October 27, 2017

Dear Families,

Upcoming Dates:

Tuesday, October 31st Halloween Parade at 9:20 a.m.

            PM Color Run/Cider and Donuts

(Please remember--no masks or weapons allowed for dressing up, and remember to bring a change of clothes to wear after the parade--students should also have a white t-shirt for the color run here at school. I think only 15 children brought them in last week).

Friday, November 3rd End of the First Marking Period

Tuesday, November 7th Election Day-NO SCHOOL

Thursday, November 9th Donuts for Dad & Fall Book Fair Begins

Tuesday, November 14th Half Day of School/Parent/Teacher Conferences-- a sign up genius will be sent home via email next week!

Wednesday, November 15th Picture Re-take Day

Here are some highlights from our learning last week:

Wow, a crazy week with the water situation, but a great opportunity for all of us to realize how lucky we are to have potable water whenever we want it. It was such a coincidence as we were talking about it last week when we were discussing other communities and their problems. Hopefully we will be back to normal next week! Continue to send water bottles with your child.

Reading- Last week we worked on building our stamina for reading and shopping for new books if needed. Many students were ready to look for books at a higher level to keep in their book baggies and practice their reading strategies. When they read with me they read mostly from our leveled book library so I can quickly assess their needs, but they are always welcome to read from our book corner and find books that they will also enjoy. We also learned how to log on to Epic and took time to enjoy reading on the Ipads.

Writing – We have almost completed our personal narrative writing unit. The students are in various places of completing stories and soon they will be choosing a story to publish as his/her final piece. We'll take next week to complete the writing process for Personal Narrative and then we will move on to blogging!

Math – We took our Unit 2 math test on Thursday. Your child's test scores will be coming home next week. We also took the Unit 1 and 2 test and will take the pretest for Unit 3 next week, as well. As a reminder, we will be sending home the at home review for unit 3 very soon, as well. Please keep this in a safe spot so you can review throughout the unit.

Social Studies- Be sure to send your Flat Stanley out to family or friends as soon as possible so that we can receive all letters back BY DECEMBER 1st (all directions for this activity were sent home). This activity aligns with our focus on learning about our community and comparing Novi to other communities. We'll be hanging our Flat Stanley responses on our map in the project area and are excited to see where our Flat Stanleys have traveled! We did have a successful launch on Friday, with no interference from trees!

Coat Donations— If you have any winter gear for Flint schools and you would like to donate, we are still accepting donations all month! Thank you so very much for helping the children in Flint with your gently used winter gear!

October 20, 2017

Dear Families,

Important dates to remember:

Wednesday, October 25th: Deadline for Long Sleeve white t-shirt (Color Run)

Thursday, October 26th: Unit 2 Math Test

Friday, October 27th: Spirit Day for Color Run, bring in a dollar for Favorite Team Day!

Friday, October 27th: All Donations for the Color Run are Due

Tuesday, October 31st: Halloween Parade in the AM, Color Run in the PM

We had another fun filled week in school! Here are some highlights from our learning:

Reading- This week in reading we worked on strategies to help your child comprehend the stories they are reading. We covered Rocky the Raccoon (Visualizing)and Jabber the Reteller (Retelling).   Ask your child to practice some of these strategies as they read at home. We will continue to cover more comprehension strategies next week.

Writing – We finished our second personal narrative and talked about revision and editing. The students used checklists to ensure that they completed the revision and editing process. Once we finished our narratives, we started a creative witch story in writing. We made a witch craft to go along with our Halloween writing.

Math – In math we finished lessons from Unit two up to 2.10. We focused on learning  about writing subtraction story problems and patterns with odd and even numbers. Our Unit 2 Math test is Thursday, October 26th. Please go over the At- Home Review that was sent home at the beginning of the unit with your child. There is no need to send this back to school. It is only for practicing at home.

Social Studies- This week we made our Flat Stanleys and got them ready for travel.  We brainstormed questions that we wanted to ask about other communities that we will be sending along with Stanley. Please send them out soon so that we can begin learning about his travels.

Mindfulness— Mrs. Carol visited us on Thursday this week and while she was here the students continued to practice mindful breathing and she talked about bucket filling and bucket dipping. Ask your child what it means to be a bucket filler.  We have included a link for the audio version of the book Mrs. Carol read with us.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3u-jUvANN8

Have a wonderful weekend!

The Second Grade Team

Attachments area

Preview YouTube video Have You Filled a Bucket Today? Book by Carol McCloud - Stories for Kids - Children's Books

Have You Filled a Bucket Today? Book by Carol McCloud - Stories for Kids - Children's Books

Have You Filled a Bucket Today? Book by Carol McCloud - Stories for Kids - Children's Books

October 13, 2017

Dear Families,

Important dates to remember:

October 19th: DCC Parent Meeting: 6:00-8:00

October 31: Halloween Parade, 9:20-9:50

October 31: Color Run

November 7th: Election Day, no school

We had another busy week in school! Here are some highlights from our learning:

Reading- We continued to learn about decoding strategies and are hoping that you are seeing your child use them at home. We learned about Skippy the Frog this week who helps us to remember to skip the word we don't know and read on to the end of the sentence. Often your brain will fill the word in for you because it's trying to make the sentence make sense. It's amazing how this strategy works! Often you can find Skippy and Lips the Fish hanging out together because Lips will say the beginning sounds of the word and Skippy will fill in the rest. Skippy helps us to make sure we are making meaning while we read.

Your child should be able to read up to a half hour now. If not set the timer for 20 minutes and build on from there. 

This is a little video about the strategies. We don't have this exact bookmark, but we'll send another one home. This might help you (the parents) to know how we coach the kids when they're reading aloud to us.

