Sight words:

full, pull, shall, was, you, your, short week, both, talk, walk, done, goes, pretty, little, work, year, live, give, most, are, who, what, where, when, why, again, please, animal, sure, use, used, over, new, sound, very, most, after, against, knew, know, just, name, good

Reading

In Reading, we’ve been diving deeply into nonfiction. We began by using Venn diagrams to compare fiction and nonfiction, noticing how the two genres are both alike and different. Students also explored our classroom library and worked together to sort nonfiction books into categories such as Under the Sea, Peacemakers and Change Makers, and Plants and Gardens.

Each child then selected a topic of personal interest and used a KWL chart to guide their thinking—recording what they already know, what they wonder, and later, what they’ve learned. This helped students choose books that could best answer their questions and support purposeful reading.

As we read, we practiced slowing down to notice important details on every page and to ask thoughtful questions about the information presented. We talked about what our books—and the different parts of our books—were teaching us. Students used prompts like “I wonder…,” “I learned…,” and “I’m surprised that…” to jot their thinking as they read.

Finally, each student selected one jot to share with a reading partner. Partners used these jots to spark conversations about their nonfiction books and to learn from one another’s discoveries.

It’s been exciting to see the curiosity and engagement growing as students build their nonfiction reading skills!

Writing

In Writing, we’ve been putting the finishing touches on our “how-to” books. Students learned that strong conclusions don’t just end a piece—they encourage the reader to try out their new skills or continue learning more. Writers practiced crafting endings that invite their audience to take action, whether it’s baking a recipe, building a project, or mastering a new game.

We also spent time creating thoughtful “About the Author” pages, where students shared a bit about their expertise and what inspired them to teach others. To bring everything together, writers designed eye-catching covers that reflect the purpose and spirit of their books.

Math

Second graders have worked on a number of activities and games related to our study of place value. Having a solid understanding of place value helps children perform arithmetic, compare values, and carry out mental computations.

First we worked on “Ways to Make” where children tried to find all the ways to build numbers using hundreds flats, tens rods, and ones cubes. We solved for 20 together and found that we could use either:

• 2 tens
• 1 ten and 10 ones
• 20 ones

Then we worked on a different problem where second graders needed to figure out ways to make two- and three-digit numbers using only tens and ones. The students worked independently to find the possible ways to make 36. Then they worked on figuring out all the ways to make 73, and some even chose to try to find all the ways to build 254!

Second graders also learned a number of games that helped them to understand the concept of a digit having a certain value depending on what place it is in. In Place Value Compare, students worked with a partner and each had to roll a die three times and record the three digits they each rolled. They then had to make the smallest possible number and the largest possible number they could and compare those with their partner’s largest and smallest numbers. We  also worked on place value riddles, where students learned how to solve for a mystery number using clues. This activity reminded students to read directions carefully.

Hundreds Boards was a favorite for the second graders! Working on a broken hundreds board means using a hundreds chart that has missing pieces. Students have to use their number sense, patterns, and place value knowledge to figure out which numbers belong in the empty spaces.

We’ve also been strengthening our math skills through a variety of engaging games and activities. Seeking Sums and Joining Neighbors are fun worksheets that help students practice addition by selecting the correct combinations of dice to create a given sum. Students completed several sets to reinforce and solidify their addition skills.

We played a game called Totality. This fun game involves players sliding a counter to adjacent numbers and adding them to reach a specific target total. The goal is to be the first to hit the total—20, 30, or higher—without going over. There was lots of excitement in the room during this game.

Other games and activities included Hundred Chart Tic-Tac-Toe, Place Value Logic Puzzles, and Fill Me In, which many of you got to play during Family visiting time. Finally, we worked on December Calendar Math to practice calendar reading skills and even/odd numbers. 

Social Studies

Second graders have been taking a deep dive into their study of the Department of Transportation (DOT). They loved having the opportunity to explore first hand how New York City is connected via the subway system through our local field trip to the Union Square station. Some students stepped out of their comfort zone when interviewing both commuters and MTA employees or police officers in the station. Others felt right at home interviewing friendly passersby. Many even noticed the subway murals Judith discussed in creative computing! 

