I have such mixed feelings when the calendar turns and I see it is May. It is exciting to know the weather is nicer more often than it is bad. I love pointing out all the different types of flowers and trees to the kids. Sunshine simply makes me happy.
It is also the time of year I match the calendar to the curriculum, making sure I am on pace to finish all there is to teach in second grade in the next several weeks. Sometimes, I panic. It is a similar feeling to studying for my finals. How will the kids do at the end of the year? Will they all make it to benchmark?
I will be starting a number of assessments over the next several weeks. This is an important time of year to have all the students here as much as possible. It is very difficult to give assessments to the class when some are missing and I need to find additional time to assess them separately. Of course, if your child is sick, please keep them home!
We are working on a couple really fun units in literacy. We are reading books in a series to get to know the characters over the course of several books. We are also writing opinion letters about those same books and learning to support our opinions with evidence from the actual books. The kids are doing a really good job working in book clubs and having meaningful conversations around the books they are reading.
In math, we are continuing to work with larger numbers. We have investigated a variety of ways to combine large numbers and subtract them as well. We are finally getting to the traditional way of adding and subtracting that I grew up with by carrying and borrowing, although I like to use the term trading to help them understand the concept of moving numbers to and from different place values. For some, this will come easy. For others, they will need a bit more practice at home,
Now I am going to go out and enjoy some of this sunshine!
Karey Kirk
