Monday, August 25, 2014

Dear parents,

We have successfully ended our second week. I want to thank all the parents that made it to school for the curriculum night. If you were unable to make it, please feel free to call or send me an email if you have concerns or worries about school. I will continue to share bits and pieces of our curriculum in my newsletter as the weeks go by.

This is our third week’s schedule:

ASSESSMENT/EVALUATIONS

The ultimate aim of giving a test is to assess scholars' learning and to see if there is urgent need to go over a concept. The tests will also be graded to keep track of scholars' performances and development over a period of time. If a scholar fails a test, I will go over the concept again, and the scholar will be reassessed to see if mastery of concept has been achieved. Therefore, the ultimate goal of testing is not predominantly to assign grades; the aim of testing is to assess where your scholar is, and to make sure your scholar achieves mastery of content to a large extent. Please let me know if you have questions about testing.

LANGUAGE ARTS

SPALDING PHONICS – Most students are doing well with the phonograms. We will complete the first 54 phonograms on Monday, and begin spelling hopefully on Monday. Many students have improved their handwriting on the practice, and we are so proud of the improvements we are seeing.  We will continue to work on penmanship.

READING – We finished the first six chapters of Charlotte’s Web, discussing the friendships that are being forged in the barn at the Zuckerman farm.  Wilbur has learned that he is being fattened up to be a Christmas ham, and Charlotte assured him that she is going to save him.  We will find out how, this week. We will also focus on main idea and details . Scholars will also read a folktale from Mexico: El Pajaro Cu, they will learn what a folktale is and discuss the main idea and lessons from the story.

In second grade, we teach sayings through short readers’ theaters.  (Each student will have a chance to present a saying through a readers’ theater at some time during the year.)  The readers’ theater gives the students a scenario which helps illustrate the figurative meaning of the sayings in a real-life way.  Last week, we learned the saying to develop, “Cold Feet.”   This week, our saying is "Go back to the drawing board".

GRAMMAR – Students will learn what a verb is and how a verb functions in a sentence. They will be introduced to being verbs.

WRITING – In writing we will continue to do our story narration, summary, copy-work, and dictation. Look out for graded worksheets coming home.

MATH

Students will compare and order numbers, as well as evaluate number patterns, such as counting on or back. Please, practice with your scholars at home.

Please do not let your child go ahead in the math workbook! We are very purposeful with our homework assignments, and just because a child might “know how to do it” doesn’t necessarily mean they know the strategy that we are stressing in class.  Please encourage your child to show his/her work.  It helps us see how s/he is thinking through a problem.

 We ask that you continue to work with your child on mastering the addition and subtraction facts to 20.  Once students learn how to use their facts to decompose numbers, they should be able to master their facts and do mental math more easily and do more complicated problems.  (Remember that students should be striving for automaticity with their basic facts.)

SCIENCE

 In our study of seasons, we will begin with summer and fall this week.  Students will participate in a reader’s theatre that describes what animals do in Summer and Fall. Every child will participate in the four reader’s theatres. I will have them bring their scripts home to study.

This week, we will learn about the typical activities that happen in summer.  Since the weather does not display a wide range in the valley of the sun, students don’t always know how to readily identify “summer activities,” especially since they can swim at least three seasons in the year!   This is why we are reading Charlotte’s Web now, to help students see the differences in the seasons as they are described by the author.

GEOGRAPHY OF THE AMERICAS

Our Geography this week, will take us to Mexico and the West indies. Our scholars find History so interesting that sometimes its so hard to stop the great conversations we have. I am looking forward to all we will learn this week.

HOMEWORK

Homework Folders and Agendas -   We have appreciated your help in establishing good work habits at home.  Most students have been bringing homework back the next day!  Thank you for your support with this at home.

VIRTUE

Our virtue this week is still Friendship. Please encourage your scholars to make new friends. I agree with Aristotle that:

“wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow ripening fruit.”

PROGRESS REPORT

Initially, I planned to send out progress reports this weekend out of my own volition to tell you how your scholars are doing, but I have decided to wait till next weekend after our Reading assessments. The reason is that I will be able to give you all the reports at once and tell you if your scholar would need tutoring or intervention. Thank you for your patience!

ANNOUNCEMENTS

Please, remember to give your scholar a healthy snack on half days.

Academic folders containing graded class work, tests and quizzes will come home every Friday.