Upon returning to class, we got a chance to reflect on our findings from our field trip. Working in small groups, second graders got a chance to be inspired by their observations of commuters in the subway cars and subway station to create a freeze frame of a “picture” of people at Union Square. Stepping outside of their roles as students, they took on a persona of a commuter – thinking about this person’s age, occupation, and reason for traveling. After spending a few minutes describing their freeze frame to the rest of the class, students got to create their own portrait of a subway rider. They came up with a name for their imagined (though very realistic) commuter, their age and destination, as well as their reason for taking the subway.

From there, we made a large map of New York City, highlighting all five boroughs. This allows students to understand just how interconnected New Yorkers are to one another thanks to the subway system.

Upcoming Dates

November 13 -14 – Parent Teacher Conferences

November 20 – Union Square Field Trip

November 26 – 28 – No School for Thanksgiving Break

December 5 – Family Visiting Day

December 20 – January 4 – Winter Break

Please help your child to practice the sight words at home.

Sight words so far:  full, pull, shall, was, you, your, both, talk, walk, done, goes, pretty, little, work, year, live, give, most, are, who, what, where, when, why

Reading

Second graders have continued to work hard to grow as readers! We spent some time practicing an important reading habit – stopping and jotting. When we come across something in our reading that evokes a thought or feeling, we jot it down on a post-it to help us think more deeply about what we’re reading. We also spent time thinking about the numerous strategies we could use to decode tricky words. Drawing upon our word study knowledge, we learned how to spot trick words in a snap. Trick words are tricky because they do not follow typical phonetic patterns. However, as we continue to learn more and more trick words, our reading will become more fluent when we can easily spot them in our books. Additionally, second grader readers learned to pinpoint vowel teams in their books, helping them to sound out challenging words. Lastly, we learned that authors intentionally use craft moves to make their stories engaging. Students had the opportunity to stop and jot when they came to a spot in the book that really drew them into the story. 

Phonics

Second graders have been spending a lot of time working on identifying different kinds of glued sounds. The two we have been focusing on are glued sounds that make closed syllables and those that make closed syllable exceptions. The closed syllable exceptions are: ild, ind, old, ost, and olt. They are called closed syllable exceptions because they look like they would make a closed syllable (there’s one vowel, closed in by one or more consonants). However, the vowel makes a long sound with a magic e at the end. 

Writing

We are continuing on in our how-to writing unit. Students got an opportunity to explore different examples of how-to writing, from cookbooks to Lego building books. Students then got the chance to choose a topic and begin brainstorming the steps for their how-to. From there, we thought about how we could craft an introduction for our books that would draw our reader in, making them want to turn the page to read more. As a class, we spent some time discussing how if we answer the questions – “Why should someone care?” and “Why is my topic important/special?” – it helps create a strong introduction. We can’t wait to continue putting our books together!

Math 

It’s been a busy and exciting time in math! During our problem-solving unit, students worked on Pumpkins in a Basket, an activity that challenges them to find different combinations of 9, 11, and 15 pumpkins using only odd numbers. Through this task, we also reviewed important math vocabulary such as addends and sum.

To sharpen their addition and subtraction skills, students enjoyed several fun math games. A class favorite was “Strike It Out”, where they took turns forming equations on a number line.

To practice our doubles facts, we read My Mama Monster Loves Me So by Laura Leuck and created our own “doubles monsters” to reinforce those facts. We also played a variety of games to continue practicing doubles addition. We followed up by reading Two of Everything by Lily Toy Hong—a story about an elderly couple, Mr. and Mrs. Haktak, who discover a magic brass pot that duplicates anything placed inside. For example, when they put in a coin purse with five coins, they pulled out two purses, each with five coins! The pot even duplicated the couple when they accidentally fell in! After listening to the story, students were challenged to figure out how they could use the pot to make exactly 100 and 128 gold coins using doubling and adding strategies.

