January 26-30

ANNOUNCEMENTS AND REMINDERS:

TOMORROW IS A SNOW DAY!  Be safe and enjoy the extra time with your children.

Homework packets are due on Thursday.  No homework = no free choice Friday!

The January spelling test will be on Thursday.  It will cover units 13-16.  Remember to help your child practice how to spell the word and how to use it in context!

On Thursday, I will be sending home an AWESOME resource to help you and your child practice their math facts at home.  Now, students will not only be held accountable for practicing their math facts, they will be held accountable for memorizing them.  In the resource, you will receive:

-an introduction letter that tells you where your child will be starting

-a math facts book showing you all of the fact families your child needs to practice.

-suggestions for how to practice math facts at home

-strategies for math facts

-tens frames (a resource that we use here at school)

-math fact cafe help

-IXL help

-a way to help you and your child keep track of their progress at home

Keep your eyes out for that resource!  Please let me know if you have any questions after you receive it.

This week in...

Phonics:  We are working with digraphs again.  Here are the digraphs we are working with:  /sh/, /ch/, and /th/.  Our focus words are:  watch, matching, teaching, each, which, wishbone, fishing, dish, path, and teeth.

Spelling:  We will focus on unit 16.  Here are the words:  any, many, too, same, and day.  

Vocabulary:  Our new words are:  students, effort, perform, mood, remember, and proud.  This week, I will introduce a new tool.  We will begin creating our own vocabulary books.  Each week, Team Howard will be responsible for writing down the new words we practice, their meaning, and also showing the meaning of the word.  They can show the meaning of the word in one of two ways.  They can either draw a picture or use the word correctly in a sentence.  I’m excited to see how this new tool works out!

Comprehension:  We will review the skill of summarizing.  When we summarize, we retell on the most important parts of the story.  While we read, we’ll pay attention to the main idea of each section of the story.  We’ll use those ideas to retell the story.   We’ll practice this skill while we read The Alvin Ailey Kids:  Dancing as a Team by Sharon Dennis Wyeth.

Grammar:  We’ll be working with the verb have.  The verb has two forms in the present tense:  have and has.  We use has when the subject is singular and have with the subject is plural, you, or I.  For example:

Nick and Ted have big parts in the play.

Ted has the role of the giant.

I have a puppy.

Writing:  I will be introducing quick writes with the team this week.  I recently learned about quick writes at one of our professional development days and I’m excited to put them to practice in my classroom.  The idea of quick writes are to help build writing fluency.  There will be three rules during quick writes.  Here are the rules:

1. Never stop writing.
2. Be quiet.
3. There is no right answer.

Each time we do a quick write, students will be prompted with something to help spark an idea.  For example, I might show them a picture, have them smell something, touch something, or even just look at a color.  Then, they will have three minutes to write all of their thoughts on their paper.  As we progress, we’ll extend the time.  Even if a student can’t think of what to write, they should be writing, “I’m thinking... I’m thinking...” until their thoughts come to them.  Their pencils should never stop moving during the entire three minutes we practice.  I’m so excited to see how this can improve our writing fluency!

Mystery Buddies:  Team Howard continues to work in small groups reading mystery novels.  While they read, they are using their detective notebooks to keep track of the mystery, clues, and suspects.  When they finish reading their novel, they will record how the mystery was solved.

Math:  This week, second grade will begin our flexible grouping for place value.  Team Howard will be traveling to the classroom that will help them with their specific learning goals for place value.  It’s so exciting to mix things up a little bit and it gives us a chance to work with other students from other classrooms.  No matter where Team Howard is working, they are working to:

1.  Be able to read and write three-digit numbers in number form, word form, and expanded form.

2.  Skip count by fives, tens, and hundreds within 1,000.

3.  Understand that the three digits of a three-digit number represent the amount of hundreds, tens, and ones.  

4.  Understand that numbers are made up of bundles.  For example, 100 can be thought of as ten bundles of ten.

5. Compare two three-digit numbers using the symbols <, >, and =.

6.  Be able to add or subtract 10 or 100 to any number within 1,000.

We will also practice our math facts.  This week, we are starting on whatever math fact family we need the most practice with.  We’ll practice these math fact families with worksheets, timed check-ins, flashcards, games, IXL, and math fact cafe.  

There will also be a chance for us to review how to tell time to the nearest five minutes and money.  This week, we will work on adding coins and dollars up to $2.00.  We’ll also practice how to use the dollar sign, cents sign, and decimal point appropriately.

Read Aloud:  We are on another mysterious adventure!  This time, it’s with the kids from A-Z mysteries.  We are reading The Missing Mummy and loving every second of it.

Social Studies:  We will finish up our “Me on the Map” project.  This project shows our special place in the world.  We talked about the planet, continent, country, state, town, and street that we live on.  This place is unique to us!  We’ll use these skills when our flat kids begin to arrive back at Russell School.

Science:  This week, we’ll review matter.  Matter is anything that takes up space.  Unfortunately the weather prevented us from having our outdoor science lesson with Mr. Vallaincourt and Mrs. Letiecq.  We’ll resume outdoor science next Monday.  Instead, we’ll do a science experiment that shows that gases take up the space of the container that they are in.  We’ll have to put our scientist thinking caps on to make a hypothesis and write down our observations and conclusions.  So much science lingo!  I love it!

Scholastic News:  To appropriately go with this huge storm that’s on it’s way, we’ll be reading an article called “Frozen in Ice.”  We’ll be talking about all kinds of wild winter weather.  Blizzards, sleet, freezing rain, and polar vortexes!  Then, we’ll use a map to answer questions about the wild weather across the country.

Have a fantastic week!