Sincerely,

Ms. Peterson and Mrs. Toyin

Curriculum Night
K-2 Curriculum Night Tuesday, August 18 3-5 Curriculum Night Thursday, August 20

Curriculum Night Schedule

6:00-6:25:	Welcome and opening remarks by Mr. Gillingham and Ms. Pantalena (Gym)
	A-L	M-Z
6:30-7:10	Homeroom	Specials in MPR
7:10-7:55	Specials in MPR	Homeroom

Multi-Purpose Room (MPR)

A-M (Last names)
N-Z (Last names)

Dear Parents,

How are you all doing? It has been a great privilege having your scholars in our class. Ms. Peterson and I are excited about the learning taking place in our class already. We had a great first week building our class community. It was nice seeing students adapt to their new environments and make new friends. Our main focus amidst so many last week was handwriting, and we will continue to reinforce this important skill in the new week. We have actively commenced teaching and will continue at this pace in the coming week.

Language arts

Spalding

We will continue to review 8 new phonograms everyday and work on improving handwriting. We will appreciate it if you reinforce this at home.

 Reading

                This week we will be reading the poem, “Bed in Summer” by Robert Louis Stevenson. Students will recite poem in class. They will bring a copy home to study, and on Friday they will recite it in class collectively for now. Please, encourage your child to practice reciting their poems. We are enjoying our literature book, Charlotte’s Web. As we read how the characters are forming their friendships, we will be relating Mr. Zuckerman’s barn to our class as we build our classroom community.  We will read chapters 4 – 7. We will continue to send home a passage every night for reading and comprehension homework.

                Our first saying of the year is “Don’t judge a book by its cover.”  Students engaged in conversations that shed light on the true meaning of the saying. We concluded that we should focus on internal qualities that people have rather than their outward looks. This week, our saying will be to develop “cold feet”. We will discuss the difference between the literal and figurative meaning of this popular saying. Please, encourage your scholars by using this sayings and phrases at home.

Writing

We will begin writing instruction this week using our text: Writing with Ease. Students will engage in story narration, dictation, summarization and copy work as they develop their writing skill at a developmentally appropriate level. Their worksheets will come home on a weekly basis, so that you can see their performance on a weekly basis.

GRAMMAR 

We will begin Grammar this week, and our focus will be on common and proper nouns. We will also explore how pronouns take the place of a nouns.               

               

Math

                We will continue to work in our Singapore Math books: counting
“Numbers to 1,000.”  We will be working with reading and writing numbers, grouping numbers to show place value, skip counting, and reviewing addition and subtraction math facts to 20.   We are asking that students NOT go ahead in the Singapore Workbook, even if they “know how to do it.”

                In addition to the math homework, which will generally be from the workbook, we ask that you continue to work with your child on mastering the addition and subtraction facts to 20.  This is a crucial foundation for fully understanding place value, and it will help as we begin to decompose (break down) numbers while learning mental math strategies. 

HISTORY

Our Geography began with the study of maps, the North American countries, and the seven continents.  This week, we will move south of our border into Central America, the West Indies, and South America.

SCIENCE

We will begin our study of the seasons.  We will explore the questions :How does the Earth move? What causes seasons?  Earth’s tilted orbit around the sun causes seasons We will talk about how Earth rotates on its axis and then revolves around the sun.  We readjusted our annual plan, so we will teach water cycle later in the coming months.

ART (A message from our Art teacher)

Our students have art class one Wednesday a month.  We are having 2nd & 3rd grade students bring in a piece of artwork that day to share with the class. This is not required and does not count towards the grade. But some student make a lot of artwork at home and this is an opportunity to share those projects. It could be crochet, clay, painting, any artwork without pop culture references.

VIRTUE

Friendship

We are working on solidifying an environment of friendship and support. Please encourage your scholars to look out for their classmates. I believe that forming friendships will help break barriers to learning and enjoying school.

Announcements (look out for the announcement corner on the website in the coming week.)

Scholars are expected to be in school everyday in proper dress code. Please check family handbook for details.

Please encourage scholars to use their best handwriting at all times, even if it means doing their work over again several times. Homework that is not carefully written and done neatly will be sent back home to be rewritten.

Thanks to those who filled out a “Volunteer” handout.  We appreciate your willingness to serve as a volunteer.  Please, be patient with us as we get the school year rolling smoothly before we begin volunteerism in the classroom. 

Quote of the week

Do not train children to learn by force and harshness, but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each    - Plato

Once again, I say a very big thank you to you all for your support so far, and I am

very optimistic about the success stories on the way.

