Phew!  That felt like a really long week, but it was a great one!  We continue to work on routines, and are really starting to get the hang of second grade!  I am so proud of so many of our bobcats!  We have finally chosen a class name!  We are the DJ Dolphins!  I guess we have some music lovers amongst us!  I would have guessed that, by the amount of dancing that takes place, on a daily basis. :).

 

We have been busy working on math routines. We’ve consistently done two centers, but had a little trouble adding in a third center.  I’m pretty sure we will get there, this week!  We continue to work on building a solid sense of numbers, this week!  Last week, we played a new game on the iPads, called slide!  The children had a lot of fun with it!  We also continued to play the number grid game.  We practiced using the number grid, and looked for patterns!  We sure do have a room full of detectives!  I was quite impressed at how many patterns they found, and how they built upon each other’s observations!  I am so excited for what is to come, this year!  We are off to such a great start!!!  This week, we will be finishing up with unit one!  Wowzers, that went by fast!  The children will be assessed on their progress in unit one, and they will start working with me, consistently in small group, in unit 2!

 

During our literacy block, we have been getting familiar with reading block routings, practicing spelling, grammar, vocabulary and high frequency word practice!  This week, we may start some reading groups!  The kids have continued to devour books!  I’m so excited to put in the next book order!   We have had some great conversations about their books, already!  What a great room of readers!  We started to work with words, and had some great conversations about nouns and plural nouns, already!  We are already on the lookout for some rule breakers!  We will continue to work on adding -es to the end of some nouns to make them plural, as well as identifying root words, and some inflectional endings!

 

What a beautiful weekend!  If only we could have weather like this everyday!  I hope that you and your families were able to get outside and play this weekend!  We certainly did!!!   I can’t wait to hear, and read all of the weekend news!  We’ve already had some fun with indoor recess, but it’s so nice when the kids can get out and get some fresh air!

Here are a few pics from some indoor recess play!

Wow!  It was so wonderful to have a room full of parents!  Although, it is not my favorite thing, to speak in front of a room of adults, I really do love sharing what we do, with all of you!  Collaboration with all of you is so important, so I am so grateful to be off to such a great start!  I know that night is a bit of a whirlwind, so if you have any questions, please NEVER hesitate to contact me!

Just a reminder that I will be submitting book orders at the end of this week.  If you wish to order something, please either submit your order online, or send it in to school.  I am so grateful for how excited the children are getting about books, already!  My cart is pretty full, with some pretty great books that the children have asked about! 🙂

 

You can order online by going to: https://clubs.scholastic.com

Our class code is: NRWJP

 

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask!

Back to school night for parents is this Monday night!  Second grade is from 6:40-7:10.  I am excited to chat with all of you, and share our classroom with you!  If you are unable to make it, I will be sending home all of the information I share, with the children, on Tuesday.

This week has been a lot of fun!  We have started to learn routines and expectations, and the children are showing expected behavior!  It is so nice to see how our learning community is coming together!  Next week, we should continue to learn routines, and start to fall into a more regular schedule!

Picture day was a success!  I can’t wait to see their pictures!  It’s so fun to see the children all dressed up!  Reminder, retake day is October 24th.

This week we started to work on our Hopes and Dreams for the year, and our wishes for the world.  The children were very thoughtful in writing their goals, and thinking about how they can help to reach them.  Be sure to check out their balloons in the hallway, at back to school night!

We also worked on another quick writing project that will be in the classroom for you to peek at, as well!

During our literacy block, we read the fable the Lion and the Mouse.  The children worked on a few activities with this story.  First, we worked on sequencing the events in the story.  They then created a sequence chain to put the events in order.  This was a lot of fun!

We also worked on retelling events from the story, by choosing the most important events, and putting them into our own words.  I was SOOOOO impressed with how well the children did with this!  We also wrote what we thought the lesson in the story was.  I am excited to start reading groups in the next couple of weeks!  We will also be starting some RTI groups next week, so the children may be talking about working with another teacher.  This is to help target both literacy and math skills, in a small group setting.  The children usually love this time!

 

For numeracy, we are continuing to work on routines.  The children are learning about rotations, and we are practicing each of them in isolation, before we start to rotate to more than one, in a day.  This week, we started to practice games.  One of the games we practiced was the number grid game.  The children had a lot of fun, playing with a buddy.

 

Friday was also a big hit!  We took out iPads for the first time!  The kids did a great job logging into Connected, which is our Everyday Mathematics online resource.  They had a lot of fun exploring, and playing these games!

We may start to try some modified spelling lists this week.  Many of the children did not like to practice words they already knew, but I was hoping to get them back in the swing of school, and homework, without the added stress of a challenging list.  They seem eager and excited, so we may give it a shot this week.  The children will just practice the highlighted words on the bottom of their list.

 

I hope you all had a chance to get out and enjoy this beautiful weekend!  What amazing weather!  Hopefully you are all avoiding the pesky colds, and viruses floating around.  We have been doing a lot of sanitizing!  We always appreciate donations of soft tissues.  The children’ noses thank you!  I try to keep us stocked, but we go through quite a few during sniffly seasons.  Thank you again for all of the donations that have given us a great start to the year!

The following is a home-school letter, which I will post, each week.  In this letter, you will see an update of what we will be covering that week, for reading/language arts.  Obviously, there will be some deviation in this, based on the needs of the students, however, this will provide you with general information about what we will be covering, each week.

This week, your second grader will bring home their first spelling homework this week.  We will take a pretest at the beginning of the week, and the children will bring home a cover sheet with their words highlighted at the bottom of the page.  This week, all students will have list A highlighted.  I haven’t had a chance to get to know this class well enough, as spellers, to send home modified lists.  If this feels like too much for your 2nd grader, please send me a note, and we will modify.  If it is feeling too easy, feel free to practice a few list B words.  In the upcoming weeks, I will be sending modified lists, please monitor their practice at home, and ALWAYS contact me if their lists seem too challenging or too easy.  As always, thanks for supporting your second graders’ learning, at home!

Reminder – I will ask for the following page to be signed and returned each week.  I do not need each of the activities to be handed in, but it is helpful to highlight or circle the activities they choose, each week.  Thanks!

There are lots of reminders for some important events:

Back to School Night!  

I look forward to seeing you all there!

9/24 – 2nd grade is from 6:40-7:10

 

Picture Day!

Picture day has been switched to 9/18!  This was a change from the initial date!

 

Popcorn!

Popcorn will start this Wednesday, September 19th!

If your 2nd grader wishes to purchase popcorn, please send them with $.50.  You can also purchase popcorn for the year, through the PTA.

 

Volunteers!

Reminder, if you wish to volunteer at the school, or attend field trips, you must be fingerprinted!  It takes some time for them to be processed, so if you are hoping to attend a field trip this year, please make sure that you are a designated volunteer.  Please see this week’s Bobcat News for more information!

 

Last week, we talked about strategies for slowing ourselves down, particularly when we are feeling a lot of energy.  One of the options we talked about was coloring.  The children did an amazing job with some intricate coloring pages.  I was so impressed with the time and effort the children put into these pages.  Check out some of their work!