Helpful Tip!

Hello Families! I hope everyone had an awesome weekend. I know I sure did. My little guy and I took a visit to Lego Land with some close friends and family. We had a ball... or would it  be a block? Whichever, we had fun! If you ever get a chance to visit I would definitely recommend it. We had a group of kiddos that ranged from 4-7 and they all had a great time. Pictures to come later :)

On to the helpful tip-
Last week we began our weekly math fact practice for both addition and subtraction. The 2nd grade expectation is that students will be able to add and subtract within 20 without the use of any manipulatives (including fingers) by the end of second grade. The long term goal is that students will be able to complete 40 problems in just 80 seconds. That adds up to only 2 seconds per problem, which can seem quite daunting at first. However, we have discussed that our goal is to reach 40 problems in 80 seconds by the end of the year, and that their short term goal is to beat their own personal best each week.

***The time and the number of problems is based on a district commitees evaluation of research by Dr. Hasseslbring and Dr. Crawford.***  

So how can you help... here are some tips to help your student reach their goal.

• Practice with your child each and every night on their math facts for at least 5 minutes using either store bought flashcards or if you click the resource link above, their will be a link to a set of addition facts that you can print and cut.
• Create math fact games to play with your child, such as who can get the most math facts correct using flash cards.
• Play beat the parent. Set a timer for 80 seconds and see who can complete the most math facts in that time. ( Resource link above will have a link to a website where you can create math fact sheets.)
• Most importantly as you can see by my above suggestions, make it FUN!!!

P.S. I will be out of the building on Saptember 26th and 27th; however, I will still be able to respond to emails if you have questions or concerns. Thanks!

Classroom Snapshot!

Hello Parents!! Even though it has only been a week I have so missed posting here! Therefore, this will be a pretty heavy post because I have just so much to share and a few reminders.

This week we...

• finished up our unit on addition strategies, and began our unit on subtraction strategies. Today we talked about how our addition doubles facts can help us with subtraction.
• read the book Rashee and the Seven Elephants, which was a hilarious story about a little boy who was given the weighty responsibility of leading Seven Elephants to his uncle's house. Well,  unfortunately along the way Rashee kept "losing" one of the elephants and had to frantically **(vocabulary word we emphasized, see if your student remembers the meaning)** search for the elephant. Luckily, when Rashee would get off the elephant to search for him he always found him . When he arrived at his uncle's house, Rashee told his uncle all about it. His uncle discovered that Rashee had never really lost the elephant, but when he counted the Elephants he always forgot to count the one that he was riding! The students got a big kick out of the ending! Students also had  fun  using this book to check and confirm predictions, which was our focus. It is pretty safe to say that no one knew that was going to be our ending!
• discussed our rights as citizens in both our neighborhoods and nation students had great ideas of the rights we have as citizens in these communities. Today, we watched a movie to wrap up our ideas about our rights and responsibilities as citizens. 
• began our routines of word study. Students have been very respectful and working so hard as I take small groups to give differentiated word study instruction. I just cannot express how proud I am that they are being so respectful and responsible.
• finished introducing all our daily 5routines! Hooray! Students have been so awesome! Below are the pictures I took of students, while they learned about the laptops we will be using during listening to reading. They were so excited!!

Reminders:

• It is not too late to express interest in our Parent University Technology Night, if you are interested in coming please just send in a note or return the form to school!
• Don't forget to support our blood walk! If you are interested in raising money towards hemophilia please do so using the envelope students brought home a week ago. Regardless, students will be showing their support during their participation in the walk during P.E. and Health classes. 
• If you are a dad, grandfather, uncle of a great student, you may be interested in coming to our WatchD.O.G. Kick Off ! Reminders were sent home today, if you would like to come to the kick off please fill out the form so that  we can have a close to accurate count to accommodate all with food and beverages. 
• In our social studies curriculum we are learning all about communities. Therefore, if you are a community worker we are very interested in you coming in and speaking to our class about your job. I am looking to schedule families the week of October 1st, if this time works for you please let me know , we would love to have you. 
• Notices went home this Tuesday about Mystery Readers. If you are interested in being a mystery reader please sign up either by the link above, or you can return the form with your availability! Hope to see you!