As we began exploring place value, students created their very own hundreds charts by filling in blank templates. We shared observations and played a few games to help identify patterns and deepen our understanding of place value.

Social Studies 

Our social studies class has launched an exciting new unit on transportation! Students have stepped into an imaginative role — they’ve been “hired” by the Department of Transportation (D.O.T.) to teach others about the benefits of using public transit in New York City. Through this project, students will explore how different modes of transportation connect the city, why structures like subway lines, bridges, and tunnels are so important, and how public transportation has shaped New York over time.

Key goals of this unit include learning about the role government agencies play in our daily lives, thinking about who uses different types of public transit, and reflecting on how these systems help us care for our planet.

As part of their D.O.T. work, students spent a class period answering imagined 311 calls from “New Yorkers” reporting transportation-related issues around the city. They read task cards with problems such as, “Queens: The traffic light on the corner of my street isn’t working, and cars don’t know when to stop or go.” Working together, students wrote down each problem along with their proposed solution and then marked on a map which borough the issue occurred in. This hands-on activity helped students think like real city workers—using maps, practicing problem-solving, and collaborating as a team to keep New York moving safely and smoothly.

To kick off our study, we enjoyed a guided tour of the New York Transit Museum, where we learned about the fascinating history of public transportation in the city. Afterward, we had lunch and visited the Brooklyn Meetinghouse of the Religious Society of Friends.

This week, second graders began preparing for their “jobs” with the D.O.T. and M.T.A. by creating team names and writing mission statements. 2J named themselves “Super Second Grade D.O.T.” Their mission: to help people learn to get around NYC safely and efficiently without using private cars. Students even designed signage for their “office” and hung it in the classroom — the first step in transforming our space into a special branch of the D.O.T.!

In 2J, we have been having thoughtful conversations about voting and the role of the mayor in running a city. To support these discussions, we read I Voted by Mark Shulman, which helps students understand the voting process, and We Disagree by Bethanie Deeney Murguia, which encourages finding common ground when people have different opinions. These books sparked rich conversations about why voting matters, how kids can learn more and get involved, and how we can share our own ideas while listening to others.

On Tuesday, 2J students got to vote privately for their preferred half-group names. The winning name was Pancakes & Waffles! We also talked about how, in any vote, some people get what they wanted while others do not. When this happens, it’s important to be kind and thoughtful to one another, whether we’re happy with the outcome or disappointed.

Upcoming Dates to Remember:

October 13th: Indigenous Peoples’ Day, school closed

October 14th: Professional Development for Teachers, school closed

October 23rd: Field Trip to the New York Transit Museum 

October 25th: LS Halloween Party

Reading

Students have been diving into a variety of texts and learning valuable skills to help them become more confident, independent readers. Here are some of the key concepts we’ve been exploring:

• Deciding How to Read: Students have discovered that they can choose different ways to read a book. They practiced using silly voices, news reporter voices, and other voices depending on the mood of the text. 
• Giving Books a Sneak Peek: They’ve practiced looking closely at the covers, illustrations, table of contents, and a few pages to get a feel for what the book is about before diving in.
• Scooping Up Words and Phrases: We’ve focused on picking out ‘snap’ words and phrases that they can read easily, which helps them read longer phrases more fluently. 
• Stopping to Think: Students have been encouraged to pause while reading to reflect on what they remember and can retell about the main events of the story.

We have continued to implement literacy work choices as a regular part of Reader’s Workshop. Students are learning to transition independently and to engage in open-ended literacy-based tasks that are connected to lessons in reading, word work, and writing. Students are creating their own phonics games, studying a selection of books, or using writing and drawing materials to respond to a prompt. Second graders are not only becoming stronger, more self-directed readers during this time, but they are also learning to rely more on their group mates to help them when they are stuck and to make plans as a team.

Phonics

During one of our recent Fundations lessons, we focused on when to use ‘k’ and when to use ‘ck’ to spell the /k/ sound. We learned that:

• Use ‘ck’ when the /k/ sound comes immediately after a short vowel, as in stick and block.
• Use ‘k’ when the /k/ sound follows a consonant, as in milk and task.