Mrs. Toyin Atolagbe & Ms. Elizabeth Peterson

for

Class 2A

ANNOUNCEMENT

Please join us for the Back-To-School Social
and Campus Dedication Ceremony!

Friday, August 15, 2014

6:00 - 7:30 PM Archway Arete families are invited to enjoy ice cream and mingle with other
families and staff.

7:00 PM All families are encouraged to join in the campus dedication ceremony by
Great Hearts CEO, Dr. Daniel Scoggin, honoring the Marley Foundation and
Betty A. Wilson.

7:30 - 9:00 PM Arete Prep families are invited to enjoy ice cream and mingle with other
families and staff.

Parking and Shuttle Service:
Due to both communities (Arete Prep and Archway Arete) being on campus with families at the
same time, traffic and parking will be an issue. To accommodate everyone, we will provide two
shuttles running continuously between the former Lindsay campus and the new Arete campus.
Only handicapped, dignitary, and faculty parking is available at the Arete campus during the
event. Shuttles will circulate every 5 to 10 minutes from 5:30 PM until 9:30 PM.

Locations on Campus:
Ice Cream Social Multi-Purpose room in the
Archway building
Campus Dedication Ceremony Gymnatorium at 7:00 PM

Addresses:
New Arete campus 4525 E.Baseline Rd.
Gilbert, AZ 85234
Former Lindsay campus 1303 S. Lindsay Rd.
Mesa, AZ 85204

A Brief look at our first week:

Dear Parents,

It was wonderful meeting you all on Thursday.  Thank you for making the time to come to Archway Arete so we could introduce ourselves to both you and your child.  There is always a bit of nervous, yet excited energy that comes with changing schools and teachers.  Now your child has knowledge of his/her teachers and knows where to go, tomorrow.    We look forward to a wonderful year teaching and getting to know your child.

Please have your child bring a clean sock to be used as a dry erase marker holder and an eraser for a white board.  Darker colors work well, because they don’t show the dirt!  I’m confident that you have a sock that has lost its mate somewhere around.  Please send this in, tomorrow.

LANGUAGE ARTS 

                SPALDING:  We will begin Spalding, our Phonics and Spelling program on Monday. We will begin with basic features like sitting position, pencil grip, and making strokes. We will start learning phonograms as early as Tuesday. Children will not have Spalding homework now, but they will begin to have Spalding homework after our “Curriculum night”. I encourage you all to join us so that you know how to support your child while they are doing homework.

                

  We are also beginning Charlotte’s Web and plan to get through the first four chapters this week. Please have your child bring their book to school.

          

We will also begin our Writing With Ease  curriculum. Children will begin to copy model sentences and listen to dictation as sentences are read out loud to them. In subsequent emals I will go in-depth to describe each of these curriculum pieces at length. 

MATH

 We are focusing on scholar’s depth of knowledge, not just whether or not they can perform an algorithm.  We stress the “why before the how,” so to speak and encourage students to prove what they are doing so we can verify understanding.  Because of this, we are asking that students NOT go ahead in the Singapore Workbook, even if they “know how to do it.”  We would appreciate your reinforcing this message at home.

We will be reviewing concepts from last year, this first week to see where the scholars’ understanding lies.  We will begin with a pre-test on Tuesday, August 12. We would like all students to solidly know their addition facts to 10.  A good website with activities is ,GregTangMath.com.  Automaticity of arithmetic facts is a crucial foundation for all we do in math.  Does your child know his/her math facts or do they have to stop and count fingers, a number line, or count in his/her head?  If so, your child is still counting to find the answer, they have not yet internalized the addition of the numbers.  We are going to work on that fluency this week, but we need your help to commit to working on math facts at home, as well.  Fact fluency is similar to reading fluency.  If a child needs to slow down to figure out the addition or subtraction, his/her comprehension of the problem is compromised. 

SCIENCE

We will begin our study in Science with the study of the Water Cycle. In the course of learning this unit , we will be performing some water experiment. 

HISTORY

Our geography will begin with the study of continents, oceans and maps (compass rose, legend, cardinal directions, etc.) . We will complete this unit by focusing on the Geography of North, South and Central America. 

Homework Folders and Agendas - The Homework Folders will be red.  Please check inside to see what is to be done and returned the following day.  We would appreciate your help in establishing good work habits at home.  Homework is expected back the next day, unless otherwise stated.  Please check the agendas for information.