We are having terrific learning experiences in Second Grade this Winter. Our current Language Arts unit is titled Lights! Camera! Action! With our theatrical theme, the children are reading, writing and observing how creative teams produce great performances. Through short stories and brief theatrical skits, our classes are able to understand that to have a successful performance, people are needed offstage and behind the camera as well as being in the spotlight! With Spelling and Daily Oral Language, the students are studying and applying ou and ow, and er, ir and ur to their writing. They continue to write in a variety of formats. See an example below.
 
Our classes have just completed two major math units -Geometry and Fractions, and Time. In these units, the children learned to identify attributes of shapes and solids. They also learned to identify congruent and symmetrical shapes. The children wrote fractions of a whole and of a set. They also explored probability and prediction. Telling time has been a part of our daily schedule. The students have been able to tell time to the hour, five minutes, fifteen minutes and the half-hour. They have also found examples of elapsed time.
 
American history and character education were important topics in Social Studies over the past two months. In January, both Second Grade classes participated in the KJ Challenge sponsored by the national organization Do Something! The children took part in daily lessons and reported acts of Kindness and Justice. They role-played, read stories and wrote about various kind and just acts at home and school. In February, our students began their study of our 1st and 16th Presidents Washington and Lincoln. The students read biographies of the two presidents, compared and contrasted their lives in written and verbal formats, and wrote their own essays entitled "If I Were President." Technology has been incorporated into these lessons through Internet research about our historical figures and word processing.
 
Following our Science unit on Matter, the second grade began a new study of Shadows and Light. Through writing activities and experiments, the children learned to classify sources of light as natural or made by people and investigated the formation of shadows. Our next unit of study in Science is Earth Through Time, in which our children will classify dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals; conclude that fossil imprints are traces of plants or animals, and simulate fossil imprints.
 
We celebrated the Chinese New Year. and continue our study of different types of communities. Our classes will go to the Children's Museum of the Native American, where they attend artifact demonstrations and participate in Native American workshops.
 
We look forward to a wonderful Spring!
 

By Jarrett
 
The Lion and the Mouse

The lion was going to kill the mouse. The mouse said, "If you let me go, I will pay you back when you are in trouble. They learned that it is good to be friendly.

 
By Gina

4/5 of the people are wearing pink clothes

By Alexandra

If I Were President

If I were president I would make the world a better place. I would help people that can't walk. I would not make people live on the street. I will help the poor people have food and clothes.

 
By Russ, Peter, and Shelun

 
There are 12 animals. They are the rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, sheep, monkey, rooster, dog, and boar. Each animal stands for one year - like 1999, is the Year of the Rabbit.
 
The Chinese people believe that red is a good luck color. Every New Year, Chinese people perform the lion dance. On Chinese New Year they shoot fire crackers.
 
We have a big feast. On that day we get money and have fun. That is what we do on Chinese New Year.