This rule helps us become stronger spellers and readers by understanding spelling patterns in words we use every day!

We also reviewed some previously learned trick words, including:
they, one, said, you, your, and was

And we added a few new trick words to our word banks:
shall, pull, and full

This week, we explored bonus letters and glued sounds during our phonics lessons. Bonus letters are extra letters that often come at the end of a word and don’t make an additional sound. You’ll see them in words like miss, spell, and puff, where the final letter is doubled but not pronounced separately.

We also began learning about glued sounds which are groups of letters that are blended together so tightly, they form a single sound. The first glued sound we introduced was -all, as in ball, call, and wall. Students were excited to add a brand-new “all” tile to their magnetic boards!

Writing

Our next writing unit is all about procedural writing: learning how to clearly explain how to do something, step by step. To prepare, students have been practicing important skills such as sequencing events, using transition words, and including plenty of details in their writing.

We kicked off the unit with a fun activity: students were asked to list the steps for making a sunbutter and jelly sandwich. Then, the teachers followed the directions exactly as written, paying close attention to the details… or more often, the missing details! Let’s just say, the sandwiches didn’t turn out quite as expected.

There were lots of laughs, but more importantly, the activity helped students see just how crucial it is to be specific and clear when giving directions. We’re excited to see what amazing how-to pieces our writers will create next!

Math 

Second graders have been busy strengthening their understanding of addition and subtraction. Last week, we learned and played a game called Addition Tic-Tac-Toe, which combines addition practice, strategic thinking, and plenty of fun!

Through our study of fact families, students are discovering that addition and subtraction are inverse operations—meaning they’re closely connected. Using the same set of numbers, they can create related math facts such as 4 + 5 = 9, 5 + 4 = 9, 9 – 4 = 5, and 9 – 5 = 4.

Math got extra sweet this week! Using the same containers of candy corn that adults explored during Back to School Night, students practiced their estimation skills. Before guessing how many candy corns were in the mysterious “?” container, we warmed up with Steve Wyborney’s Pumpkin Esti-Mystery—a fun problem-solving activity where students estimate the number of pumpkin candies in an image and use clues to narrow down their guesses.

Students learned that an estimation is an informed guess—not just a random number! After sharing their first estimates, we organized everyone’s ideas on a number line from least to greatest. We discussed range, revised our estimates using new clues, and finally revealed the total by counting the candy corn in groups of ten (and a few leftovers). Of course, the best part came at the end—everyone enjoyed a few untouched candy corns!

As part of our problem-solving work, students read My Little Sister Ate One Hare by Bill Grossman—a funny, cumulative story about a girl who eats one hare, two snakes, three ants… all the way up to ten peas! Students calculated how many animals she ate in total (a whopping 55!).

This activity challenged students to extract information from a story, add multiple numbers, and stay organized as they worked. When they finished, students completed two extension tasks that pushed their thinking even further about addition and number organization.

We also began our October Calendar Math, exploring the month’s special dates while practicing skills such as identifying even and odd numbers and recognizing number patterns in the calendar.

Social Studies/SEL 

In continuation of fostering a strong sense of community, students completed identity icebergs. The iceberg serves as a metaphor, underscoring that the tip of the iceberg is what we notice when we look at someone (i.e. hair color, clothing, tall vs short). However, there is so much more to us than that! There are so many things about a person that we don’t know until we take the time to learn more about them (the part of the iceberg that rests below the surface). Second graders got to fill in their own identity icebergs, labeling what someone might notice about them just by looking at them on the top portion of the iceberg and what someone would know only if they spent time getting to know them on the part of the iceberg that’s underwater. Students then had the opportunity to share their icebergs with some peers, allowing room to start conversations such as, “I didn’t know that you like ____.” This activity serves as an important reminder that we cannot judge a book by its cover and the importance of taking the time to get to know the people around us, so we can know the whole person (not just the tip of the iceberg).

