Monday, February 22, 2016

Weekly News February 22-26, 2016

Homework: The math packet and reading log are due on this Friday. Please return it in your Yellow Reading Log/Math Homework Folder. Continue to work on the writing homework. Remember it is due March 4th. Please make sure you sign your child’s reading log.
Basket Raffle for the Fun Fair: Help our class build a wonderful arts & craft basket to raffle. Please bring send in any supplies for our basket. Thanks to those who have already contributed to our basket.
Thanks for all the help for our holiday parties this year. A special thank you to Rebecca Edwards for organizing the parties. The children had a lot of fun celebrating together.
Language Arts and Science: We will become weather watchers and researchers for the next several weeks. We will begin by observing clouds. The students will learn the three basic clouds: cirrus, stratus, and cumulus by reading the book Clouds by Tomie dePaola. We will discuss how these types make other types of clouds. In our reading groups we will each be reading about the water cycle. As a read aloud we will be reading Snowflake Bentley.  Students will be working with the long vowel a. We will learn that it can be spelled ai or ay as well as the CVCe that we already learned earlier this year. In writing our focus will shift to informative writing. We will begin by selecting a sport or hobby that we know well. We will divide our topic into three headers or driving questions. We will learn to use key words to take notes. Then take the notes and turn it into an informative paragraph. We will read Stand Tall Molly Lou Melon. This is the book of the month that will be discussed at our All School Meeting on Friday.
Mathematics: We are continuing our work on mental math. We will review addition strategies and then focus on the subtraction strategies. On the back of our newsletter is a helper chart of our subtraction strategies. We will learn how to round two and three digit numbers to the nearest 10. We will practice using rounding to estimate sums and differences. Using estimation students will learn the steps to see if their answers are reasonable. We will work on explaining our answers in writing.
Cursive: We slowly started learning about our first group of cursive letters. So far we have learned the letter a. It is in a group we call the “Clock Climbers.” All the letters in this group begin the exact same way.

Ways you can help at home: Watch the weather together. Describe your observations. Watch a meteorologist on tv together. Talk about the key words he or she used to tell about the weather. Read books and poems about the weather or seasons. Review numbers that make 10. Review the numbers that make a hundred. Practice solving equations that involve a missing number with your child. Go over any problems that your child may have missed on class work or homework. Talk about whether it was a careless mistake or whether they were confused.


Monday, February 8, 2016

Weekly New February 9-12, 2016

Homework: The math packet and reading log are due on this Friday. Due to the snow day Monday night’s homework is optional. Please return it in your Yellow Reading Log/Math Homework Folder. Continue to work on the writing homework. Remember it is due March 4th. Please make sure you sign your child’s reading log.
Reminders:
We will celebrate Valentine’s Day on Friday, February 12th. Please have a candy free Valentine card for each classmate. You may also send a snack for your child to enjoy at our celebration. The students in our class include: Yakub, Hannah, Max, Stella, Chris, Declan, Ryan E., Ryan F., Aidan, Michelle, Owen, Natalie, Ellie H., Samantha, Colin, Kelly, Kaitlyn, Victoria, Zak, Shruti, Jack and Ellie S.

Basket Raffle for the Fun Fair: Help our class build a wonderful arts&craft basket to raffle. Please bring send in any supplies for our basket.
Supplies:  Our classroom community is in need of  tissues, erasers (block kind), glue sticks and dry erase markers. Thanks!
Language Arts and Social Studies:  We will continue to read about leaders and talk about what makes a good citizen. Students will be working with the long vowel e spelled ea.  We will be editing our opinion pieces.
Mathematics: This week we will be focusing on mental addition strategies. Then we will review what a difference is and begin to some mental subtraction strategies.
KidBlog: To get on your child’s kidblog go to the website at https://kidblog.org/class/mrs-porters-class8/posts 
Scroll to your child’s name and click it. Then enter the password. This is your child’s first and last initials lowercase followed by your child’s student number (your child knows his/her number) and sss If your child has a single digit student number put a zero in front of the number. For example, if Jane Doe was number 5 it would look like this jd05sss  Let me know if you need any support getting on it. The students who have gone on are enjoying posting and  commenting on their peers’ blogs. Your child might like reading and writing on their blog over the break. I have to approve the posts and will check at least once a week or more to approve posts and comments. Encourage your child to use capitals and end punctuation in their work.
Ways you can help at home: Help make sure your child is getting started with their writing homework. Model adding numbers in your head and talk about what you did. Then have your child try it.  Get your child to talk about his or her day. Here is a website that might be able to help if your child doesn’t want to say much. Check it out for ideas. http://www.simplesimonandco.com/2014/08/25-ways-ask-kids-school-today-without-asking-school-today.html/
Play games with your child over the break, read books together,  Have a safe, relaxing week!

Video of the Week

Presidents of America Song

Thursday, February 4, 2016

Weekly News

Homework: Please see the new writing homework for February. It is due Friday, March 4th. The math packet and reading log are due on this Friday. Please return it in your Yellow Reading Log/Math Homework Folder. Please make sure you sign your child’s reading log.
Language Arts/Social Studies: We will continue to find leadership traits and evidence from the text to support the trait. We will work on the vowel team ea/ee in our word work. We will continue to work on opinion writing. We will continue to work on our opinion pieces this week.
Mathematics: We have finished our first workbook. I am sending it home today. You will find that we did not do two chapters. These chapters do not correlate with our second grade curriculum here in Shrewsbury so our district has decided for us to skip these chapters. Certainly they are still good pages if you chose to work with your child on them. We will begin chapter 10 on mental math this week. The students will learn that mental math can be used to find the exact answer in addition and subtraction. Estimation can be used when an exact answer is not needed. The students will learn how to use number bonds to add and subtract two and three digit numbers with and without regrouping. They will also learn how to round numbers to estimate sums and differences and check for reasonableness.
Math night was a lot of fun. Thank you to all of you who were able to attend. I was in charge of the game section for second grade. I am sending home copies of the games to those who weren’t able to make it.
Valentine’s Day Information: Please remember that our Valentine cards need to be candy/snack free.  Thank you for your help with this.  I am sending a list of our classmates for you to help your child make a card for each classmate. 
Supplies:  We just passed the half way point of the school year. It is a good time to check in with your child about his or her Twistables. These are the one item is not a part of our community supplies.  Our classroom community is in need of more tissues, erasers (the block eraser not the pencil toppers) and glue sticks. Thank you in advance to anyone who is able to volunteers to help out our classroom community with supplies.
Ways you can help at home: Read with your child and discus the character traits. Read a biography together. Look for ea/ e words as you read. Practice spelling sight words. Help your child take time to edit for capitals and end marks in their writing in their homework. Go on Greg Tang Math and play some games with your child. Practice asking your child what is 10 more, 10 less, 20 more, 20 less than a number, 100 more and 100 less.  Talk about how to add numbers. Review weekend activities with your child on Sunday night or Monday morning so your child will be ready to write in his or her journal about the weekend.