Classroom Snapshot and Reminders

Hi Families!

I hope everyone had a great weekend. My weekend was o.k. except I came down with something, which bums me out because that meant I had a day away from the kiddos today. I hope everything went smoothly with out me. :-)

This week is a very exciting week filled with all kinds of fun. Here are just a few things that are taking place at Grand Prairie this week.

• Monday- Friday we are celebrating Red Ribbon Week school wide. Here a few things you will want to keep track of as we celebrate this week. 

• Monday- Healthy Living is No Sweat: Wear your Work Out Clothes
• Tuesday- Follow your dreams: Wear your Pajamas
• Wednesday- Color my World Healthy: Wear Bright Colors or Tie Dye. 
• Thursday- Team Up For Healthy Living: Wear Sports Gear
• Friday- Live Heart Healthy- Wear Red.
• All Week wear your red ribbons to school

• As most of you probably know this Wednesday we will be having our Fall Festival. Here are a couple reminders regarding the Fall Festival:
• No weapons or blood. Students will be asked to take off costumes if present. 
• Do not wear costumes to schools, students will  have time during the afternoon, prior to the parade to put on costumes. 
• Parade begins at 2:00 p.m (weather permitting).
•  Classroom parties begin at 2:30 p.m.

Quick Notes:

• Conference Times were sent out last Wednesday, if you have not scheduled your conference or have not received your time, please contact me as soon as possible!
• Here is a note from Mrs. Dassinger: 

Dear Grand Prairie Families,

We are very happy to announce that GP Elementary School will again be offering support groups for students experiencing difficult life circumstance related to grief, loss, and/or parental separation and divorce.  This year, instead of the Rainbows Program we will use a new program called G.L.a.D.S. (which stands for Grief, Loss, and Divorce, Separation) which we developed after thorough consideration of our students’ and families’ needs.

If your child has experienced the death of a loved-one or is adjusting to a separation or divorce, they may want to participate in our G.L.a.D.S. program to share with other children and sensitive, trained Grand Prairie staff facilitating the group.  Furthermore, the group will provide your child with a safe place to share his or her feelings and to receive support from other children who experience similar circumstances.

For more detailed information and to register your child(ren), please refer to the program flyer that was sent home. Additional flyers can be found at the GP office or requested through your child’s teacher.

For any other questions, please contact Bianca Dassinger, our school social worker.

Thank you!

I am going to leave you with some fun pictures of our Voting Unit and Halloween writing projects  we completed a little over a week ago. Enjoy!

Reminders

Hi Families, '

I am actually out of the building today, and will happily return tomorrow! Here are a few reminders:

• If you have not yet scheduled a parent teacher conference, please return a parent teacher form as soon as possible. For those who have turned in a form, I will be sending home schedules tomorrow. Please be sure look at it carefully, and if there are any changes in your schedule please let me know as soon as possible.
• Wednesday and Thursday, October 24th and 25th second grade students will be participating in CoGat. Please make sure that your child eats a healthy breakfast and gets a good night sleep!
• Report cards will be sent home on Thursday. Please make sure to carefully look over your child's report card and sign and return the signature card and envelope as soon as possible.
• If you have not already picked out your child's  Halloween Costume, or even if you have, please make sure that their costume is school appropriate. NO blood or weapons.

That is about it for now. I will be back a little bit later with pictures from last week!

Classroom Snapshot

Dearest Famlies,

This week has started off wonderfully! Here are a few things that we did today, as well as, a few things you will want to take note of.

Today we...

• learned about comparing numbers in math. We learned all about the symbols that represent greater than, less than, and equal too. Students were real pros at this today. 
• also learned about Similies. We read a cute book called Crazy Like a Fox: A Simile Story. We talked about how a similie compares two things that are not alike using the words like and as. Then, after we read our book, students created their own similies!
• had second step with Mrs. Dassinger, and she shared with us today about how we can handle and deal with frustration. (Please ask your child about the three steps to handling frustration.)
• Finally, at the end of the day we had a special Mystery Reader come in and read to our class! Thank you Mrs. Nolan, which is one of our students grandmothers,  for coming in. We truly enjoyed it. Also a special thank you Mrs. Burns, Mrs. Gieseke, Mrs. Piekosz, Mrs. Kania, who have all come in and read to our class this year. We truly appreciate you coming in!   If you are interested in coming in and reading to our class please click the mystery reader link at the top of the page, and I will email you a day and time!

