Sept.21- Sept. 25

2nd-3rd Grade Explorer News

Theme:Empathy

C.A.R.E.S. Our students are starting to put what they’ve learned about the brain into practice. They are recognizing how and why characters do and act the way they do.This week we tackled the value of empathy.

Where in the World?  These projects are so awesome! The amount of support and effort is apparent! Thank you for supporting these kids in this activity. Everyday I see a sense of pride and excitement. This week we traveled to  Riverton, Vermont, Cape Cod, Scarborough, Maine, and Ogunquit, Maine.

Third Grade Dictionaries

Mr. Coburn from the Rotary brought all third graders their own dictionary. We had a great time exploring this fantastic tool. It’s not just a dictionary but so much more. We found the longest word, looked for the most populated states, and learned that states have mottos, state birds, state flowers, etc. Mr. Coburn gave us some extra dictionaries for our classroom. We are learning to use them for the Word of the Day. Of course these are their books to take home and have for reference. They can keep them at school if they would like.

Word of the Day: The goal is to “thicken” our vocabularies this year. 3-4 days a week we have a Word of the Day. These words are either words we use regularly, curriculum based, or word study related. Third graders will be using dictionaries with these words. They practice using guidewords to locate the Word of the Day (in an efficient way). They also note whether a word is a noun, adjective, verb, etc. They use each word in a sentence to show their understanding of the word and practice their sentence structure.  Second graders are building a vocabulary book. They record the words, write their definition of the word, and draw a picture to help remind them of this word.

        efficient, accurate, empathy      

Nature Trail

On Friday afternoon, our second graders joined Mrs. Susmann’s class for our first trip on the nature trail. This trip was our introduction to the trail and how we will use it as a learning laboratory in 2nd grade. Mrs. Susmann and I will be taking second graders out often together for writing and science learning opportunities. Our third graders will be joining Mrs. Wagner’s class to do some similar learning along with their 3rd grade peers.

Notes and Reminders

Check out the blog….

    turcotteexplorers.blogspot.com

3rd Grade planner homework is a daily check in. Parents don’t forget to initial in 2 places.

2nd graders- Homework due Friday.

Oct. 12-13   No School (Columbus Day and Inservice)