Big Idea: Ecosystems are communities made up of living and nonliving things that interact with each other.

     Second graders at RCS are experts at SYSTEMS.  We know that a system is a group of things or parts that come together to make something whole.  Like pieces in a puzzle, every part of the system plays an integral role in the whole.  The children have jumped into our final unit of study--ECOSYSTEMS-- with flourish and excitement.  They are well on their way to understanding that all ecosystems are made up of living and nonliving things that work together.  Our ecosystems study will be a great way to review many of our previous studies including body systems as we explore food webs and food chains, weather as we compare and contrast temperatures and weather conditions in wetlands, deserts, forests, oceans and the Arctic, and of course communities by our further understanding of how all life is connected.  In class we've begun our work on our CAPSTONE Keynote projects.  We have used online articles and books to research and explore living organisms as beginnings (kindergarten), patterns and cycles (first grade), and systems (second grade).  We can’t wait to share our projects with you during our Spring Portfolio Night on Wednesday, May 31st.  We loved getting out into the FIELD during our three day CAPSTONE field trip to BARRIER ISLAND and our day trip to the PORT ROYAL SOUND MARITIME CENTER to explore hands on our local ecosystems and animal classification on the dock, in the forest and marsh, and on a boat excursion.  
     Our MATHEMATICAL studies have focused on problem solving with length, money, and data.  The children have loved creating surveys and displaying their data in graphs, sorting vertebrates various ways and organizing the data in tables and graphs, and finally interpreting our data.  Boy, our students sure are good with MONEY!  The children continue to show perseverance with this hands-on authentic learning unit.  Please continue to ask your children to count your coins in your pockets and purses, help with figuring out if they have enough money to purchase items during family shopping trips, and to calculate how much change they will get back.  We've recently become experts on telling time and geometry as well.  We will continue to hone these skills throughout the month of May.
     Riverview second graders have proven to be poetic beyond compare!  Their writing skills and enthusiasm have not ceased to amaze as they work to create beautiful, serious, silly, and witty poems--BIG thoughts in small packages.  We know that poets write with their HEARTS and with their minds and that they find amazing ideas in ordinary objects and experiences.  We will share these original tiny treasures with our Port Royal community during our upcoming SPRING SERVICE LEARNING project we've titled "PENNIES for POETRY."  Students will either visit Port Royal Elementary School or The Little Brown School to read our poems in exchange for donations of coins to raise money for BORN to READ--a local non-profit organization that supports literacy.  Students will also host an AUTHOR'S TEA at Riverview in our classrooms on Thursday, June 1st at 11:00 to raise additional money--mark your calendars to attend!

Barrier Island Capstone Field Trip

Port Royal Maritime Center

In School Ecosystem Work

Time, Money, and Geometry

Literacy Work--Capstone Research Projects, Poetry, and Daily Five