Things to remember:

• Wednesday we will be going to the bookfair. If you are interested in your child purchasing books, please be sure to bring money to school with your child for Wednesday.
• Please be aware that their is also a family book fair night, on October 18th  from 4-7:00 p.m. where you can come in as a family and purchase books. In conjunction with this event, the P.E. department will be hosting an Open Gym from 6:00-7:30. Lots of fun is to be had so hope you will be able to make it out!

That's all for now have a great evening!!!

GREAT NEWS!!!

Oh My Goodness! We have so much great news to share, I can barely contain myself! So here we go!

• Thank you to everyone who supported our book fair change drive! Because of you, our class earned $365.00 towards new books for our classroom library. We are absolutely beyond thrilled, and cannot wait to choose our new books!! Be on the look out for a very special thank you once we get our books!!
• 2nd Grade has gone virtual. If you have a facebook page please become friends with the 2nd grade team. You can either search for us viaFacebook using the name GP WILDCAT or you can look over to the right and under awesome websites you will find a link that will take you directly to our facebook page. Our 2nd grade facebook page will be used for giving parent updates and reminders regarding 2nd grade happenings including field trips, testing, etc. It will also be a place where we will be giving tips about how to use and incorporate technology. We are so excited to launch this awesome resource, so make sure you friend us! While you are at you can also go over to the Grand Prairie PTO Facebook page and like it as well to get all kinds of school wide updates!
• It's Friday!! I hope everyone has a great weekend, I know I sure will. I get to take my little guy to the pumpkin patch tomorrow, and I absolutely cannot wait!

Classroom Snapshot and Reminders too!

Hello Families!! I have quite a few things to share with you in today's post. So let's get right to it!

Today we...

• worked on understanding how to make numbers using tens and ones in math. We also, began our math centers after a couple of days of discussing expectation and how our centers run.
• learned about Venn Diagrams and their purposes, during shared reading. We introduced Venn Diagrams by first comparing me with the infamous Mrs. Frizzle from one of our favorite books The Magic School Bus series. Here is how the students compared me to Mrs. Frizzle...

Phew... They said my clothes were "normal". I'm happy they didn't think my clothes were weird! :-)

• After students compared me to Mrs. Frizzle, they worked with a partner to compare themselves with their shoulder partner (the partner next to them that they rub shoulders with). Students had a great time learning how much they actually have in common with their friend.
• continued our discussion on Christopher Columbus. Students created a neat project where the sequenced the events that lead up to Christopher Columbus' arrival to the "New World".  

Students had a great time following  Christopher Columbus' voyage to the New World.

• ARE SUPER EXCITED TO FIND OUT THAT WE ARE IN SECOND PLACE FOR THE CHANGE DRIVE!!!! WOO HOO!!! Keep it up!

That is about it for today!

Reminders:

• We are still collecting money for our book fair change drive. Remember the class with the most money collected will be able to spend their class collection, getting new books. The rest of the money will be used to spend money on our school library. Sounds like a win win to me...
• Thursday-  We are collecting Quarters
• Friday- We are collecting ANY Denominations!
• PARENT UNIVERSITY is this Thursday! Second grade teachers are so excited about this event. I can't wait to see you all there. Also, if you did not R.S.V.P. do not worry you are still welcome to come; however, we will not be able to give you a special refrigerator magnet with your child's log in information.
• Don't forget to continue practicing math facts! Make sure to also check out the awesome websites links over to the right. One of the links is to a great website, Arcademics. This website gives students an exciting way to practice their math facts with other children around the world!

Cool Moments from last week...

