What a wonderful time we had at the Carnival on Friday. The kids were so excited, and I was impressed with how well they did in such a busy environment! Did they tell you about the special surprise outside? Principal Underwood was quite brave this week! Next week in the Wonders program we will complete the Unit One assessment. Two weeks ago we practiced strategies for test taking, and this week I will encourage students to use those strategies as they show what they have learned. We will also spend some time celebrating the season will fun Halloween and Fall books. There will not be two spelling lists this week, only one. We will focus on root words and endings as a review for our Unit One grammar work. The Students will also complete a short Unit 2 Math assessment. They will have a chance to play games that they have learned this unit, as there have been so many. In addition, we will incorporate the excitement of Halloween as I have some fun math activities planned for the kiddos based upon doubles, near doubles, and odd / even numbers. We are busy preparing for our show this Thursday. As a reminder, our Open House will be from 6:00-6:30, although you may want to head down to the gym a few minutes early to grab a good seat. We have 3 planned rehearsals this week, and already the show is looking wonderful. We are so very lucky to have such dedicated and talented specialists at our school! If your child can please bring in their “costume” by Tuesday, we plan to have our first in-costume dress rehearsal that afternoon. Thank you to the many parents who have volunteered to come into the classroom to help at our Halloween celebration. We have a fun game and craft planned and there are many delicious treats on their way! An important note about costumes. Please ensure that your child’s costume does not include anything that may scare our younger students such as gore or blood. All make-up for the costume needs to be put on before school, as neither teachers nor parent volunteers are allowed to apply makeup. Please make sure your child is able to change into their costume independently if needed (they will need to change on their own in the bathroom)- costumes that go over school clothes are recommended. Additionally, dependent upon weather, we may ask your child to wear a coat over their costume….but don’t worry, they will look great either way! Upcoming Dates: Tuesday- Please send in your child’s “costume” for dress rehearsal Wednesday Thursday-Open House Friday- Halloween Party 12:00-12:30 Parade 1:00-1:40ish Halloween Party wrap-up 1:40-2:15
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This week in our Wonders program we will answer the question, “What happens when families work together?” We will review key details and try to deepen our understanding of asking questions as we read. For spelling this week, the focus will be on long and short i spellings. The students will review inflected endings (-ed, -ing, -s) and will begin to learn about possessive nouns. We will be busy!
In Math this week, the students will wrap up our second Math Unit. We will further explore multiple ways to express numbers (tallies, ten frames, addition sentences) and multiple names for numbers (14 can be 7+7 or 10+4 or 9+5) We will also explore even and odd numbers, looking into what happens when we add: two even numbers two odd numbers one even and one odd number The following week students will take their second Math assessment and play some Halloween themed math games! We continue our animal projects during our class time. We have scheduled research time in the library, using gopebble (an age appropriate online encyclopedia). The students are enjoying learning new facts about the animals they are studying, and will begin to plan a project that displays their learning. We have a lot of extracurricular activities over the next few weeks that will keep us busy. I have listed any important information I thought may be helpful to repeat. I find the new school website is much more user-friendly and is a great source of school dates and information. *The New Boston Central School Board has a vacancy for the remainder of this year. There is information posted on the school website, or I can pass along information if you are interested in the role. Friday, October 23rd will be our PBIS carnival. The students met their goal of earning 1,000 PAWS cards for excellent hallway and in class behavior! We will attend the carnival for 45 minutes as a second grade team during the 9:00 hour. We are still looking for more volunteers if you are interested. This week some of our Parent-Teacher conferences are scheduled. Thank you to the many parents who have signed up! I have a goal of meeting with 100% of the families, and we are close to having almost everyone signed up. Please sign up at least 48 hours in advance, so I am aware of a schedule change. Let me know if you are having any trouble signing up, changing a time, or finding a time that works for your schedule. Our Halloween Party will take place on Friday, October 30th at 12:00. The students will play a game, create a craft, and enjoy treats. I have sent out a sign up on signupgenius.com. We will begin to dress for the parade at about 12:30. Please send your child’s costume in with them on the 30th or feel free to join us in class and help the students prepare for the parade! As a reminder, please ensure that school costumes do not have any weapons or gory masks. There are many younger students who will be in the parade with us . The parade will begin at approximately 1:00, but they will begin calling classes to the gym at 12:45. We may extend our party after the parade depending on how much we can fit in! Phew…. I think that is it for this week, let me know if you have any questions! Next week in Wonders will be a review week. We will learn how to take a Wonders assessment, using test taking strategies (read the questions first, underline important information as you read, etc). The first assessment will be used as a teaching tool and will not be recorded as a grade. For spelling this week, students will practice writing their full name and address. The spelling homework will look a little different this week, so let me know if you have any questions on Monday evening.
In Math we will continue our work with addition strategies. The students have worked incredibly hard at mastering their doubles facts, and are beginning to apply this learning to help them learn near doubles facts (6+7-they use 6+6 and go up one). We will continue this work next week. We have introduced a great number of mathematical tools to the students, and encourage them to use the one that they feel the most comfortable with. We will continue our STEAM challenge next week. One team finished their planning stage and moved onto building. All of the other teams will begin their building next week. The students are so thoughtful with their planning, sharing their ideas and collaborating beautifully! As the students wrote out their plans this week, many of them chose to revise their original idea and combine pieces from each other’s work. The room is A BUZZ during this time, it is so cool to see! In addition to our STEAM challenge, students continue to learn about animal adaptations. They will carry this knowledge over as they choose their own animal to research in a small group. We will spend an extra block in the library this week, working as teams to gather facts and continue our research. We hope to complete this work in time for Open House! It is hard to believe that we are already in the month of October. Tonight you will receive an email inviting you to sign up for a parent-teacher conference. I have done my best to accommodate schedules, but please let me now if you cannot make on the listed times. I would like to meet with 100% of all families for the fall conference.
This week in reading we will continue to learn about pets and animals with special adaptations. We will refine our work with questioning; ask your child to tell you the difference between a thin question (it is right there in the story) and a thick question (open ended questions that require you to think, give your opinion, and prove your answer). The students have made great progress with this strategy. We will focus on the spellings for long and short a, and continue to work on identifying the subject of a sentence. Students continue to attend WIN groups every day, supporting the skills that are just right for them. They are quite excited to work with new friends, and some even travel to a new classroom for the block! The students performed beautifully on their first Math assessment, really impressing me with their determination and effort. I will continue to support students with any areas that were challenging for them. For the next two weeks we will learn multiple fact strategies that help us build our fluency with addition and subtraction facts. There is a wonderful website link on our class website that helps students practice their addition and subtraction facts in a fun and engaging way. We began our next STEAM challenge on Friday. The students are working to build a device that can rescue a pet (stuffed animal) out of a pipe (tube made of Clorox wipes). It is amazing to see the children’s growth in terms of teamwork, creativity, and perseverance in only a few short weeks! These first four challenges have acquainted the students with the design process and have helped the students become more comfortable taking risks. Over the next three weeks, we will build our understanding of animal adaptations in preparation for our first science standards aligned STEAM challenge. To begin our build on Friday we are looking for donations of: Paper towel tubes Rubber bands Craft Sticks If you are able to send in any of these items, I thank you in advance! |
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