Our Amazing Week!

Dear Families,

We had another successful week with your child! We celebrated National Peace Day on Thursday. The students created pinwheels with Mrs. North and put them outside to be displayed. It was a beautiful display!  We mentioned "Cultures of Thinking" at our Curriculum Night, and this year our focus as a school will be on the force of language. First, we're working on the habit of using our manners. Saying "Please" and "thank you" are very important to creating a culture of respect. Please review this important habit at home. It creates a friendly and polite atmosphere and encourages thoughtfulness. Another way that we practiced using our language last week, was learning how to say Good Morning to one another using eye contact, a friendly handshake and our names. Working so closely all day in a classroom with twenty two children in one room can sometimes get a little too cozy so they need to learn how to look someone in the eye and say, "Please stop!" and that NO means NO. It's great to use your words in a firm, assertive tone to get someone to leave you alone or stop a behavior that you don't like. All of these strategies will help to build our classroom community and hopefully we will see these manners carried through on the playground and at home.

Reading- This week during reading we read a couple of books with characters that have very strong character traits. We talked about the different adjectives or traits that described the main character. We also wrote about the character and the problem and solution in our "Thinking Notebooks." These notebooks are where students will share their thinking about a reading, science, social studies or a specific learning topic. We're focusing right now on the procedure of the notebook, writing the date, the title, the target, and answering both questions from the prompt. We also filled our Book Baggies to the brim with books that we are excited about reading. Students are building their stamina and working toward reading for a full 20 minutes! We'll get there!

Word Work: This week students created a Word Collection Book to begin to collect words. They set up the short vowel pages and began to collect short vowel words. Ask your child to tell you about their book and tell you about short vowels (they're really not "short"). ;)

Writing - We're working on setting up our Writing Notebooks and creating maps with our writing ideas. We created our first map, which was a heart map. This map has many of the things that your child loves on it or adventures that they've loved. Students can use this map to get ideas for their personal narratives. Next week, we'll create another map and then get started writing a personal narrative.

Math - Thanks for all the paper towel rolls! We made our number scrolls last week. This is a fun way for students to learn the patterns of numbers. It's interesting to see how when second graders start writing in the hundreds, they get confused on how to write them. Scrolls are an amazing and fun way for them to practice. We worked on number grids, recognizing patterns and playing the number grid game which helps students to practice how to travel and count on a number grid. We worked on the procedures of math workshop and are getting the hang of math workshop expectations. We will be finishing up our first math unit next week and the test will be the following week. Please use the Unit 1 Review that was sent home to help your child prepare for the test. You don't need to send that back to school.

Makerspace- We had our first Maker Space this week. We went over expectations for this space and talked about collaboration.  The students had a chance to work with others to build something using materials at a table of their choice. We saw several unique structures and enjoyed seeing the student’s creativity. We look forward to spending more time in the Maker Space this year!

NWEA- This week your child had the pleasure of taking the NWEA tests. It requires stamina and some patience with the technology. We had a few technical difficulties, so a few children will finish next week. We will share the results during conferences in November. These tests give us a baseline of your child's skills in reading and math and help us to plan for instruction.

Seesaw: Because of the tech issues and testing last week and next week, we haven't had access to our Ipads or Chrome books to make entries into Seesaw. Please be patient with us, as soon as testing in all classrooms is finished we should be good to go! We're excited to share all of the great learning experiences that we've been having!

Friday Buddies- This week is our first week meeting our buddies from a different grade. Please ask your child about the ice breaker activity they did with their buddy class. We had fun meeting with our third grade buddies!

Important dates-

     October 4th: Picture Day.  Information went home last week.

Have a wonderful weekend!