Writing - We started another story this week based on the mentor text, "Roller Coaster, " by Marla Frazee. We read the book and noticed some of the craft that the author put into her writing. We made a list and tried to put some of the same authors' craft into our own stories. We included dialogue, onomatopoeia, capitalized words (to show emphasis or loud sounds), parentheses to show extra information and ellipses. We also learned about a couple of different ways to add endings (instead of, "I went to bed!).

Math - In math we finished lessons from Unit two up to 2.6. We focused on learning about the many different strategies that we can use for fact power. Ask your child to share the doubles strategy or the nearly doubles. These strategies give us the power to add numbers quick as lightning and we don't even have to use our fingers and toes...

Social Studies- We had so much fun this week learning about accountable talk and how to agree, disagree and compromise when working together on a team. We learned the phrase, "Tell me more, " when we're not sure that we understand someone. We practiced listening to one another and looking at both sides of a situation and how to say "I disagree" or "I agree." We brainstormed questions that we had about maps, and  looked closely at maps to make a list of things that are included on maps. Then we started working on creating our own team community maps, while answering these questions: 

1. What is a community? 

2. Why do families live in communities? 

3. How are communities alike and different?

4. What should we include in our community to make people want to live there?

5. What should we include on our map to help readers to know about our map?

Next week, we'll continue to work on our maps!

Next week I'll send home information about our Flat Stanley Project. We finished our first Flat Stanley Book and we'd like your help in sending Flat Stanley around the world. More information to come! 

Mindfulness:

Ms. Carol came this week for mindfulness on Tuesday and Thursday. This week's lessons were about heartfulness and body awareness. We learned how to send loving/kind thoughts and how to do a body scan to help us to get to sleep. 

Please see the information on the Parents' Page to learn more about mindful classrooms. 

Have a great weekend!

October 6, 2017

Dear Families,

Important dates to remember:

Friday, October 13th: Spirit Day for Color Run, bring in a dollar for PJ Day!

Thursday, October 19th: DCC Parent Meeting

Friday, October 20th: Spirit Day for Color Run, bring in a dollar for Hat Day!

Friday, October 27th: Spirit Day for Color Run, bring in a dollar for Favorite Team Day!

Tuesday, October 31st: Halloween Parade in the AM, Color Run in the PM

  Here are some highlights from our learning this week:

Our class picture with The Golden Crayon! 

We won the opportunity to have him stay with us in our classroom for the month of October. We are so proud to be the first class to win the Golden Crayon for our amazing and excellent behavior 

in Art class!

Reading- This week we reviewed some of the decoding reading strategies that your child may have learned about in first grade. We went over Chunky Monkey (chunking the word into manageable pieces), Lips the Fish (getting your lips ready to say the sounds the letters make), Skippy the Frog (skipping the word and reading the rest of the sentence all the way through. Then coming back and thinking about what word would make sense there). When I listen to your child read, I'm looking to see how your child uses strategies to figure out unknown words. I'm also listening for fluency and then talking to your child about the book to check on comprehension. If it's painful to listen to your child read, then the book is too hard at this time and needs to be switched to something that will be simpler for them to read. 

Our Books of the Week for next week!

How can you support your child's reading skills at home? Read with your child as often as possible! They should be reading aloud to you and you should be reading aloud to them. This will help you get to know your child as a reader. What does your child do when they come to a word they don’t know? Do they have any strategies that they use to try to figure out the word or do they just give up? Next time this happens, ask your child what strategy they could use to help them.

We finished our first read aloud series, the Lulu books! If you haven't heard about Sonia Sophia Solinsky, be sure to ask your child about her! We're sad that they're over but excited to start a new series next week! Series books are a great way to get kids hooked on reading and great read alouds at home. Check some out at the library!  

Writing – Students continued working on their rough drafts and learned different tricks that writers use to make their writing more interesting. Students had a chance to improve their lead sentences, add dialogue and insert transition words. We will continue with Personal Narratives next week by using what we’ve learned this week to make a great story, and learn some new tools to use as well! 

Math – This week we finished up our first unit with our Unit 1 test.  You should expect to see your child’s score next week. We'll send home the cover sheet with the points per skill. If your child did not meet expectations YET, please don't worry, these skills are reviewed and retaught throughout the units. Please practice the skills that weren't met. We also started our next Unit. The At Home Review will go home next week. Please keep these at home, there is no need to send them back to school. I sent  a game home today called Spinning for Money. It's a fun way to practice counting change and can tell you a lot about your child's money counting skills. Notice if they can recognize the coins, count them and exchange for a dollar. I also sent home some money(yes, money),  ones, tens, twenties, and hundreds so that they could play with it at home. They were super excited that I had a money making machine in the back room couldn't wait to have some of their own! 

       Money Games in Math Class

Social Studies- 

This week we took a deeper look into our what our community looks like by learning about maps. Your child created both a family map and started making a neighborhood map. Next week, we will continue learning about maps by working in groups to create maps of a community. We will also go over how to successfully work and disagree in a group setting by using Accountable Talk.

Mindfulness—This week we started our training in Mindfulness. We are so lucky that after showing great progress last year in our classes with mindfulness, that the NEF awarded the 2^nd grade team with a grant to continue our training this year with our second graders. Our Mindfulness trainer, Ms.Carol, will be coming in twice a week for the next 8 weeks for about 20 minutes, to teach our students about being mindful and how it can help them in their everyday lives. This week we started learning about mindful listening and mindful breathing. Ask your child what they learned about this and how it can help them! 

Character Trait—Self Control

Our new character trait of the month is centered around Self Control. This week, your child should have brought home their next calendar with suggestions of ways to practice self control. 

Have a wonderful weekend!

The Second Grade Team