Pumpkins & Sprouting Minds for the Holidays

Greetings HSCDS Community,

As Thanksgiving approaches this week, the second grade team gives thanks for all of the hard work our young learners have put forth as they swiftly transitioned back into their classrooms.  We know this transition would not have been possible without the support and guidance of our helpful parents and families.  Please read on to learn about the new activities our scholars have been diligently working on since our last post.

General Studies – Jacob

The second-grade pods came back to in-person learning ready to rock! While at home, the pods put their finishing touches on the narrative story pieces; creating an attention grabbing title and cover page to entice their audience to open up their book and dive into their stories. Now back at school, each pod got to celebrate their hard work and shared their great work with each other in a publishing share. In Social Studies, the pods began an investigation into landforms and map skills. The children learned that a landform is a natural feature of the surface of the Earth. We studied a selection of landforms and incorporated this work into an exploration of maps, symbols and map keys. 

Math, Science & Social Emotional Learning – John

This learning segment was pivotal for our math scholars as we celebrated the completion of our addition up to 1,000 chapter.  This unit fostered the development of deep conceptual understanding of regrouping strategies, number decomposition and mental math fluency, which our sprouting learners carry with them as they irrigate the new fertile steppes of their learning with subtraction.  It has been exciting to see these foundational skills applied as they skip-count forward and backwards making and taking away tens and hundreds along the way.

In physical science, we posted our water cycle crafts and graphic organizers with pushpins on the wall and have further investigated the journey water takes, as it transforms from liquid to gas and back to liquid before freezing into a solid.  Our second graders had exciting opportunities to explore the scientific method through cloud experiments which modeled accumulation, evaporation, condensation, absorption and precipitation.

In social emotional learning, our virtual classes offered a special opportunity to create a unique digital mural on gratitude, designed with pictures and text for the many things for which we are grateful in our lives.

Hebrew & Judaic Studies – Ariana 

We have been learning so much during our Judaic Studies and Hebrew lessons.  In Chumash we learned that the Torah has its own antique Hebrew language.  For example, verbs that start with וי translate into הוא in modern Hebrew – i.e. ויאמר means הוא אמר.  We also learned four key words (אור חושך בקר ערב) that appear in the verses  to describe creation.  After watching a beautiful video about creation we illustrated our favorite creation day and videotaped our thoughts to explain why this was our favorite day of creation.

This past week we learned about the Beta Israel, the Ethiopian Jews and the Jewish holiday of Sigd.  We made umbrellas like the ones Beta Israel use in the Sigd celebration, discussed the story “What makes me a Jew?” and reflected on Jewish diversity.

In Hebrew, we continue learning our script letters in our Choveret otiot kotvot.  We also read multiple mini stories in Hebrew script letters to practice our new skills.  Children circled specific words in multiple colors to practice recognizing global words too.  We learned letters א ת ב ה ס נ ק מ ל ח ש ר  We are also writing multiple words and sentences from print to script letters.  We are currently starting the process of our first draft of our first Hebrew writing piece.  We are excited to continue learning more in the weeks ahead.

Music – Heidi

Second graders continued examining a piece of sheet music, and they read and played the rhythms. They also re-accessed their solfège knowledge from last year and started to learn how to read pitches on a music staff!