Week 3

                                                                                                        August 29, 2016

Dear Second Grade Families,

It’s hard to believe we will be entering our 3rd week of school!!  The first 2 weeks have been very busy and all  2nd graders are getting settled into a rountine.   

Math

This week in Math we worked on a very difficult but important skill--renaming tens and ones.  I must say, Miss Garcia and myself are  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 32, it can be renamed the following ways.

32
Tens	Ones
3	2
I I I	■■
2	12
I I	■■■■■■■■■■ ■■
1	22
I	■■■■■■■■■■ ■■■■■■■■■■ ■■
0	32
	■■■■■■■■■■ ■■■■■■■■■■ ■■■■■■■■■■ ■■

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.  Remember to check out our math resource page on the blog, we are updating it often.

Here is the homework for the week...

Monday	IXL A.6 Number Lines- Up To 100
Tuesday	IXL A.9 Even or Odd
Wednesday	IXL M.2 Place Value Models-Up To Hundreds
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.  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.  Miss Garcia and myself hope that you and your family enjoy the extra day!

Sincerely,

Anne Bloomfield

and

Shannon Garcia

Reading information from Mrs. Loop...

Hello Second Grade Families,

We had a great week of learning last week in reading class.  The students have done a great job getting back into our routines. 2nd graders will begin guided reading groups this week.  We are so excited that we can begin reading groups so soon.  Your child will have  book to read beginning this week.  Your child will be bringing their books home in a plastic envelope, this will need to be returned daily along with any reading logs that need to be completed.  Please listen to your child read nightly.

Last week the students learned about the closed syllable.  These are syllables that have one vowel, that is followed by one or more consonants and the vowel is short. Examples of a closed syllable are (stop, prob, lem, cat, fish,). We also finished our review of reading secrets by looking at students names.

Below are some pictures of some things that we discussed and learned about last week.  The names are showing the reading secrets that were found in them.       

Katy Loop

Fabulous First Week

Week 2: 2nd Grade Blog

One...

...problem...

Last week we focused on mainly review skills that your students learned last year.  I wanted to get a feel for where their learning was after our summer break!  The 2nd graders worked on skip counting by 2’s, 5’s, and 10’s.  They recorded a 2 digit number within 10-99, began writing numbers in word form AND found found one more, one less, within 100 by using a 100 chart as a tool.

...3 ways to solve.

 In Language Arts we focused on nouns.  The students created a circle map listing any person, place or thing as a noun.  This poster will be used as a tool in the room to refer to as the year goes on.  

Here’s the Math Homework for this week....`

Monday	IXL B.1 Comparing Numbers Up to 100.
Tuesday	IXL A.7 Hundred’s Chart
Wednesday	IXL C.2 Writing Numbers Up to 100’s in Words
Thursday	IXL M.1 Place Value Models-tens and ones

Here are some fun pictures from the 1st week of school!

  

Project Time--Students are making a poster for Attentive Listening.

   

Second Graders enjoying P.E. at the end of the day.

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

Hello Second Grade Families,

I am so happy that I get to work with your children still in second grade.  They meet with me every morning from 8:15-9:35 for reading class.  

Last week we reviewed how to shop for books in our class library to fill up our book baskets.  The kids also began building stamina while reading to self and writing in their journals.  They are all so eager to get back in the swing of things in our classroom so this week we will be adding choice during our building stamina times so they can choose if they want to read to themselves or work on writing first.  They are all working at being able to read and write for 20 minutes without being interrupted.  

We are also reviewing reading secrets in student’s names which correlate with secrets found in words when we are reading.  We have also reviewed what a syllable is  (a word or part of a word with one vowel pattern).  We discussed that every word needs a vowel and the kids practiced sorting sticky notes with groups of letters on them under the heading “IS A SYLLABLE” or “IS NOT A SYLLABLE”.  They put a dot under the vowel in the letter groups and placed the sticky note under “IS A SYLLABLE” and if they did not have a vowel they placed it under “IS NOT A SYLLABLE”.

We will continue discussing syllables this week, reviewing secrets in the remaining student’s names, and building stamina with read to self, read to someone, and work on writing.

Please encourage your child to read a book of their choice each night.  Please listen to them read or even take turns reading a sentence, paragraph, or page with them.  Assigned reading books will not be sent home until probably the first week in September.  

Happy reading,

Katy Loop

Welcome to 2nd Grade

Week 1

Second Grade Homework

August 15 -18

Welcome to the 2016-2017 school year!  Mrs. Bloomfield and I were so happy to see you on Thursday afternoon!  We can’t wait to see more of our students and families on Back to School Night on August 18th!  We would also like to express a HUGE thank you to all of the Oasis helpers and volunteers, we couldn’t make all of this happen without YOU!  

Our main focus of the first week of school will be working on the day to day routines that are so important to establish.  Time spent on routines early in the year make the rest of the year run very smoothly.  Even though we will be working hard on our routines our academic work will begin as well.  We will begin switching for reading with Mrs. Loop and Mrs. Rowlett  starting on Monday.  Our first writing assignment will also be started this week.  We will also begin our first project of the year, which will focus around the Tribes Agreements of Mutual Respect, Attentive Listening, Appreciations, No Put-Downs, and the Right to Pass.  It's going to be a busy week!!

Remember, it's a long day for 2nd graders!  Going to school until 4:00 PM is a big transition from last year!  When you take a longer school day and add on activities such as soccer, football, or dance; there is bound to be an adjustment period.  Please make sure that your child has a second snack for the afternoon.  They will definitely be tired, be sure to establish bedtimes that ensure that your child gets enough sleep.  

As we move into this new school year, Ms. Garcia and myself will be sending home assigned math homework starting Monday.  The homework schedule for the week is listed below.  We will be teaching classroom routines and beginning some informal assessments.  We suggest that you practice your homework time routine on Monday and Tuesday evening by spending 20 minutes reading with or to your child and practicing 15 minutes of math OR 10 math problems - not NOT to exceed 15 minutes.  It is our hope to ease your 2nd grader and your family into the new school year.

Happy Back to School,

Mrs. Bloomfield & Miss Garcia

Monday	IXL A.1 Skip Counting
Tuesday	IXL A.3 Skip Counting Sequences
Wednesday	Worksheet page  7-8
Thursday	IXL C.2 - Writing numbers up to 100 in word form