Last Week of the First Quarter

I Love Fall Color!

Dear Second Grade Parents,

Here we are in Week 9 (our last week of the first quarter), I can't believe how fast this first quarter has gone.  It seems like just yesterday we were enjoying our first day of second grade!  In any event, with the close of the first quarter, it's time to start scheduling Parent Teacher Conferences.  Mrs. Jackson and myself will run our conferences together so that you can get the most complete information about your child's 1st quarter progress.  Our official Parent Teacher Conference is Friday, October 24th but since Mrs. Jackson and myself will be meeting with all families from both classes (40 families in total) our conferences will continue into the following week.  An official sign up will be sent out via email by Wednesday, October 15th.  Please be sure to respond promptly as you will be scheduled on "first come first serve basis".  I look forward to visiting with you all soon!

Here's the happenings from Week 8 in a "nutshell"...

Math
In math our focus was adding and subtracting 2-digit numbers without renaming.  We are working towards solving these problems mentally.  Here's an example of what your student might be thinking....
If the problem is...      25 + 43 =
In their mind they are breaking 25 into 20 and 5 and 43 into 40 and 3.
              20 + 5   40 + 3 =
Students then add the tens to get 60 and the ones to get 8 and then put them together to get 68.  It has taken longer in this Blog to explain than the students will take to calculate in their heads.  One of the keys to success in this strategy is knowing math facts (both addition and subtraction fluently).

The other big skill in Math this week was our work with word problems.  Again our focus was Part Whole Problems and Comparison Problems.  Our work on this skill will be ongoing.

We rounded out the week with our 3rd Math Assessment on Thursday. 

Here's the homework for the coming week...

Mon.  IXL A.7 Even and Odd Numbers Part 1
Tues. IXL A.8 Even and Odd Numbers Part 2
Wed.  IXL A. 9 Even and Odd Numbers on a Number Line
Thurs.IXL A.10 Which Even of Odd Number Comes Before or After?

Language Arts
In Language Arts we are working on irregular plural nouns.  The students have been generating a Tree Map to show that a noun doesn't always go from singular to plural by adding an "s".   We have learned that sometimes you have to add an "es" (dish becomes dishes), change the "y" to an "i" and add "es" (pony becomes ponies), some words that end in "f" need to change the "f" to a "v" and add "es" (wolf becomes wolves), and finally some words become plural by changing to a new word (foot becomes feet).  

Writing
In writing we finished our Interactive Writing to the kindergarten class.  This was a great way to learn the parts of a letter and the correct punctuation to use in each part.  Students are now working on their own letters to the Churchill County Museum for allowing us to visit and for providing us with a great tour that really focused on our "Then and Now" Project.

Projects
Our "Then and Now" Projects are coming along.  This has been a very rigorous process for the second graders, but I have seen so much improvement.  We have written rough drafts of the "then" and the "now" of their given category (Games, Education, Transportation, Cooking, and Music).  This past week we paired a student who wrote about the "then" with a student who wrote about the "now". One "then and now" pair compared (wrote about how they were the same) while the other "then and now" pair contrasted (wrote about how they were different).  We will be typing these pieces on our Chrome Books this week.  Some groups also got to select images to go on their trifold boards.  This has been a very BUSY project!!  It will be completed on Thursday, October 23rd when they are taken to the Churchill County Museum for judging and display!!

Looking forward to another great week in second grade!!  I hope your week is wonderful!!

Sincerely,
Anne Bloomfield

Here's a reading update from Mrs. Jackson...

Dear Second Grade Families,

I can’t wait to see you all very shortly for fall conferences.  I am excited to share all of the growth that your child has made in Reading since the beginning of this year.  

This week I will be doing individual assessments on each child.  Due to this fact, I will not be sending any assigned reading books home for homework for certain reading groups.  Please make sure that your child is still reading “good-fit” books even though I am not sending them home.  For other Reading groups, your child will be assigned to finish and answer questions individually about the small chapter books that we began reading last week.  

We are also continuing to do assessments as a class focused on main idea, character development, setting, story mapping, etc.  We will be doing an activity all week focusing on close reading using the text The Spider and the Fly.  I think your child will really enjoy this book and it will definitely help them begin learning how to focus more deeply on the text that they are reading.  

This week we will spend time studying the -ore Word Family.  On Monday we will write sample words on white-boards using this ending, then your child should be practicing a Spelling list of these -ore Word Family words all week and be ready for their Spelling Test on Thursday.   

I look forward to talking with you more during conferences next week.  Please let me know if you have any questions.