Hello Families,
We had a great week in school! Here are some highlights from our week...
Important Dates:
*October 12- Last day to add to the Deerfield Directory https://docs.google.com/
*October 15- Volunteer Opportunity- Meet in the second grade project area at 9:30 if you can help with a few projects :)
*October 18- Color Fun Run Donations Due (donations are tax deductible) https://99pledges.com/fund/
*October 19- Color Run! Sign up to volunteer here: https://www.signupgenius.com/
*October 26-Trunk or Treat (see email from earlier this week)
Spirit Week leading up to the Color Fun Run:
$1 donation for spirit days!
- Monday: Favorite College Team Day
- Tuesday: Hat Day
- Wednesday: Pajama Day
- Thursday: Go Wildcats Day- Green, white, Novi or Deerfield gear
- Friday: Color Run! Students will need to bring a white t-shirt (no donation today)
Deerfield Online Directory:
The Deerfield directory is going digital this year. If you would like to share your contact information, please sign up using the link below. The date has been extended to October 12th (today!) for parents to sign up. This is very helpful when parents want to invite other students to birthday parties etc, but need contact information. Please note this is an optional activity.
Be sure to put your student’s information on the correct GRADE LEVEL tab, located at the bottom of the page. Hopefully you will find this to be a helpful resource in trying to communicate with other families in our community. This will become a “read only” document as of Friday, October 12th so please be sure to input your data soon if you would like to be included.
Second Grade Leadership Project:
We had quite an eventful morning! As students came into our classrooms, they soon discovered that someone had left a rock with inspiring kindness message on them. We gathered together as a whole second grade and realized each of our classrooms had a rock! Who could have done this!? We called Mrs. North to see if it was her but she said it wasn't but she was intrigued. She came down to our room and read us a story that reminded her of this, Only One You. This sparked our interest and as a grade we decided we must share this with the whole school! Luckily, second grade is in charge of Community Friday's during the month of November so we have the perfect platform to share. Mrs. North has agreed to set some art time aside next week to teach us about practice painting rocks. What a great cross-curricular leadership project integrating science, social studies and art. Stay tuned because we are going to need your help! Follow our journey on Twitter.
Academics:
Writing This week we continued to write our Personal Narratives. We continued to study mentor texts in order to learn more about what published authors do when writing personal narratives. We also learned about leads and endings this week. Your child had the opportunity to create different leads and different endings for the personal narrative he/she is writing.
Reading This week we began learning about our Decoding Beanie Babies! These are strategies that children use when they come to a word and don't know what it is. Ask your child about Eagle Eye (use the picture to help you figure our the unknown word), Stretchy the Snake (stretch out the word or sound it out) and Chunky Monkey (look for chunks in the word to help figure out the word). We will continue our decoding strategies next week!
Math We began Unit 2 this past week. You should have received the "at-home review" as well as your child's Unit 1 math test. The cover sheet for the unit 1 test will tell you how your child did on the test. If your child missed any skills, please review them at home. We will be rechecking them on these skills when we take an accumulative test just before report cards. Also, please keep the ,"At-home review" in a safe spot at home. Please use this as you see fit to help your child prepare for the next test at home. You do not need to return the review back to school...it is simply sent home so you can help your child prepare for the test.
Science We reviewed our ,"Need to knows" as a grade level this past week. It is amazing to see how much we have learned about rocks so far! We also took our next "i-check" science test this week. After reviewing what we have already learned about rocks, their properties and how they are made, students decided that the next logical step in our learning should be to determine the how these Earth materials affect us and how they are useful. On Wednesday, we took a walk outside to find areas of the schoolyard where rocks were used to make something useful. Students were thrilled to find these materials being used to make sidewalks, a path, concrete steps, clay flower pots, brick walls, and many more examples. Your child can easily do this investigation at home too! See what things they can find around your house that have been made with cobbles, pebbles, sand, silt or clay. Please see the email we sent home about requesting help to make a matrix mixture for our science. If you can help, please let us know!
Have a great weekend!
The Second Grade Teachers
