2nd Grade News - Week 8

Our annual Halloween Parade to Odd Fellows is coming up on Thursday, October 31^st.  Students will be allowed to bring their costumes in their backpacks the day of the parade.  We will be changing after lunch.  For this to be a smooth process we will need a few parent volunteers to help the students change into their costumes and walk with us during the parade.  Please email me if you would be interested in helping out or sign up on the flyer outside the classroom door. I will only need 4 volunteers for this activity.  When we get back from the parade we will be having a Fall Harvest Celebration in our classroom.  A sign up sheet for volunteering and snacks is hanging in the hall outside our classroom door.

Eating breakfast in the classroom has become a bit of an ordeal in the morning.  Breakfast is served in the cafeteria from 7:30 – 7:50 am.  Ideally, I would like students to eat breakfast in the cafeteria during this time period.  I realize a few students do not arrive at this time.  I will allow students to eat in the classroom until 8:00 am.  After that, we must start our school day and breakfast must be disposed of.  I have spoken to the students about this policy.  Please go over it again with them this weekend.  Thanks!

Literacy:        Lucy Calkin’s Reader’s Workshop – Wrapping up Unit 1

                                    -Review character traits, setting, and story sequence

                                    -Study how whole books click together

                                    -Practice story retell/summarizing

                                    -Learning lessons from books

                        Lucy Calkin’s Writer’s Workshop

                                    -Learning how to make our writing powerful from our favorite authors

                                    -Trying out craft moves we learned from mentor authors

                                    -Emulating mentor authors while revising

                                    -Thinking about word choice in our writing

                        Words Their Way – Differentiated phonics lessons

Mathematics:  Zearn Math on-line – More information to come home soon

                          Fact Families

                          Multiple strategies for solving addition and subtraction problems

                          End of the quarter review and assessments

Science:  Plant Adventures – We are doing our last Mystery this week!

Upcoming Events:  

            *Dine Out at Hopworks – Monday, Oct. 21^st

            *October Birthday Celebration/T-Shirt Day – Friday, Oct. 25^th

            *Fall Festival – Friday, Oct. 25^th

            *Halloween Parade – Thursday, Oct. 31^st

            *End of 1^st Quarter – Thursday, Oct. 31^st

            *Teacher Planning Day/No School – Friday, Nov. 1^st

            *Picture Retake Day – Tuesday, Nov. 5^th

Have a Great Weekend!

Mrs. Hawksford (ahawksford@pps.net)

2nd Grade - Week 7

All three, second grade classes will be taking the NNAT3 (Naglieri Nonverbal Ability Test) next Monday.  This is a tool that is used to help identify gifted students within the district.  This tool can also assist in identifying students for TAG, who might not otherwise be identified.  Please try to have your child get a good night sleep, eat breakfast, and be to school on time.  The assessment will take between 30 and 45 minutes. 

We have had 32 days of school so far this year!  Students have learned a lot, made new friends, and are much more comfortable at school.  As students are becoming more comfortable with each other and myself school rules and personal boundaries are beginning to be challenged.  Our biggest challenge as a whole group is listening and being respectful to the speaker.  We will continue to work on listening at school and not interrupting the speaker.  Discussing school expectations at home, as a family, always provides much needed support in the classroom.  If you could take a few minutes over the weekend to reinforce this skill at home it would be greatly appreciated.

Our annual Halloween Parade to Odd Fellows is coming up on Thursday, October 31^st.  Students will be allowed to bring their costumes in their backpacks the day of the parade.  We will be changing after lunch.  For this to be a smooth process we will need a few parent volunteers to help the students change into their costumes and walk with us during the parade.  Please email me if you would be interested in helping out. When we get back from the parade we will be having a Fall Harvest Celebrations in our classroom.  A sign up sheet for volunteering and snacks will be hanging in the hall outside our classroom door the week of October 14^th.

Academic Areas of Focus for Next Week:

Literacy:        Lucy Calkin’s Reader’s Workshop

                                    Reading Priority Standard – Describe how characters in a story

                                    respond to major events and challenges.

                        Lucy Calkin’s Writer’s Workshop

                                    Writing Priority Standard – Write narratives in which they recount a

                                    well-elaborated event or short sequence of events, include details to

                                    describe actions, thoughts, and feelings, use temporal words to signal

                                    event order, and provide a sense of closure.

Mathematics:  Unit 2 – Addition and Subtraction: Mental Strategies and Developing

                                         Number Sense

                                                -Discovering number patterns

                                                -Looking at how addition facts relate to one another

                                                -Finding all the 2-addend combinations for numbers 0-20

                                                -Looking at how subtraction facts relate to one another

                                                -Listing subtraction facts for the numbers 0-18

Science:  Plant Adventures

Upcoming Events:  

            *No School – Teacher Inservice – Friday, Oct. 11^th

            *Kinderkonzert Field Trip – Tuesday, Oct. 15^th

            *Dine Out at Hopworks – Monday, Oct. 21^st

            *October Birthday Celebration/T-Shirt Day – Friday, Oct. 25^th

            *Fall Festival – Friday, Oct. 25^th

            *Halloween Parade – Thursday, Oct. 31^st

Have a Great Weekend!

Mrs. Hawksford (ahawksford@pps.net)

2nd Grade - Week 6

Grout 2^nd grade had an amazing field trip on Wednesday to the Hoyt Arboretum.  Students were able to extend their learning around plants and trees outside the school environment.  I want to send out a big thank you to the five chaperones that attended the field trip with us.  You made it possible for students to learn and have fun outside of the classroom!

Over the next few weeks we will be spending a lot of time on learning our addition and subtraction math facts to 20.  Knowing these facts quickly will provide students with a solid base to move into multiplication and subtraction in the future.  Making or purchasing flash cards to practice addition and subtraction math facts at home will really help expedite students learning.  For addition, cards should start with 0+1=, 0+2=, 0+3= and work their way all the way to 10+10=.  Subtraction should be 1-0=, 1-1=, 2-0=, 2-1=, 2-2= all the way up to 10-10=. In a few weeks I will be introducing the students to an online program called xtramath that will focus entirely on computation and learning these math facts. 

Academic Areas of Focus for Next Week:

Literacy:        Lucy Calkin’s Reader’s Workshop

                                    -Reading vowels teams

                                    -Strategies for figuring out brand new words

                                    -Author’s purpose

                        Lucy Calkin’s Writer’s Workshop

                                    -Using transition words in our writing

                                    -Focusing on a strong beginning and ending

                                    -Revising to add detail

Mathematics:  Unit 2 – Addition and Subtraction: Mental Strategies and Developing

                                         Number Sense

            Priority Standards for Unit 2:

                        -Fluently add and subtract within 20 using mental strategies.  By the end of

                        2^nd grade know from memory the all the sums of two one-digit numbers

                        -Explain why addition and subtraction strategies work, using place value and

                        the properties of operations.

Upcoming Events:   

            *No School – Teacher Inservice – Friday, Oct. 11^th

            *Kinderkonzert Field Trip – Tuesday, Oct. 15^th

            *Dine Out at Hopworks – Monday, Oct. 21^st

            *October Birthday Celebration/T-Shirt Day – Friday, Oct. 25^th

            *Fall Festival – Friday, Oct. 25^th

            *Halloween Parade – Thursday, Oct. 31^st

Have a Great Weekend!

Mrs. Hawksford (ahawksford@pps.net)