October 5-8

ANNOUNCEMENTS AND REMINDERS:

There is no school for students this Friday, October 9th!  Please plan accordingly.  Russell School teachers will be learning more about a new writing program.  There is also no school next Monday, as we observe Columbus day.  Enjoy the four day weekend!

Mrs. Thibodeau will be visiting us again on Wednesday.  We'll be learning more about Kelso's Choices.

On Thursday, we will be attending a fire safety assembly.

Homework started this week.  You should have received a homework packet and a homework survival guide.  The survival guide stays at home!  This is yours to use throughout the year.  It has an incredible amount of resources for you.  There is:  a how-to guide for homework, questions to ask your child after reading, reading graphic organizers, spelling words for the whole year, ideas for how to practice spelling words, a how-to guide (with pictures!) on how to use and log in to many of the websites that are available for student practice, and a list of letters and numbers on IXL that specifically hit each of our math standards.  Hopefully you and your family find this guide useful.

You'll notice that we are starting on Unit 1 for spelling this week.  Students will not be assessed on these words until next Friday!  We want to give you and your child a chance to get into a homework routine without adding any worry or stress about memorizing any spelling words quite yet.  Second graders are held accountable for not just being able to spell these words correctly, but also being able to USE these words correctly.  You'll notice there are two homophones in unit 1:  there and their.  These are really tricky for some students!  As is the word "an".  Please help your child to practice how to use these words correctly too.  I'll be sending home more information about our spelling program later this week. 

CLASSROOM WISH LIST:  We are requesting apples!  We would love to have some apples donated to the classroom for a "Johnny Appleseed" activity we'll be doing on Thursday.  Send in one, send in a bunch!  Whatever you can send in will be greatly appreciated.  Please let me know if you have any questions.

THIS WEEK IN:

Spelling:  We are working on unit 1.  The words are there, your, an, can, and we.  We'll be doing all kinds of activities to practice these.  We'll be spelling, writing, and reading these words as much as possible. 

Vocabulary:  Our focus words are:  tomorrow, different, groan, excited, carefully, and whisper.  We'll define these words, use them in a sentence, and then create connections with them to help us remember them better.  Then, we'll search for them in the short story called "School is Starting!" by Josh Singh.

Comprehension:  This week, we'll be thinking about character and setting.  Characters are the people the story is about.  When we analyze characters, we think about what they say and do to tell us how they think and feel.  The setting of a story is when and where the story takes places.  When we think about the setting, it helps us understand how the place or time might affect the characters.  We'll practice this skill as we read, David's New Friends by Pat Mora.

Writing:  This week, we will complete one of our class books.  We are creating an ABC book of the Cumberland Fair.  Each student will be creating a page (or two!) that identifies many of the items we found at the fair that started with a specific letters.  Team Howard is held accountable for having a complete sentence with neat handwriting and also a neat, detailed, and colorful picture.  We are also working on our dream house projects.  Each of us had the chance to think of our dream house.  It could be a tent, a fort, a tree house, a cottage, a castle, etc.  It just has to be something that is special to us.  This week, we will be practicing our descriptive writing skills when we write to describe our dream house to someone else.  We will include details about what our house looks like, where it is located, and our favorite parts of the house.  Then, we'll even get a chance to create a 2D model of our house!

Johnny Appleseed Fun:  We are going to be partnering with Miss Davis' class for some apple fun.  First, we'll read a great story about an American legend, Mr. John Chapman!  He is really better known as Johnny Appleseed.  While listening to the story, students will have a small apple snack.  When we are finished with the story, we will create apple poems using a TON of adjectives!  As a team, we'll even be making some of our very own apple sauce in the classroom.  The classroom is going to smell amazing!

Read Aloud:  We are going to finish up the beloved story of Charlotte's Web this week.  The end of the story always brings a tear to my eye!

Math:  We are continuing our unit on graphing.  This week, students will be surveying each other.  Today, students surveyed many of the teammates about what they had for lunch today, if they have any pets at home, or if they were present or absent today!  Then, they sorted that data into a T-Chart.  Later this week, we'll apply this skill to another graphing project.  The team will be asked to come up with a survey question and collect the data from all of their teammates.  Using that data, they will organize it and present it in a bar graph.  Finally, using the bar graph they created, they will answer questions about the data they found.  They will be sharing this information with the team.  

We'll also have a "math minute" where we will be looking at tens frames and trying to quickly decide how many dots we see.  This skill is called subitizing! 

Science:  This week, our friends Pete and Penelope are back with another question!  They are having a horrible time deciding what the world is made of?  Mostly water, mostly land, or an equal amount of both?  The team will conduct an investigation to help them solve their problem.  Then, we'll learn a little more about the continents and a little more about landforms.  Here are two videos we'll be watching.  I find them hysterical!