Dear Parents,

How are you all doing? I hope you had a great weekend. It’s hard to believe that week five is here already. Here is a summary of our fifth week.

Island Projects

Thank you for supporting your children through out the two weeks of preparing for their first second grade project. It was a huge success. I was amazed at how well they were done. Students took pride in their work, and they presented it confidently too. We will finish presentations this week.

LANGUAGE ARTS  

SPALDING – We will continue with our spelling list this week, they will be tested on Friday. Please, review homework as they come home.

List 1: time, may, into, him, today, look, did, like, six, boy

List 2: book, by, have, are, had, over, must, make, street, say

List 3: hand, ring, live, live, hill, late, let

These words may appear too easy for your child, but the ultimate goal is that they learn the logical progression of markings, basic spelling rules and how the knowledge of phonograms can help their reading and writing. Words will increase in complexity and amount in the coming weeks. Please, continue to encourage proper manuscript handwriting.

Alongside practicing new words, I will include phonogram review to homework this week. This is to ensure that students are practicing their phonograms at home. Some of them are still struggling, so please spend five minutes reviewing assigned phonograms sent home. To review phonogram show the card, and have your child repeat after you. Here is a website for one of our sister schools. You can watch videos on how to help your child at home: http://archwayveritas.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=168&Itemid=212

READING – READING STRATEGY: We will continue with our reading strategy  “making connections.”   As children learn to make connections, they will learn that there are three ways: text-to-text, text-to-self, and text-to the world. We will have student make connections to Charlotte’s web this week again. I look forward to some of the great insights. We finished chapter twelve in Charlotte’s Web. We will move on to at least the next three chapters.  

 POETRY : Title: “Where Go the Boats” is our poem for this week again. It can be found in Harp and Laurel Wreath pg. 29 (Students will memorize poem and say it together by memory at the end of the month.)

Author: Robert Louis Stevenson

SAYING: “Don’t cry over spilled milk,” is still our saying.  We will appreciate it if you use it at home because children retain sayings when they engage in it through meaningful use.

           

GRAMMAR/VOCABULARY –  This week, we will continue to learn about verbs: linking verbs, helping verbs, and state of being verbs.          

WRITING – As we work with Writing With Ease , students will continue to develop narration, dictation and copy work skills. They will come home this weekend with their second writing homework. We are asking that you follow the directions given by reading the story with your child, have them do a summary, and then dictate a short sentence to them.

LEVELED READERS

I am so excited about this new development. Students get to take books home to read three times a week M/W/F. The expectation is that they read it 20 mins every night. Each book has questions at the end. Please, ask your child some of the questions at the back to make sure comprehension has taken place. Your child has at least two days to finish reading the book before returning it. These books were carefully chosen to help your child build a wealth of background knowledge from different spheres of life. They will also help them develop their reading and comprehension skills over a period of time. We hope that you engage them in questioning at the end of every book. They will also keep track of the books they are reading in their reading log.

MATH

            Many students are catching on to the math decomposing of numbers when adding and subtracting.  Some will need more practice.  When overseeing your child’s homework, please encourage her/him to look for tens or multiples of tens when they decompose numbers for adding or subtracting.  Children should please focus on examples given in their homework for further help.

             Many students do not know their facts to make tens.  They should be working on math facts daily!  Your second grader needs to master the addition and subtraction facts to 20.  We cannot stress this enough!  Once students have mastered their facts, learning how to decompose numbers and do mental math will come more easily and help them to do more complicated problems (Remember:  students should be striving for automaticity with their basic facts) .Here is a recommended website: http://gregtangmath.com/

In Math this week, we will focus on addition and subtraction with renaming. Students will finally be allowed to add and subtract using the vertical algorithm.

SCIENCE

Last week in Science, we focused on what humans, animals and plants do in Winter . We talked about: hibernation, migration, and dormancy. We will finish the winter conversation and move on to Spring in this coming week. 

GEOGRAPHY OF THE AMERICAS

         This week, we will finish our unit on Geography of Americas. We will finish our conversation on South America, do a review, and test on Friday. Your students will come home with a study guide.

VIRTUE

Responsibility

To hold yourself morally accountable for actions within your control.

OWN your actions

Quote

  The price of greatness is responsibility."

— Winston Churchill

Announcements

·      We will begin guided reading on Wednesday this week. There will be a quick information session after school on Tuesday with parent volunteers. I look forward to having parent volunteers in the classroom.

·      Guided reading will be  on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. On Tuesday, it will be 12:30 – 1:30pm (60mins) On Wednesdays; it will be 11:50am -12:50pm (60 mins). We will need parent volunteers. Please, this is a yearlong commitment. We will also do Math groups on Wednesday mornings starting this week  at 8:05-9:05 am. Please, send me an email if you are interested in volunteering.

·      There is a History test on Friday.

·      There is a Math test on Wednesday

·      Sept 9^th is Singapore night for parents.

·      Sept 12^th is half day.

Thank you for all the encouraging words and support!

Sincerely,

Ms. Toyin & Ms. Peterson