February 17: Newsletter

UPCOMING EVENTS:

February 24: Spirit Day - Wear your favorite hat

March 3: Students should be at 50% of their SRC goal

March 10: Early Release - Dismissal at 12:15

March 15 & 16: Parent/Teacher Conference (details soon)

March 17 : St. Patrick's Day - Wear Green  

March 31: Students should be at 75% of their SRC goal

May 5: Students should be at 100% of their SRC goal

OTHER NEWS:

Thank you for all of the donations that came in this week for Kid’s Food Basket.  Your generosity is evident as the food items continue to stack up outside of the classroom.  Thank you for fully embracing this project with your child.  The class set a goal to collect 120 items in two weeks.  After week one, we are over half way to our goal!!!  We have one more week to collect 56 items.  All donations are due by Friday, February 24.  Thanks again for your contributions to this great cause.  

You might have heard from your second grader that we spent a great deal of time on Wednesday discussing behavior expectations in school.  We made a few changes in the classroom to promote leadership.  One huge change is that we got rid of the clip chart!  Instead, we posted four main goals in the classroom to remind students of their expectations at school.  Our goals are to be responsible, be kind, be safe, and be respectful.  Each second grader identify an area that they excel in already.  I posted their choices by putting their pictures by the chosen expectation.  You will have to ask your second grader what area they chose.  I think they were very accurate with their decisions.  Students will continue to earn habit cards throughout the day when they display any of the posted expectations.  In fact, many habit cards were given out last week already.  Students will also be able to earn privileges as team captains when they consistently model appropriate behaviors for school.  We also have a plan if students are not exhibiting the behaviors mentioned on the charts.  Students may need a short break away from the class to reset or change their behavior.  If the behavior continues, the student and I will have a short meeting at recess to make a plan for different choices or a reflection paper will be sent home for you to be aware of the behavior occurring at school.  The students and I are excited about these changes.  I am eager to nominate lots of students for team captains in the weeks ahead.  

READING:

Next week we will continue our informational book study.  Students will make predictions before reading and learn when to stop and think about new learning.  I will also have time to complete a reading assessment with each second grader.  I am eager to see how they have all grown as readers.  I will share my findings with you at our upcoming conference next month.  

I did not send home a new word sort this week.  This week’s sort introduced new spelling patterns for the letter ‘a’.  I want to make sure students are fully understanding this new learning and transferring it into their writing.  We will continue with the same sort next week.  

WRITING:

We will completely dive into our opinion writing next week.  We will brainstorm topics for a persuasive review.  Students will be stating their opinions about their favorite books, movies, songs, places, and restaurants as well as supporting their opinions with multiple reasons and evidence.  We will begin the week by examining a review written about McDonalds.  Students will read three different examples and identify the writing traits that make each one convincing.  

MATH:

We continued to practice subtracting from a 3-digit number this week.  We clarified misunderstandings by fixing errors in our work.  This is a tricky concept to master, but I am extremely proud of the students’ perseverance!  I even introduced an new concept of adding up to find an unknown partner or addend.  The class was able to grasp this idea very quickly.  Next week we will continue to practice these concepts for full mastery.