March 23-27

Announcements and Reminders:

Conferences are this week!  You should have received a confirmation paper with your date and time last week.  If you are unsure of your scheduled time, please contact me.  Looking forward to meeting with all of you again!

On Tuesday, the Children’s Museum and Theater of Maine will be visiting Russell School and performing a puppet show focusing on disability awareness.  We are so excited to welcome them to our school!

Wednesday is our field trip to Hannaford.  We will be going on their guiding stars tour to learn about how we can making healthy choices while grocery shopping.  If you have not returned your child’s permission slip yet, please do so as soon as possible!  If I did not receive a permission slip from you yet, there will be another copy in your child’s backpack tonight.

Homework packets are due on Thursday!

This month’s spelling test will be on Thursday.  It will cover units 20-23.

On Friday, students from UNH will be performing “The Nightingale.”  This performance also goes along with our disability awareness curriculum.  We will be laughing and learning a lot during this performance!

Mrs. Thibodeau will also be visiting us on Friday afternoon.  She will be wrapping up our disability awareness curriculum.

BIOGRAPHY DAY:  As a part of our biography project, second graders are invited to come to school dressed as the person they studied.  This should be a simple “costume” and can be as simple as a hat.  If you need ideas, please contact me.  I would be happy to help!  This year’s biography day will be on Wednesday, April 1st (NOT a joke!).  A paper reminder with a more detailed explanation will go home in totes this week.

This week in...

Spelling:  We will practice the final list for the month of March.  The words are:  great, tell, men, say, and small.  Our spelling test will be on Thursday.

ELA:  Our main focus will be on our biography projects.  Team Howard was required to use at least two resources.  After reading our nonfiction resources, we gathered many facts about the people we are studying.  We know when they were born, when they died, who their family members were, what their interests were, what they are best known for, how they are like us, and many other interesting facts.  This week, we will be organizing all of our research into a rough draft.  Once we have our rough draft, we will edit and revise it so we can then publish our writing into an illustrated and informative biography book.  

We will be presenting these books to our team on Wednesday, April 1st.  On this day, Team Howard is asked to come dressed as the person they studied.  As mentioned above, this should be a simple “costume”.  Again, if you need any help, please let me know!  I have lots of ideas for how your child could dress for the occasion.  

We’ll also continue to practice our literacy goals with our fable unit.  Each week, a small group of students performs a fable for the team.   Then, we discuss the fable and do a short activity to connect to the story.

Conferences:  This week, Team Howard will be doing their spring conferences.  As you know, half of the conference will be student led.  We will be practicing and rehearsing our student-led part with each other.  We’ll practice talking about our goals, our projects, and many of the projects that we plan to share with you.  

Computer lab:  We are practicing our typing skills by typing one of our personal narratives.  When we are finished typing our projects, we’ll be sending them home for you to enjoy.

Math:  This week, second grade will be involved in a strategy switcheroo!  Each second grade class will travel to every other second grade classroom.  In each class, they will have the chance to be introduced to a new strategy.  They’ll practice the strategy and leave with a “take-away”.  These strategies will be the strategies we will focus on and practice in our word problems unit.  Here are the two power standards that we will be focusing on for the next several weeks.

1. Fluently add and subtract within 100 using strategies based on place value.  These strategies will include the building and use of a number line.
2. Use addition and subtraction to solve one and two step word problems involving situations of adding to, taking apart, and comparing with unknowns in all positions including money and measurement word problems.

Read Aloud:  As a class, we are studying Clara Barton.  After reading a short picture book and nonfiction online article, we are now reading a short chapter book.  We are looking all kinds of interesting information!  For example, did you know that Clara Barton was one truly amazing teacher?  Now you know!