Dear Grade2SB Parents,

In the past week we have continued working on our understanding of simple machines and how they make our lives easier by doing work for us. We have explored some items which have simple machines and discussed how we use these in real life. After watching and discussing the book, ‘Stuck’, by Oliver Jeffers, about a boy who throws things into a tree to try to get his kite down (it’s an absurd book which the children thoroughly enjoyed), we brainstormed which simple machines we could use to get the items out of the tree.

Using the ideas created from our brainstorming session, the students formed small groups to draw and label their ideas, then they chose one idea to write about using procedural writing. Each team was given a graphic organiser to plan their writing and now they are beginning to revise and editing their writing for a final draft. Included in our procedural writing lessons are how to use transition words to move the writing along and how to add descriptive details to make the writing more explicit.

In maths, we have continued to work on numbers greater than one hundred: identifying numbers using base 10, writing numbers using words, writing 3-digit numbers in the expanded form and placing them correctly on a 1000 square. We are also beginning to problem solve using larger numbers.

Enjoy your weekend!

Please see photos here.