Terrific Two Weeks of School

Hello Second Grade Families,

I hope everyone had a great start to their week.   I sent home the first reading log of the year with the students.  Each child may read by themselves or they can read with an adult.  In order to get chips (or points) they need to have an adult signature every morning.  If they choose to read over 20-30 minutes they will earn more chips (points).  The goal is to have the students reading every night to build fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, and a love of reading.  If a student cannot read due to a family emergency or circumstance on a given night, please write a quick note on the paper so that I am aware.

I am not having students practice for a spelling test this week due to the Open House. The Open House is tomorrow. Tuesday, September 11th at 6pm. I will introduce spelling words next Monday.

Mrs. Farwell our P.E. teacher, said that the students are learning and strengthening their bike riding skills.   Mrs. Farwell said that if students have their own bike helmets at home, they may bring them in on Thursday.

In the classroom we have been strengthening and practicing our routines, jobs, expectations, and our daily schedules with our different specials.

I have an odd request.  Please have every student bring in an extra pair of socks on Friday.  I will have a few extra if students cannot bring in a pair.

In Math:

-The class has been practicing reading word problems and underlining the important information to solve the problem with pictures and equations.

-The students are practicing their 0-20 addition and subtraction facts.

-The class has been strengthening their skip counting by 2’s, 5’s, and 10’s

- The students have also been building their telling time skills by counting by 5’s, and identifying the hour and minute hand.

-The students have also been counting and using pennies in their addition or subtraction problems using cents.

In Science:

The class is currently learning about the properties and phases of matter. Last week’s lesson was the importance of wearing clothes and the properties different clothes had.  The students learned that clothes protect us from getting scrapes, burns, and bug bites. The students also described properties of armor, dance wear, cotton clothes and rain gear. Some vocabulary words were: light, heavy, hard, soft, stretchy, stiff, absorbs, and reflects. The students used paper towels, rubber bands, tin foil, two pieces of tape, and a paper plate to create their own hat.  The goal was that this hat would protect them from the sun, absorb their sweat, and reflect light so they would stay cool on a dessert island. They did a pretty awesome job! You may have seen them come home last Friday.

This upcoming Friday we are going to do an experiment as if they are still on a desert island.  In our activity the class will be seeing which materials are insulators.  We will be warming up some water bottles and the students will be using tin foil to cover their hands, Styrofoam cups, and a pair of socks. They will measure which materials stopped the heat from coming through and which materials let the heat pass to their hands.  We are only using warm water, so there is no way for anyone to burn themselves, but it will be enough for the students to feel the different temperatures.

In Social Studies:

The class has been reviewing and will be learning about the foundational parts of social studies, for example:

-Who’s in our family?

-What stores or services are in our town?  (Grocery stores, post office, fire department, police station, hospitals, and school schools)

-What makes a group of people successfully function?

-What town, school, state, and country do we live in? 

-What is our weather and how does it compare to other places?

-What is our landscape type and how does it compare to other places?

-We will be learning about Mexico and Canada later in the year as well as other places and cultures.

In Spelling and Writing:

-The class has been working hard on practicing best formation in their handwriting on their “what I did over summer vacation” paragraphs.  (Using the cloud, plane, grass, and worm line when forming capital and lower case letters)

-The students have been practicing using a capital letter in the beginning of a sentence and using punctuation at the end of a sentence.

-The first spelling tests will be with short vowel sound words.

In Reading:

-The students and I have been discussing characters in books and asking, “Are they are like ourselves or not?”

-The students have been making predictions about what is going to happen next in different stories.

-The class has also been practicing identifying the setting of where stories take place, and examining the sequence in which the story happens.

I hope everyone has a fantastic week and if you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to email me at:  MacCallumt@hartfordschools.net. 

I cannot wait to meet parents and families in person tomorrow, at open house!

Sincerely,

Ms. Mac :)