Good-Bye August...Hello September

                                                                                       

                                                                                                  September 8, 20015                                                                                  
Dear Second Grade Families,

Already done with the third week of school...these weeks are just flying by.  How can we be in September already???  

Math

In math we have been very busy learning about the hundreds place.  We worked on a mini math project in which 5 bags with straws in them were shown to the class.  We talked about we could figure out how many straws there were.  Students talked about counting them by one's and then counting them by two's but after some discusion time students thought it would be best to count them by tens.  After some more conversation students decided that we would need to keep the groups of tens separate from one another.  We accomplished this by bundling them with rubber bands.  Students found that it was MUCH easier to count by tens but realized we had LOTS of groups of tens and that maybe we needed to bundled our groups of tens into 100.  That was quickly completed and the final straw count was 741!!

Students have been exploring up to 3-digit numbers with base ten blocks and place value charts.  As we work with 3-digit numbers here are some of the ways your child is seeing them:

standard form = 274

word form = two hundred seventy-four

expanded form = 200 + 70 + 4,         

place value chart = hundreds    tens    ones
                                   2           7         4

Another math skill being worked on is writing number words up 3-digits.  Students are using resources in the room, an Interactive Writing that we created together.  This Interactive Writing piece has the numbers and the number words 1-20, the decade words (thirty, forty,...), and one hundred.  With this resource students are able to write the numbers from 1-999 correctly.

Here is this week's homework.  Please have your child work for 15 minutes on the following objectives.

Monday-No Homework-Labor Day
Tuesday- M.2 Place Value Models--Up to Hundreds
Wednesday- C.4 Writing Numbers Up to 1,000 in Words
Thursday- A.9 Even and Odd Numbers on a Number Line

Language
We are adding on to our knowledge of nouns.  Students are now learning about singular and plural nouns.  As a class we are creating Tree Maps to help us see the different ways to make singular nouns (names one person, place, or thing) into plural nouns (names more than one person, place, or thing).

Writing
Students are continuing to work through the writing process with our riddles about ourselves.  This writing project will not only create a great beginning writing piece for your child's writing portfolio, it is also taking the students through the complete Writing Process-- pre-writing, rough draft, editing and revising, and final draft.  I am so proud of the writers in Room 17.  They are doing an amazing job with this first piece, I can't wait to get them hung in the hallway.  I wonder if you will be able to guess which one is your child!?!

Projects

Team Work

We are getting close to completing our first project--Tribes in Action.  During the first 2 weeks of school we worked on learning about the Tribes Agreements--Attentive Listening, Mutual Respect, Appreciations/No Put-Downs, and Right to Pass.  This past week students were broken into groups (They selected their top 3 agreements that they wanted to work on.).  Because this is our first group project we create "Working in Groups Norms" to help us stay focused on task.  So far the groups have created a poster to announce their agreement.  We will continue this week creating puppets and writing short puppet show scripts that shows each agreement.

P.E.

I don't normally write very much about P.E. in the blog, but this week Darity Openshaw shared a special talent with our class--Zumba!!  The Zumba class lasted 45 minutes and included warm-up, aerobic dance, game stations, and a yoga cool down. It was so much fun to exercise and learn about Hawaii!  We are so fortunate to have Darity Openshaw as a volunteer P. E.Teacher!!

Mark your calendar... 
Picture Day for Room 17 will be October 7th at 10:30 AM. 

Looking forward to another great week!!

Sincerely,
Anne Bloomfield         

Here's some information from Mrs. Loop...

Hello Second Grade Families,

Last week I begun meeting with small groups for reading groups.  Each student brought home assigned reading in their red reading folder last week.  Students are earning stickers for the treasure box when they take the time to read each night and complete a quick reading activity.  This week your child will be receiving a reading log that has quick reading assignments for each night to coincide with their assigned reading book.  Please take the time to listen to your child read aloud and ensure that they take the time to complete their quick reading activity.  Many of these activities are tied to grade level standards and give me an indication of student’s ability or struggle. Study hall will also begin next week and any students who forget to complete their reading assignment or are not prepared because they forgot their reading book at home may be required to attend study hall in the afternoon.

We have implemented 4 of the Daily 5 reading components in our classroom (read to self, read to someone, listen to reading, and work on writing).  I am including a list of the listen to reading sites below that students are utilizing at school.  During your child's reading homework time at home you are welcome to have them visit the sites that I share with you to offer them more reading practice.  Remember read alouds offer students the opportunity to hear reading fluency especially of books that they may not be able to read yet independently.  (I sent all parents an email with the links below.)

raz kids (teacher username is kloopa)

https://www.kidsa-z.com/main/Login

just books read aloud

http://justbooksreadaloud.com/

National Geographic Young Explorer

http://ngexplorer.cengage.com/ngyoungexplorer/

Storyline Online

http://www.storylineonline.net/

Your child will be bringing home their binder with a red folder in it. (I kept all binders at school over the long weekend.)  Inside the folder should have your child's assigned book.  When your child brings home an assigned book please have them read it aloud to you.  They can read it aloud multiple times if it is a short book or short part of the book.  If your child does not bring home an assigned book please have them visit one of listen to reading sites that I will be sharing via email or have them read aloud a book of their choice.  Reading homework should take no more than 20 minutes each night.  Ice cream and rocket sight words have been assessed for this year.  

Reading fluency assessments have begun.  Your child may have a reading fluency passage in their red folder to practice.  Please set a timer for one minute and have them read the passage aloud.  They need to read 100 words in one minute with a 95% accuracy (approximately no more than 5 mistakes).  If your child does not have a fluency passage in their folder they can count 100 words in their assigned book and see if they can read them in a minute or less with minimal mistakes.  I like to test my son 3 times each night and it takes no more than 3 minutes.  He tends to read faster and more accurately with each time that he practices.

Happy reading!

Katy Loop