Cool Moments From Last Week:

• We began our Second Step program with Mrs. Dassinger and it went great! During this time she reviewed listening skills. Students had a wonderful time sharing this time with Mrs. Weber's class as well.
• Cassandra was our star student and our class thoroughly enjoyed getting to know all about her and her growing family. 
• We changed our seats and met our new teammates. However, before leaving our old teammates we wrote sweet goodbye notes to our former teammates. 

Phew!!! I made it and thank you for also making it through this long winded post. I promise it won't be so long next time!

Classroom Snapshot!

Dear Families,
Students had an awesome day today, it has been awesome working with such a great group of second graders! Here are a few things we did tday.

Today we...

• Learned how to make 10 to add 8, Lesson 2.7.
• Talked about having a purpose and audience in mind we begin planning a new piece of writing.
•  In shared reading we discussed setting short term reading goals. Make sure to ask you child what their short term reading goals are.
• Continued working on building and maintaining stamina during our daily 5. So far we have reached our goal of 20 minutes of read to self, 11 minutes of working on writing, and 10 minutes of read to someone! Students are truly rocking and rolling, we will begin introducing our final two daily 5 routine next week!
• discussed citizen's rights in Social Studies. We learned that Rights means things that we are free to do. Students shared with their teams rights they have in school. We have such good citizens in room 005 because they came up with such great ideas such as...
• We have the right to not be bullied
• We have the right to learn
• We have the right to stand up to a bully, and tell them to stop.
• We have the right to be respected.
• Also went to the library where Mrs. Starkman read us an awesome book called we are going on a book hunt. It was all about library behaviors and how to check out a book. Students truly enjoyed being able to join Mrs. Starman in reading!

Here are a couple of reminders:

•  Art Shirts Tomorrow!
• Parent University R.S.V.P.

 That's about it families! Cannot wait to see your little ones tomorrow!
 

We Will Always Rember!

I know many of us can remember September 11th, 2001 as if it were yesterday. I know for myself , personally, I can remember walking down the hallways of my High School in utter shock and disbelief with a heavy feeling of sadness at what our country was going through at that time. However, as WE always do WE pulled through, and made September 11th a day to remember, not for the tradgedy, but a day to remember the MANY heroic efforts and a day to remember how our country pulled together in our time of sorrow and became stronger than ever before.

Today we discussed the importance of this day, and focused on the many postive things that can be attributed to September 11th. I hope that tonight, you can also share your story with your child about where you were and how you felt at this time. Here are a few pictures of the fun we had REMEMBERING.

Quick Reminders:

• Students will need art shirts on Friday because they will be using Water Colors.
• Students will need to return Library Books on Thursday, E day. This is our scheduled library day.

Be on the Look Out

Hello Families! Second Grade has a very exciting technology training program that we are calling Parent University, which we will be launching on October 11th, 2012. My team and I are so excited about the opportunity to train parents on two of our very useful resources, Discovery Education and Pearsonsuccessnet.com. Please be on the lookout for the Save the Date form for that was sent home yesterday, September 10th. We are asking that parents please R.S.V.P. for this exciting night of technology! I hope to see you all there!

Classroom Snapshot

 Hello Families!!! I hope everyone had a great and restful weekend. I cannot wait to get back to school tomorrow to see those sweet faces! This post is a delayed post from Friday. I just wanted to quickly share a few things about last week.

Last Week We...