Additionally, students learned how to use I-messages. I-Messages are statements given from the “I” perspective to communicate our needs and feelings. We explicitly teach this, so students have a framework to work from when they need to tell a friend they didn’t appreciate something they did. The messages follow this structure: “I felt __________ when you __________. Next time, __________.” For example, “I felt hurt when you said I couldn’t share the drawing book with you. Next time, please share with me.” I explained that sometimes friends don’t know they did something you didn’t like, and I-Messages help us communicate that. We spent time role playing both giving and receiving I-messages, understanding that it might be hard to hear that you’ve hurt someone’s feelings. Everyone did an incredible job in our role playing. 

Lastly, we read the book “Niko Draws a Feeling” by Bob Raczka. In the story, Nico loves to draw. However, people don’t seem to understand his drawings. His drawings reflect the feeling or feelings he felt in a certain moment, not what was actually happening. This served as a nice way to introduce to the class our next SEL activity – layers of emotions. We discussed how we can feel more than one feeling at a time. The co-existence of two or more feelings might be overwhelming or even confusing. However, it’s a very normal experience. Students were asked to think of a time when they felt two feelings at the same time. Then, inspired by Nico, they were tasked with drawing those two feelings. We emphasized the importance of not drawing what happened in that moment, but what the feeling might have looked like. Everyone took this activity seriously, and 2J was so proud of their work. We ended our time with a fun share!

We also enjoyed several wonderful visits from Isabel. First, she taught us to mix different shades of brown from red, blue, yellow, and white. Then she taught us to mis our own skin tones. Most recently, Isabel came in to help us with drawing eyes, noses, and mouths. These activities are scaffolds for the self-portrait work we will be doing in the coming weeks.

Upcoming Dates to Remember:

Thursday, October 2nd: Yom Kippur, school closed

October 13th: Indigenous Peoples’ Day, school closed

October 14th: Professional Development for Teachers, school closed

October 25th: LS Halloween Party

Math

As we begin the year, we dedicate ample time to building up students’ growth mindset. Though a strong growth mindset does not only serve students in math, it’s important they feel they can take academic risks that help them blossom as mathematicians. In 2J, we embrace mistakes as opportunities to grow instead of experiences to be avoided. 

During the first few weeks of school, we spent time reviewing combinations of 10 through playing a variety of games. When students have a strong foundation in their basic math facts, it supports them in approaching more challenging problems with confidence. From there, second grade mathematicians worked through multiple word problems, translating their computation skills to real world scenarios. Our math curriculum balances conceptual understanding, procedural fluency (computation), and problem solving. 

In connection to our work around names in SEL (read more down below), we read Chrysanthemum. In the story, the main character Chrysanthemum loves her name until her peers begin to comment upon it being too long and floral. Through the loving support of her parents and teacher, she begins to re-embrace her uniquely beautiful name. Afterwards, students got to explore their own names through the lens of math. For example, they determined how many letters are in their name and compared that number to the number of letters in Chrysanthemum’s name. From there, the class collected data on how many letters are in each student’s name. Through reflection, students considered the best way to arrange the data to make it more organized. Everyone agreed – a bar graph would make the most sense. Students worked together to create their own bar graphs that accurately reflected our class’ data and took time to analyze what information we could gather from looking at the graph. We are off to a great start, and I can’t wait to see how the class continues to sharpen their skills!

Social Studies

Throughout the year, and especially as we are getting to know one another, we integrate social emotional learning into the work we do in social studies. Building a strong classroom community starts with getting to know, respecting, and celebrating each person’s identity. We read The Day you Begin by Jaqueline Woodson, and discussed the characters’ feelings about being different from their classmates. The students shared thoughtful insights throughout this story and were excited to hear how the characters found their sense of belonging by the end of the story. As a way to help the students get to know each other better, students in 2J conducted friendly interviews. The students took this activity seriously, and afterwards were able to share some interesting tidbits they learned about their partners! Most recently, students took this work further by creating Venn diagrams with a partner. After answering a series of questions and having meaningful discussions, they compared their similarities and differences- a great exercise in understanding and appreciating one another.

