Hello Blackberry Families,

 

Thank you for being patient with us as we have been very busy and haven’t had time to update the blog. We appreciate your understanding. Mark and a few of the students have been sick these past weeks – reminder to have students stay home if they are not feeling well and to wear a mask upon returning to school. Also, please provide more than one mask for your child, in case it gets dirty and a back-up is needed.

 

We’ve had very busy days with lots of fun activities. For example: we had a short introduction to robotics! Big thank you to Mytko for giving us an opportunity to visit the makerspace, meeting the other student, Owen, who is participating in the Robotics competition. He did an amazing job, explaining the use of the robot, how to use the controls and also letting Blackberry students use the iPads for a coding activity. 

 

We’ve done various academic activities in the Blackberry classroom. During Phonics we went over writing vocab words with final blends like -ink, -unk, -ank, -ing, -ong, -ung, -ang. Various activities have been done with these final writing blends, and other endings alike. Students were paired up in groups and as a team had to work together as they were quizzed on previously learned vocab words. Students did an amazing job defining vocab words from the beginning of the year, drawing an example of what they mean and writing the definition. Each group took turns sharing the answers with the rest of the class. We had our very first spelling test this week and a lot of our friends did so well! It was over our -ang -ing -ong -ung words which we’ve been practicing for a while. We will continue this process after we’ve practiced our other phonetic rules. 

We worked as a team to create our sight word wall. See the picture at the bottom for how great it turned out. Sight words are words that at times don’t play by phonics rules. These are rules we just know by heart. They can practice the list that was sent home last week by reading it, writing the words, or playing memory with the words.

 

For math we introduced telling time. We used analog and digital clocks to show what time it is and student’s need to write on a white board the correct corresponding time. Students viewed which hand on the analog clock represents the minutes or and which represents the hour. The 2nd graders have been practicing writing word problems and solving them.

 

In cultural studies and science, students learned about a number of topics. From Portland’s Ice Storms to the history of Rice, each topic covered had a follow up activity and discussion. Students are currently building inventions out of recycled materials to help with the collection of water used for rice growth and machines that would be useful during an ice storm.

This week we talked about climate change and human rights.

 

We had our first Percussion class! Thank you Javier for visiting our classroom, giving us a quick background story about the percussion in this country, and letting us try some instruments! Students had a great time with this and we will continue to have Percussion classes on Fridays as part of this 4 week program. 

 

Friday ended with Buddy Day with students from El Cerrito!

We also found a slug after the rain and he is now our class pet! His name is Matthew McConaughey.

Upcoming Events:

Valentine’s Day Love Brunch- Feb. 14 8:45-9:45

 

On Wednesday February 14 our Blackberrians invite you to come read a letter that your child wrote about love. We also invite you to bring breakfast food to share with our community.

100th Day of School- Mar 1, 2024 8:45

On Friday March 1st we invite the community to see our 100 day projects (more information forthcoming). 

 

Questions: 

If you could decide, where would you go on a field trip?

How was your first spelling test experience?

How is your project building going?

What did you read with your buddy?