solve for subtraction
* going back through 10
* going up through 10
* counting up 
* counting back
* using doubles to subtract