October 21, 2016

Dear Families,

Here is an update on what is going on in the second grade team.

Important dates:

*October 31st: Halloween Parade and parties.  Parade 9:20, Party 10:20-11:20

*November 1st: Sign up Genius is being sent home to sign up for conferences!

*November 4th:  End of first marking period

*November 8th:  Election Day- no school

*November 15th:  Half day of school/ Parent-Teacher Conferences!

*FYI  Please remember to send back the FYI forms. We're going to put them in our Leadership Notebooks. 

* Leadership in Action:  This month Kindergarten is working on a community service project to help the students in Baton Rouge, Louisiana who had flood waters ruin their school (a note came home about it earlier this week).  They are asking for donations and second grade is in charge of donating index cards, red and black ink pens, glitter, or a cash donation for a gift card.  Any and all donations are appreciated and will be accepted until Wednesday, October 26th. 

Language Arts:

Reading: Over the next several weeks we will be focusing on Comprehension Beanie Baby Strategies. This week we learned about how Rocky Raccoon Visualizes to comprehend text.  Students were read mentor texts, "Fletcher and the Falling Leaves" and "A Night in the Country".  They listened and made movies in their heads as they visualized.  Ask your child what pictures they drew from their favorite moments visualizing in the stories!

Writing:  This week we learned about creating snapshots in our stories using our five senses.  We did a "Snapshot Nature Walk" to look, hear, smell and touch nature to get our writing juice flowing!  Students practiced writing a snapshot as a lead to their stories to grab the readers attention and pull them in!  We then wrote stories about our favorite fall activity.  Ask your child what their story is about and have them write a snapshot for you!

Math: In math, we are continuing to learn about addition strategies. This learned how near doubles/helper facts, and the turn around rule can help us when adding.  Please make sure your child is practicing their basic facts to gain fact power at home! Ask your child about these strategies and see if they can draw a model of a Double Ten Frame and explain in writing the near double/helper fact addition strategy. In second grade the common core asks for students not only to be able to get an answer, but to be able to explain in words/examples how and why they got the answer.  We practice this a lot at school, but practicing this at home would be very beneficial as well.  We ended the week on 2.8 if you are following along with Home Links at home.

Social Studies: This week we continued our PBL unit with kids creating a class booklet to give to new families moving to Novi.  We brainstormed all the places in Novi that make our community special.  Each student chose a different place, drew a picture of it and wrote about why it is special.  We will put all of these together to make a booklet.

STEAM: We are doing some of our October STEAM challenges next week and need  more small candy pumpkins and boxes of toothpicks!  Thank you in advance if you are able to help out!

Character Trait of the Month: Self Control. Please remember to have your child work on his/her self control map/calendar.  Our hope is for these Character traits to become natural for the kids both at home and at school!

Have a wonderful weekend! Enjoy the beautiful colors!

The Second Grade Teachers