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

Sept. 29, 2017

Dear Families,

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

Reading- We continued to learn about character traits. We also practiced writing to a prompt based on our mini lessons. We looked deeper at the characters and tried to find out more about our characters based on what they say and do. How can you support your child's reading skills at home? Think about the characters in the books you are reading at home with your child. Talk with your child about the traits each character has (i.e. funny, sneaky, silly, mean). It can be fun to track if the character changed throughout the story!

Writing - The students learned how to use a circle map to help them plan out a story. Next, we learned about how to really grab our readers with a powerful lead. We started our first personal narrative and will work on revising and editing our stories next week. 

Math The students love working on their scrolls and challenge folders when they are done with their math assignments in class. We will be having our first math test this coming Tuesday, October 3rd. Please be sure you go over the review that was sent home at the beginning of the unit in preparation for this test. Thanks!

Social studies- We began our first unit with the students.  Our first unit is called, "What is a community?".  We will help students answer questions such as:

1. What is a community?
2. Why do families live in communities?
3. How are communities alike and different?

We started the week learning about ourselves and what kind of citizens we want to be this year. We talked about who we are and who we want to be. What are the words that describe our character traits? We also talked a bit about how our families are the same, but different.  We will continue with our unit next week as we look deeper into our what our community looks like by learning about maps.

Mrs. Carol our Mindful teacher will visit us next week! We'll send more information later when we set up a parent meeting date. 

Important dates to remember:

Tuesday, October 3rd Bingo Night (6:00-8:00 p.m.)

Wednesday, October 4th Picture Day and Count Day

Thursday, October 19th DCC Parent Meeting

Have a great weekend!

The Second Grade Team

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!