• Had our first ever read-a-thon! Students had so much fun getting to read to self with their sleeping bags, blankets, and pillows. All their sleeping gear came in handy too, as it was very chilly in our classroom that day. (Quick Reminder: Please dress your child in layers, as we are still trying to problem solve our new air conditioning units. Somedays it has been very chilly and other days it has been very warm. We have been promised it will be fix soon! ) All in All, students had a blast on this day!
• Continued to build stamina in Reading to Self and Working on Writing. Students were able to build stamina to 17 minutes in read to self and 7 minutes in working on writing.
•  also introduced another one of our daily 5 routines, which is Read to Someone. Students were very excited about this addition. As a class we discussed, what the expectations are for this routine.  We further discussed how this will be the most difficult routine of our Daily 5, and immediately students knew exactly why. They all responded because we are working with someone. Exactly! So we made sure to model the correct and incorrect way to Read to Someone.
• also expanded our knowledge of communities and to took a much needed brain break after one of our discovery testing sessions,  and invited Mrs. Weber's 2nd grade class to watch a movie with our class entitled, Cities. Students were so awesome as we watched this video! You would have never guessed there were 50+ kids there. 
• introduced math topics adding doubles, adding near doubles, and adding in any order. 

Those were just a few of our learning adventures we had last week, and I can't wait to get into this week. 

A few reminders:

• We are collecting non-pershible food for Creekside Cares, which is an awesome program that helps Grand Prairie Families that are in need. Our Class would love to also thank all the families that have donated so far! 
• Remember to sign student's homework logs each night. 
• Students have been bringing home sight word flash cards for the last 2 weeks. Please be sure to study these words with your students nightly for their test on Friday. Also, make sure to keep the words in a safe place and practice throughout the year because students will be assessed on these words again at the end of the year.
• This week we will begin having Mrs. Dassinger, the social worker, coming in on A days to work with our students using the second step program. The program program helps to teach students the skills needed to be successful both socially and academically. Students received this program in 1st grade with Mrs. Dassinger, and responded very well to the program. So we are super excited to continue the program in 2nd grade. This instruction will take place every A day from 2:20-3:00.

Have a great night!

Classroom Snapshot!

Good Evening Second Grade Families!! I hope everyone had an enjoyable 3 day weekend! We have a quick celebration that I meant to share with families on Friday, but I was unable to get to the computer too often this weekend. So...we started our classroom incentives during the first full week of school, and we have already earned our first reward! We have earned the read-a-thon! Students were so excited you should have seen their faces. Therefore, we will be celebrating our read-a-thon tomorrow, Wednesday! So students may bring their sleeping bags, pillow, etc and get all comfy for read to self! I'm even super excited! On another note: We have quite a few reminders today and a couple snapshots into our day.

First, the snapshots...

Today we...

• began unit 2.1 in math. We discussed how to add 0,1, and 2.
• continued to build our stamina in writing and made it to 4 minutes!!! We were so very excited about our achievement. I think we are all getting the hang of it now, and we will be sailing from here on out!
• began our week long discussion on how we can get to know ourselves as readers. Today our focus was on understanding that readers develop differently. We discussed as a class how a book that is just right for me may not be just right for others, but that is o.k. because we all develop differently.
• practiced our new word wall words for the week. Students understand that they will need to learn and study these words  throughout the week, and be prepared for our test on Friday! Click here or click the Word Study tab above to see this weeks word study words.

Reminders:

• Please turn in the orange sheet for blog permission, and the blue parent survey if you have not already. Another copy will be sent home on Thursday, if I have not received it by then.
• Please turn in parent handbook signature pages.
• We are having a food drive for our Creekside Cares Program, which helps several families in our school. The class that brings in the most non-perishable items by September 14th will receive an extra P.E. class! Not only are we excited about the extra P.E. but we have been learning all about good citizenship, and how good citizens help those in need. Therefore, what a timely lesson to reinforce at home by donating towards this program. What ever you can spare would be greatly appreciated!
• Wednesday is our Read-a-thon. See above!
• Thursday is Spirit Wear! The theme is Hawaiian, so get out those laus and flowered shirts!

That is all for now. So hope everyone has a great evening, and look forward to seeing some of you at tonight's P.T.O. meeting!