We talked about how names are part of people’s identities and how it is important to pronounce peoples names as intended by their namers. To reinforce this idea, we read the book Your Name is A Song by Jamilah Thompkins-Bigelow. After hearing the story, each student had the chance to share their own name, to be clear about how it should be pronounced, and to have their classmates repeat it back. 

Students are continuing to develop body awareness and are learning how to set and respect personal boundaries. Recently, we read Personal Space Camp by Julia Cook — a humorous story about a child who doesn’t yet understand the concept of personal space and also happens to be fascinated with outer space! The book cleverly introduces the idea of a “space bubble” to help children visualize and understand personal boundaries. The students enjoyed talking about when and why peoples’ boundaries might vary. For example, a person’s space bubble might be smaller when they’re with family members and larger when interacting with friends at school.

2J recently participated in a boundaries activity from IFSEL (The Institute for Social and Emotional Learning) that used red, yellow, and green circles to help students reflect on their personal comfort levels in different situations. For each scenario shared by the teacher — for example, “You’re standing in line and the person behind you is very close,” or “You arrive at school and a classmate runs up to hug you” — students privately chose a color:

• Red if they were not comfortable,
• Yellow if they might be okay with it, and
• Green if they were comfortable.

After making their selections, students turned around to see how others responded. This activity helped kids to check in with themselves and each other about boundaries. 

An important part of building a strong classroom community is deciding on class promises. We started this process by encouraging the students to think about their “Hopes and Dreams” for our class for the school year. We read the book Our Class is A Family by Shannon Olsen and talked about how we should all have goals and these hopes and dreams are for us as a group. We then read I Promise by LeBron James, which inspired us to think about the commitments we need to make to help everyone’s hopes and dreams come true. From these discussions, we created a set of class agreements, including ideas like “be kind” and “stop when someone says stop.” To show their commitment, each student signed our class agreement poster as a promise to do their best to follow our shared guidelines.

Language Arts

The beginning of each school year is an important time for students to think about their reading identity. As an extension of their summer assignment, second graders designed bookmarks that highlighted their favorite book, favorite place to read, favorite genre, and favorite character. This helped us learn more about each child as a reader and sparked conversations about reading interests.

A central goal of our literacy program is to expose children to a wide variety of texts. To explore our classroom library, students worked on a scavenger hunt to discover the different genres and series we have in our classroom library.

We also practiced choosing “just right” books. Students learned that a just right book is one that:

• Has about 3–5 tricky words per page
• Lets them use the strategies we’ve been practicing
• Can be read smoothly and fluently
• Can be understood and remembered
• Is enjoyable!

We remind students that “just right” looks different for everyone. The best choice is a book that fits their reading stage, not necessarily what a classmate or sibling is reading.

More recently, we launched our literacy work groups. In these small groups of 3–4, children rotate between independent reading, working with a teacher, and engaging in activities that connect to bigger questions. This month, students explored:

• How can we use different materials to show or describe inclusion?
• What kinds of phonics games can we invent and play using these materials?

In phonics, we began the year by reviewing short vowel sounds. Students played a board game to practice sorting words by vowel sounds, and reviewed tapping out sounds, blends, and digraphs (wh, th, sh, ch, ck). We also learned the rules for spelling the /k/ sound (c, k, or ck) and were introduced to closed syllables.

In Writer’s Workshop, we started with journal writing. As a class, we generated a list of topics, and then each child created a “Map of My Heart” filled with memories and ideas to inspire future writing. Students are also working on writing complete sentences. One favorite activity was turning fragments into complete sentences—2J did a fantastic job with this!

Finally, we introduced the writing process with C.U.P.S., a strategy for checking their own work for:

• Capitalization
• Understanding
• Punctuation
• Spelling/spacing

It’s been a rich start to the year, and we are excited to continue building strong reading and writing habits together!

We also had a special visit from an upper school Spanish class. They read “Side By Side / Lado A Lado” to the students in 2J.