The Final Post for the 2014-2015 Team Howard!

ANNOUNCEMENTS AND REMINDERS:

Tomorrow is field day!  We will be participating in the activities rain or shine so please help your child dress appropriately.  They also need a change of clothes for afterwards.  An extra pair of socks and sneakers is also helpful.

Friday is the last day of school!  Students are dismissed at 12:00.  It’s hard to believe the end of the year is already here.  Thanks to all for a great year!

This week in...

ELA:  We are completing our memory books of second grade.  We’re writing all about some of our favorite things and all about the fun activities we did this year.  We’re even taking a few moments to reminisce about our accomplishments and our future goals.  This project always brings a few tears to my eyes!  In each student’s memory book, I’ve also written a short note to them.

We will also create a gift and a card for Father’s Day!  It’s a surprise... so you’ll just have to wait and see what we’ve created :)  We hope you enjoy it!

Students also performed in our final Reader’s Theater plays for the school year.  It was amazing listening to the expression that is in our voices now.  My favorite part is listening to the audience give compliments to the students who performed.  So special!

Math:  This week, we’ll create a glyph to go along with our summer bucket lists.  The glyph will show us our favorite season, how many books we plan on reading this summer, our favorite ice cream flavor, and what we would rather do at the beach.  The glyph will accompany our short summer bucket lists of all the things we hope to do this summer.

Classroom Community:  We’ll work as a team to help clean out the classroom.  Today, we cleaned out our desks.  Some of our materials will be coming home to you.  There are a couple writing tools, folders, writing journals, and spelling workbooks in your child’s backpack.  Please feel free to use these as extra tools to help your child practice their learning goals over the summer.  Later this week, we’ll work together to pack up many of our classroom materials to make the classroom “summer ready”.  It’s sad to see everything come down and get packed up, but so exciting at the same time.  We are so proud of all of the things we have accomplished this year and all of the new friendships we have made.

There will also be a short awards ceremony for the team.  I’ll be handing out special awards to each member of Team Howard as a way to recognize the many special qualities we all have.  

Finally, I have put together a short slideshow with pictures of all of the fun memories we’ve shared this year.  The team will watch it together.  My hope is that it will allow everyone to remember what a special time we’ve shared with one another.

Photobooth:  Mr. Johnson is bringing a photobooth for second graders!  We’ll get a chance to take some pictures with our friends.  We’ll even get a copy of the pictures to bring home with us.  It will be such a fun way to end the school year!

Last Day of School Fun:  We’ll meet one last time as a second grade team to watch a short slideshow that Mrs. Hannan has put together for us.  Then, each student will be honored with a medal.  After receiving our medals, we will parade through the hallways one final time to wave goodbye to all of our old teachers and friends.

As a team, we’ll play some fun minute to win it games and read some special books.  To start the day, we’ll read I Knew You Could by Craig Dorfman.  To end the day, we’ll read Oh the Places You’ll Go by Dr. Seuss.  

Thanks again to each and every one of you!  The progress your children have made could not have been possible without your support at home.  I’m sad to watch the team move on to third grade but so proud of all they have accomplished!  Best of luck to you at Dunn School.

Your forever grateful teacher,

Mrs. Howard

June 8-12

Announcements and Reminders:

Our class book has arrived!!  Your child should be bringing it home with them today if you had ordered it previously.  We are so excited to see our story like a real book.  We certainly worked hard on creating a great story with some great illustrations.  If you didn’t order a copy of the book before and would like to order one now, it’s not too late!  Your child will be bringing home an information paper that tells you have you can order a copy for yourself.  Please let me know if you have any questions.

Field day is TOMORROW!  Please send your child to school with a change of clothes and a water bottle.  They will be getting wet during some of the activities that are planned so a change of clothes is necessary.  If you can, a change of socks and shoes might also be helpful.  All students will need to be wearing sneakers in order to participate in the activities.

Friday is our Step Up Day to Dunn School.  Please remember to send your child to school with a packed lunch if that is what you indicated on your child’s permission slip.  It should be a fun day!  We’ll visit a third grade classroom, ask them all of our questions, have lunch, go to recess, and do a short activity with our third grade buddies.  This field trip is highly anticipated! 

This week in...

