March 16-20

ANNOUNCEMENTS AND REMINDERS:

Please remember to send in your preferred dates and times for your child’s spring conference.  If it is easier for you, you are more than welcome to email me your preferences as well.  I’ll be sending out reminders sheets with your conference date and time in totes on Thursday.  Conferences will be scheduled on March 24-26.

Homework packets are due on Thursday!   Please remind your child to put it in their backpack on Wednesday evening.

A field trip permission slip will be coming home in totes on Thursday.  We will be going to Hannaford for their guiding stars tour to help us learn more about making healthy choices.  We are scheduled to go Wednesday, March 25 at 9:30.  Students do not need to bring anything special for the field trip.  Please sign and return the permission slip as soon as possible.  We’ll be needing the permission slips by Monday, March 23.

Ms. Austin will be joining our classroom on Friday to do an activity with us about the types of thinkers we are.  We’re looking forward to having Ms. Austin in the room again!  

This week in...

Phonics:  We are working with the spelling patterns /oo/ and /ou/.  Here are our focus words:  shook, stood, hook, brook, crook, foot, soot, could, should, and would.  

Spelling:   We will work on unit 22.  The words are:  again, off, went, old, and number.

Vocabulary:  Our new words are:  conservation, remains, trouble, extinct, and hardest.  We’ll define these words together and search for them in two short stories called “Prairie Problem” and “Be Careful!  We’re Almost Gone!”

Comprehension:  This week, we’ll read a nonfiction article called A Way to Help Planet Earth.  We’ll make a description web about recycling plastic.  

Grammar: We will work with irregular verbs.  Sometimes you can’t just add -ed to form the past tense.  Sometimes, the word changes.  Some examples of irregular verbs are went and did.

Writing:  We will continue working on our biography projects.  Today, students found out who they will be studying for the project.  We then found at least two resources to help us find information about the people we are studying.  After reading our resources at least one time, we will go back and read slowly and carefully.  This time, we will search for information about when our person was born and when they died, their family members, their interests, what they are best known for, their best accomplishment, how they are like us, what we admire about them, and interesting facts.  We will keep track of the resources we use to add to our bibliography at the end of our project.

Math:  We have finished our Pennies for Peace books!  You’ll have the chance to see them at your child’s spring conference.  This week, we’ll review some important concepts from place value and begin practicing several strategies that will help us add and subtract numbers within 100.  I’ll be sending home an information sheet with you to show you the strategies we will focus on in the classroom.  When you are helping your child with their homework, please help them practice these strategies.  Practicing carrying and borrowing is usually too advanced for second graders.  Instead, we want second graders to have a strong foundation in strategies based on place value and a strong understanding of what they are doing to the numbers.   Carrying and borrowing becomes a strategy that is taught and used in later grades.  

We’ll also continue to practice our math fact families.  Make sure you are practicing your child’s math fact families at home as well.  These facts need to be memorized and memorization takes time.  The more your child practices (at school and at home) the faster they will meet their goals at school.

Science:  This week, we will do an activity that involves pieces.  One goal for second grade is that we understand that matter is made up of smaller pieces and those pieces can be taken apart and rearranged to create something new.  We’ll practice this with pattern blocks!  We also introduced part of our next science unit:  landforms.  Check out this funny video we watched today:

Saint Patrick’s Day Fun:  We’ll be writing persuasive letters.  Team Howard will be challenged to defend their opinion of leprechauns... are they real or not?  We’ll write a good topic sentence that states our opinion.  Then, we’ll write three reasons for why we feel that way.  Finally, we’ll write a great concluding sentence that restates our opinion.