Mrs. Bloomfield's Second Grade : Week 2 in Second Grade

August 31, 2015

Dear Second Grade Families,

I can't believe we will enter our 3rd week of school tomorrow!! It's been an exciting 2 weeks and I believe we are getting settled into a rountine.

I have been working hard to get the volunteer schedule together. I am very thankful to have so many parents that are willing to share their time and talents with our class. Some of you will be working within our class and some of you are willing to do things at home. Remember if you would like to work within the class you need to a background check. Please see Julie or Susi in the office to pick up the necessary paperwork. If you have previously completed the background check you are good to go. I am thankful for all the help! Between this week and next week I will be setting up my volunteen schedule for those parents who wanted to volunteer in class, specifically those parents who wanted to help out with math facts or P.E. Volunteers will start on September 14th. Thanks so much in advance for your eagerness to help our class!!

Math
This week in Math we worked on a very difficult but important skill--renaming tens and ones. I must say, I am very proud of how hard students worked to understand this concept. We used manipulatives and drew pictures to help us work on this skill. Here's an example...
If the number is 56, it can be renamed the following ways.

5 tens and 6 ones
4 tens and 16 ones
3 tens and 26 ones
2 tens and 36 ones
1 tens and 46 ones
or 56 ones
We will continue to review this skill as it will be very important for mental math.
Other skills we worked on were reading and writing 2-digit numbers.

Here is the homework for the week...

Monday IXL A.6 Even or Odd: Counting Objects
Tuesday IXL A.7 Even or Odd
Wednesday IXL M.1 Place Value Models Tens and Ones
Thursday No Weekend Homework (Enjoy the long weekend with your family!!)

Language
We continued to study nouns this week. Our focus was with common and proper nouns. Students are learning that proper nouns name a specific person, place, or thing. All proper nouns are capitalized. This is a review of a first grade standard, but will lead to the 2nd grade standards that relate to nouns.

Writing
In writing we are continuing a work on our riddles about ourselves. We were able to take our prewriting (circle map and tree map) and write a rough draft. Students needed to pick 6 to 9 ideas from their tree map and turn it into a clue. This writing assignment is really coming together, I can hardly wait to see the finished product.

Projects
Our work with our Tribes Project has continued. We focused on the Tribes Agreements of Mutual Respect, No Put Downs, and Appreciations. For each agreement we have made an artifact for the class so that we will remember the agreement throughout the year.

We finally got on our Chromebooks. It is very exciting for 2nd graders, since each 2nd grader is issued their own Chromebook. This week students used their Chromebook to take a Birthday Survey. We will be looking at the results this coming week. Every week we will be using the Chromebooks more and more. The students of Room 17 have been so patient as we have started this journey. It is so amazing to see students gain proficiency with this technology as the year progresses.

This weekend we celebrate Labor Day Weekend. I hope that you and your family enjoy the extra day!

Sincerely,
Anne Bloomfield

Here is the Reading information from Mrs. Loop...

Hello Second Grade Families,

I am so lucky to be able to work with your wonderful child again this year! I look forward to starting my day with them every morning for reading class and I am so impressed with how focused and ready to learn they are when they arrive in my classroom. They have all matured so much over the summer! I have completed all of my beginning of the year assessments on my second grade students so I am ready to begin reading groups this week! It helps to have already taught most of this class last year so my assessments on most of them from the end of the year are still accurate. Last week we reviewed how to do “read to self”, “read to someone” and “work on writing” which are three of the Daily 5 components that the students will participate in during our reading class. This week I will begin on Monday with introducing “Listen to Reading” and the different listening options that the students will have on the chromebooks. I will plan on sharing some sites with you later this week that your child may want to visit at home for listening to reading. I am looking forward to beginning reading groups this week and beginning individual and small group reading instruction. Students will be bringing home assigned books in a red folder. Please have them read their book aloud to you nightly. Spend no more than 20 minutes a night having your child read their assigned book aloud. The books should be a good fit for your child.

Below are some pictures I took of the kids practicing “reading to someone”. Check out the variety of places that they choose to read in the classroom!