Second Grade

June 2008

We can't begin to tell you how great our year was. These students grew by leaps and bounds, not only physically but also academically. We completed a very complex literacy curriculum that included:

· note taking,
· review and analytical writing,
· two formal reports,
· literature analysis that covered several compare-and-contrast exercises with a classic novel, an abridged version and a screen play,
· graphic organizers,
· sentence and paragraph structure,
· letter writing,
· biography writing,
· and a look a English and Hebrew grammar.

In math we continued developing our skills in measuring, geometry, beginning algebraic expression, regrouping numbers for addition and subtraction into the millions, and estimations.

Over the past several weeks we have been reading and learning about biographies. In June we have looked at the lives of Madame Curie, Sir Isaac Newton and Galileo. We have learned about our solar system and have revisited the electromagnetic spectrum. We have learned about object size, density, and how things move. The children are still working on why a hammer falls to the earth faster than a feather, but please don't give them the answer. We have footage of the experiment the astronauts performed on the moon that we will show over the last two days of school. Galileo was indeed right!

We have been very fortunate to spend the time with your children and it is our hope that learning has been fun. We have done our best to encourage the students to ask quality questions about our world and that they will spend a lifetime doing so.

Many blessings for a great summer...

Paul Angers and Shula Soffer