Classroom Snapshot

Hello Families!

Our second graders have been very hard at work since the beginning of the school year building their stamina for reading, writing, word work, and reading to someone. We have successfully built our stamina for 15 minutes independently in all of the above centers, which means we are ready to begin our guided reading small group instruction! It is the most exciting and most important part of the day as we begin to really grow as readers and writers. Please make sure to ask your child about what books we are reading in class.

This week:

• I will be out of the building Monday and Tuesday to work on Common Core Math Curriculum for the district. 
• in Shared Reading, students will be able to use a variety of questioning techniques to better understand what they are reading. 
• in Math, students will be learning a variety of addition strategies.
• in Social Studies, we will continue to discuss communities and good citizenship. 

Reminders:

• Please remember we are always looking for Mystery Readers! If you are interested in being a mystery reader for our class, please send a note or email and I will get you all set! If you would like, you can also click the mystery reader tab above, and you can sign up electronically. 
• Please return Community Helpers forms if you are interested in sharing with our classroom about your work in the community. 
• Don't forget our 2nd Grade Party at HAUNTED TRAILS!!!! Everyone is invited! Included but not limited to Siblings, moms, dads, neighbors, grandmas, grandpas, etc. We hope to see everyone for an epic laser tag 2nd grade tournament this Thursday, September 26th!

Catch you later!

Welcome!!!

I am so thrilled to be able to connect with all my families this year through my classroom blog. What can you expect to find here? You can expect to find, weekly updates of what we are doing in our classroom including fun pictures of some of our classroom adventures! Additionally, you will find many reminders and things I would like you to be on the look out for as they come home. I hope families find this to be a useful tools, and I am definitely open to suggestions. If you have any suggestions to make our classroom blog more useful, please let me know. 

Reminders:

- P.T.O. meeting tonight at 6 p.m. hope to see you there!

- Please return handbook signature page if you have not done so already. 

- Remember to check out your child's monthly behavior calendar, and sign student homework logs nightly. 

Be on the look out:

- Students will be bringing home homework this week, please be sure to give students support in the beginning of the school year. Make sure your child has a quiet and consistent space to complete homework. 

- Daily Homework is as follows:

           Monday Math- Worksheet Inside Folder (IF)

           Tuesday, Totally Sight Word Tuesday- Inside Notebook (IN)- Nothing comes back to school just            

           a signature of completion at home is required.

           Wednesday, Wonder Writers Wednesday- Inside Notebook (IN)- 3 sentences to given prompt.

           Thursday, Thinking Thursday- Inside Notebook (IN)- reading plus 3 sentenes to given prompt. 

           (Monday- Friday- 20 minutes of reading daily)

- Homework Journals will be where Tuesday- Thursday homework will be stored. 

- For information regarding Star Students.

- Above you will find a running list of our weekly sight words in case students lose or forget. 

Thanks so much!

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!

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!