Short Week

                                                                                                     September 14, 2015
Dear Parents,

Here we are in week 5!!  These weeks are just flying by, especially when this past school week was only 3 days long!  

In Class Math Volunteer Opportunities
I'm very happy to report that next week I will be ready to have parent volunteers during the math block.   I am requesting 1 volunteer per block for Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.  The 1st grade math block is from 8:15 to 9:35 AM.  I would like a volunteer (you don't need to have a student in the 1st grade class) from 9:30 to 10:15 AM.  The 2nd grade math block is from 9:50 to 11:25 am.  I would like a volunteer (you don't need to have a student in the 2nd grade grade class) from 10:30 to 11:15 AM.  Although the volunteer time is only a 45 minute slot, this would count as a hour.  Volunteers for these time periods will be helping small groups of students with their facts (high number) practice through games and individual students with reinforcement and practice of math concepts.  If you are able to help out on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday I would really appreciate it!!  Please let me know so I can schedule you in beginning next week (Sept. 21st).

Math
Last week in math our focus was to continue renaming 3-digit numbers.  This is challenging concept but the students of Room 17 are beginning to be pros.  It has taken a lot of work with manipulatives and working with partners but I believe we have it!!

Along with renaming we continued work with writing numbers in standard form, word form, and expanded form.  It got a little tricky when the place value was out of order, for example--What number is 6 tens 3 ones 4 hundreds? What number is 5 + 300 + 40?  But after only a couple of times students realized that they have to read the problem carefully, making sure the place value is in the correct order.

Math Homework
Monday--IXL M.4 Value of the Underlined Digit--tens and ones
Tuesday--IXL B.2 Comparing Numbers Up to 1,000.
Wednesday--IXL M.5 Value of underlined digit up to 100’s.
Thursday--Worksheet

Language
Nouns, nouns, and more nouns...we are still learning about singular and plural nouns.  This week we studied nouns that are irregular in the plural form.  Our focus was on nouns that ended with y, f, and nouns that you have to change the spelling of the singular form to make the plural form.  Here are some examples...
Singular                       Plural
penny                            pennies
scarf                              scarves
child                              children 

Writing

More revising

Revising

We are so close to finishing our first writing project!!  This week we spent time revising.  Students were confusing editing (fixing a piece of writing) with revising (changing a writing piece to make it stronger).  So we spent 2 class periods using teacher models and activities to revise as a whole class and in partners.  Finally students applied their revising knowledge to their own rough drafts.  I was also able to start meeting with students to edit and revise with them.  Students will be ready to write their final copies this coming week.

Still more revising.

Sharing revised pieces in groups.

Projects 
Student groups finished their agreement poster (Mutual Respect, Attentive Listening, Appreciations/No Put-Downs, and Right to Pass).  We started getting ready to write scripts for our puppet shows.  Groups looked at and practiced a script to learn about the parts.  Each script will include 5 characters, a setting, problem, and solution.  Although this project is taking longer than anticipated, I know the outcome will be well worth it!!

Hope your week is great!!

Sincerely,
Anne Bloomfield

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

Hello Second Grade Families,

We are in full swing of using all Daily 5 reading components in our reading class and students are doing great in their leveled reading groups.  Your child will have an assigned book nightly with an assignment for them to complete in their reading log. They should be reading 20 minutes a night.  

Some students will have sight words in their reading folder as well as a fluency page to practice reading aloud at home if they are reading fluently below a reading level L (which is considered the end of first grade.)  Students should be able to read at a higher level than their fluent level but as books get harder we want students to be able to read them at a fluent pace.  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.  Fluency assessments will be every Wednesday.

All students will be bringing home a spelling list that they will be practicing in class but will need to practice at home as well.  Spelling assessments will be every Thursday.

Happy Reading,

Katy Loop