• We had a ton of extremely cool moments last week. Mayors, police officers, pastor, mystery readers, field trips, tests, picture day etc.  We made it through our busy week, and had a great time doing it! Check out some pictures from our exciting field trip to the fire station!

Have a great evening!!

Classroom Snapshot and reminders

Hi Families,

Our busy week is slowly coming to an end.

Today was a pretty exciting day. We had a school wide evacuation drill to the fire station, and students did a fabulous job!! I am so proud of them, but then again... when am I not! :-) Students also enjoyed hearing two awesome community workers come in today to speak about their very important roles in our very own community. You will want to ask your students all about it.

Just a few reminders:

• Tomorrow is our walking field trip to the firehouse. Please make sure your child is wearing comfy shoes for the walk.
• Tomorrow we are collecting pennies!! All money collected school wide will be used to help provide books for our school library. Additionally, the class that earns the most money, will win the amount donated as a class, to spend in their own classroom library! I know for sure that our class would love to get an opportunity to get some brand new books! So make sure to scrounge up all your loose change to help us out. You can even ask close family and friends. :)
• Tuesday- We will be collecting nickles for the same reason above.
• Wednesday- Dimes
• Thursday- Quarters
• Friday- Any denomination.

Have a great night!

Good Afternoon Families!

Wow! Today was a great day! Students got a wonderful opportunity to meet Mayor Collins, who is the mayor of Plainfield! Students thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to talk with Mr. Collins and learn more about his job. Students were even more excited to learn that Mayor Collins is our very own Mrs. Starkman's dad! You should have seen how all their mouths dropped when Mrs. Starkman told them. It was so cute!

Here are a few pictures of our experience. Enjoy!

Classroom Snapshot

Hello Families!! Today was an awesome Monday! Students had so much fun being able to wear their comfy pajamas to school today. What a great way to start a Monday! First I want to say that I am so proud of my second graders because students earned this second reward while the sub was in our classroom. I received nothing but great words about our class. I even had other teachers who popped in come an compliment our class on how great they were for the sub! They are such superstars! On to a quick snap shot of our day, reminders, and things to be on the look out for.

Today we...

• took our quiz on Topic 3 in math, which covered subtraction strategies. Afterwards we took a quick pretest on the topic of place value. The reason for this pretest is to give me an idea where students are in their understanding of place value, and I can then use this information to create guided math groups to give additional support or enrich and challenge students. 
• began reading the book Tell Me A Story, Grandpa, which is a non- fiction book that discusses the traditions of a Pueblo Native American family. Today as we read this book we focused on a strategy that we can use when we come across unfamiliar word. Students learned that when they come to a word they do not know that they can skip the word and read on to discover clues about the unfamiliar word. Once they have unwrapped all the clues, students can go back and re-read the text with a better understanding. Have your child try this strategy at home. 
• also began day one of our W.I.N. time which stands for  What I Need, this time was formerly called M.E.R.G.E. Students did an excellent job during this time and were working very hard. During this time, students are either receiving small group intervention or they are focusing on reading an appropriate independent texts, followed by writing about the text they are reading. 
•  continued to work in our guided reading groups and centers, which are in  full swing, and I cannot wait to have parents come in and volunteer to help us out!

Now here are a few reminders:

• We have a very, very busy week filled with all kinds of excitement and fun. Here are a few things you want to remember. 
• Tuesday, we will have Mayor Collins visit our school, and tell us all about his role in the community. Pictures will be posted!
• Wednesday, look your best for picture day! Do not forget your picture day money. Also, 2nd graders will be taking the Naglieri Test which measures students ability without reading, writing or speaking. Focuses on reasoning and problem solving skills. 
• Thursday, we have parents who work in the community that are coming in and sharing their roles. 
• Friday- We will have our walking field trip to the firehouse. I personally cannot wait!

Be on the look out for...

• me to contact you regarding chaperoning for Friday's field trip
• information regarding our upcoming Book Fair.
• a new homework calendar and reading log. 

That's all for now! Be back with pictures later. 

P.S. This information was from yesterday October 1st. I forgot to post so it is a day late. :-)