ANNOUNCEMENTS AND REMINDERS:
Our field trip to the Cumberland Fair is this Thursday! If I have not received your child's permission slip, an extra one was sent home with them today. It's on orange paper. Please return this slip, signed, by tomorrow!
We are also in need of some more parent chaperones. If you have already filled out the volunteer paperwork and would like to accompany us, please let me know by tomorrow (Tuesday) afternoon at the latest!
Students are allowed to bring a water bottle to school with them. They can fill them up in the morning and keep them on their desk to stay hydrated throughout the day.
Please remember to send a healthy snack to school each day. Apples, bananas, grapes, cheese and crackers, carrot sticks, celery sticks and sunbutter, pretzels, whole grain cereal, etc. are all great choices for snack time!
On Tuesday, Shaw's will be visiting our school for a quick assembly. They are donating $400.00 to Russell School! We are so grateful for their generosity.
On Wednesday, Mrs. Thibodeau, our guidance counselor, will be visiting Team Howard. She'll be sure to bring her friends George and Kelso to go over some of Kelso's choices and how we can use them to help us solve small problems. If it's a big problem, we should also get an adult to help!
You should expect homework to go home next week. But DON'T WORRY! I'll be sure to send home a "homework survival guide" as well to help you and your child understand how the homework works and what second grade expectations are. This guide will include all of your child's login information for various websites we'll be using. I'll also be making some how-to videos to help you navigate the websites. If you find you have more questions after reviewing the guide, please don't hesitate to ask. We want homework to be a chance for some extra practice, not to be an epic battle!
THIS WEEK IN...
Writing: We have been working incredibly hard at understanding what makes an "expert writer." This week, we'll have the chance to take a look at some example (made-up) students to see if they are experts or not. For the students who we think are not experts quite yet, we'll talk about some advice we might want to give them to help them out. We'll also be looking at some just "write" examples of writing to understand what is expected during our writer's workshop. Then, we'll have a chance to start building up our writing stamina with some quick writes. The rules for quick writes are: never stop writing, stay on topic, and there is no right answer. The goal for quick writes is to increase writing fluency. The idea sparkers for quick writes are also really fun. My hope is that these spark some ideas for Team Howard to continue writing about beyond our quick write time.
Reading: Just like in writing, we've been studying what is looks like to be a reading expert as well! This week, we will have the chance to look at some example (made-up) students to see if they are experts or not. We'll also have the chance to look at some example (made-up) students to see if they have chosen just right reading books. Last week, we did a lot of work around just right reading books. We read Goldisocks and the Three Libearians which is a great story about a little girl on the lookout for that just right book.
We also learned a fun song about how to pick a just right book. It follows the "IPICK" acronym below. Ask your child to sing it for you!
To go along with the Cumberland Fair, we'll also be doing a lot of reading activities about schools, then and now. We'll read an interesting non-fiction story all about schools and how they've changed. When we are finished reading, we'll write three facts we learned. As the week continues, we'll do a true or false activity as well as a comparison activity.
Math: Our first math unit is all about graphing! The first couple weeks of schools, we worked on creating all kinds of graphs that told a little more information about us as a class. We created picture graphs, bar graphs, pie charts, venn diagrams, a pirate glyph and more! This week, we'll work on how to sort data (which is a fancy word for information) into categories. This skill is going to help us immensely next week when we begin asking our own survey questions to the class and collecting data. We'll use this information to create a bar graph. Then, we'll have the chance to explain and interpret the data answering questions such as...
Which category had the most?
Which category had the least?
How many are in a certain category?
How many more _____________ are there than _______________?
How many fewer _____________ are there than _______________?
Social Studies: The first few weeks of school we are all about creating our classroom community and setting expectations. We do this through creating a shared classroom vision and a code of cooperation (which is really like classroom rules). You probably saw our vision lyrics come home the other week or perhaps you've heard your child singing it for you! If not, here are the lyrics:
Best Team
***to the tune of Fight Song by Rachel Platten
We will work hard
Give our best try
Say that we can!
Never we can’t
We will respect ourselves
others, our classroom too
A positive attitude
Can bring success for me and you
Together, each and every day
we always cooperate
We will keep our heads up high
Can you hear our voice this time?
We are the best team
Honest and true team
Helpful and kind team
This is our big dream
Focused right now is what we’ll be
We are the best team
With my best effort here and friends by my side today
I know that I can make it all the way
The five words that we thought were the most important were respect, effort, attitude, cooperation, and honesty. It just so happens that the first letter of each of these spells the word REACH! We thought this was so cool because it goes along with our morning song, Reach for the Stars by S Club 7. It's a fun song we listen and sing everyday to help us get our day started on the right track. Here it is below for your listening enjoyment!
From our classroom vision, we created our code of cooperation. These are the things we have to do in order for our vision to come true.
1. Treat others the way you want to be treated.
2. Give your best try and never give up.
3. Be positive!
4. Everyone has to do their part.
5. Take responsibility.
Today, we played a really fun game of "Headbandz" to help us understand what each of our classroom rules look like. Ask your child about it tonight! The whole class was smiling and giggling by the end of the game.
To help set up classroom expectations, we've also been reading a lot of reading great books. Check them out below!
Read Aloud: We are loving the story of Charlotte's Web by E.B. White. Each day, we sketch the picture we see in our minds as we are listening to the story. Then, we write a quick sentence talking about what is going on in our pictures. We love to share what we have drawn and written.
I know that was a TON of information! Hopefully you found it interesting and helps you to get a quick glance as to what's going on in our classroom. I hope everyone has a great week!