ELA:  We are working on creating an end of the year newspaper for our classroom that highlights some of our favorite projects, field trips, and memories.  Team Howard is working in groups of two or three to write a fact-based article that is interesting to our audience.  Our articles will have at least three details, capital letters where they belong, and correct ending punctuation.  Then, we’ll create a detailed illustration to accompany or article in the newspaper.  It will be fun to read when it is completed!

We will also be participating a lot of fun camping-themed review activities.  We’ll be identifying main idea and details, sorting nouns as people, places, or things, sorting words as nouns, adjectives, or verbs, putting words in ABC order, sorting synonyms and antonyms, creating silly sentences, placing correct ending punctuation, creating compound words, capitalizing words that need capital letters, solving riddles using context clues, and sorting words into long and short vowel sounds.  Phew!!  It’s a lot but it’s sure to be fun!

Math:  We will working on our final math facts assessments as well as time, money, and line plot assessments.  Now that the year is coming to an end, most of our time will be spent assessing any goals that haven’t been assessed yet.  However, we will have some fun activities planned as well!  This week, we’ll be applying our measuring skills to fairy houses!  We’ll measure several nature items and compare them before using them to build our very own fairy houses at Russell School.  

Read Alouds:  We’ll continue to read some great picture books.  This week, we’ll read our very own book as well as some of the books from our very authors like Chris Van Dusen, Marty Kelly, and Ryan Higgins.

End of the Year Fun:  This week, we’ll begin to assemble some memory books to capture all of the precious memories we’ve made in second grade.  We’ll reminisce about past field trips, school favorites, and more!  We’ll even have a chance to get the autographs of our teammates and think ahead to third grade.  These memory books are always fun to create.

June 1-June 5

ANNOUNCEMENTS AND REMINDERS:

Our field trip is tomorrow!  We will be going rain or shine so please help your child dress appropriately for the weather.  Umbrellas are allowed, as well, if you would like to send one along with your child.  All students need to bring a packed lunch and water bottle with them.

Please send along $2.00 (only!) with your child so they may purchase a drink or ice cream from the snack shack.  We will NOT be visiting the gift shop so please do not send along any extra money.

Students may choose to bring a quarter to buy food to feed the fish, bear, or deer while we are at the park. 

If there should be a downpour tomorrow while we are at the park, we will come back to school early.  

Today, your child will bring home a large gift bag with their name on it.  It is my end of the year gift to them.  In it, you’ll find a team jersey for your child.  They are asked to wear it on the field trip tomorrow.  You’ll also find information for summer practice.

If you would like your child to participate in the school wide book swap on Friday, please send them to school with a gently used book they would like to trade for a different book.  It should be a book you think another child would be interested in reading.  All books should be donated by TOMORROW!  The book swap will take place on Friday.

This week in...

ELA:  This week will be dedicated to our final personal narratives for the year.  This will be the writing piece that will be used as the final assessment of our writing goals.  It will also be sent to your child’s future third grade teacher.  Today, we shared our memories out loud with partners so we could remember as many details as possible.  Then, we brainstormed when our memories happened, who we were with, where it happened, what happened, and how our memories made us feel.  Later this week, we will use all of this information to write a personal narrative.

Our narratives should have:

-a good topic sentence

-lots of details about our thoughts, feelings, and actions

-information that goes in order and makes sense

-some use of transition words like first, next, then, and last

-a good closing sentence

-capital letters where they belong

-correct ending punctuation

-most of the words spelled correctly

-neat handwriting with finger spaces between the words

After writing our rough drafts, each student will proofread their own work.  Then, they will have two other students proofread their writing before they turn it in.

Spelling:   Our final spelling test of the year will happen on Friday!  Students will be assessed on list #4.  

Math:  We will focus on measurement.  Here are our learning goals:

-be able to select an appropriate tool for measuring

-estimate how long an object is

-measure in inches and centimeters

-create a line plot of the measurements and talk about the data (i.e.  How many objects were six inches long, how long were most of the objects, how long were the fewest amount of objects, etc.)

Science:  We will be celebrating all of our hard work on our animal projects by visiting the wildlife park!  The GNG Middle School students will be giving several presentations on the animals we will visit to give us more information.  

Read Aloud:  From now until the end of the school year, we are going to read some great picture books... just for fun!  It’s important to know that reading is fun and should always be enjoyed.  We don’t always have to read to learn something.  Sometimes, it’s nice to just read a book that makes us smile or laugh.  I’ll be reading some of my favorites to Team Howard over the next few weeks.