Weekly News Letter

Second Grade News

October 31,2008

Dear Parents,

First I wanted to wish you all a very safe and happy Halloween! It has been a very busy 2 weeks in second grade. My how the time has flown bye. I wanted to apologize for not getting a news letter out last week with the week being short and being sick for two of those days, it slipped my mind and I apologize . It was lovely meeting with each of you at confrences and getting to know some of you for the first time was great! I appreciate the time you took to meet with me to discuss your child.

Calendar/ Morning work:

We have been busy little bee’s in second grade at Calendar time! Some students have brought in some very wonderful and educational items to share with the class to learn about. This week I thank Noell for bringing in her piece of bark with termite tunnels that had created an itricate design on the inside. We had the chance to then learn a little about termites and what they do to trees as well as other pieces of wood. Along with this we had the chance to learn about many other exciting new facts such as the Spanish Halloween traditions which they call this day Dia de los muertos, translated “day of the dead.” The students learned about the Spanish festivities and cultural celebrations that they do in Spain to celebrate Halloween.

We have been working very hard on place value, patterns and skip counting each day at calendar as well as in our morning work. We are still struggling with skip counting by three’s, so extra help at home would be wonderful. Along with these we have been working our brains with some new and exciting brain questions and we even learned the nursery rhyme Hey Diddle Diddle in sign language.

In our morning work we are still working on correcting sentences and improving our grammar skills in not only our morning work but also in our daily work in all subjects. They have learned this rhyme to help them remember the steps in class: Captial letter at the beginning, punctuation at the end, look in the middle and then begin. This helps them remember to look at all parts of the sentence, circle the mistakes and really watch which corrections need to be made. I have seen some improvement this week and hope to continue to see more improvements as the weeks go by.

Math:

This week we have really been working hard on learning all about our fact families. Each day the lessons built a new concept in working with fact families ending with Thursdays lesson in which the students had the chance to learn basic algebra. Boy were they excited when I told them that they were learning some algebra and that algebra is what the sixth and seventh graders do! We had absolute silence when I was teaching because they were so very excited to learn some older student materials!

Science:

This week the students had the chance to be scientists and do their own observation experiments. We have been learning all about plants, what comes from plants and what is made from plants and not made from plants. Our little scientists were hard at work on Thursday searching high and low around the classroom figuring out what was made from plants and what was not. Along with this they were expected to fill out a chart based on their own personal observations. Boy we have some very brilliant scientists in our room! What amazing findings they found and how proud of them I was that they really thought outside of the box on some of their findings. What a great experience it was! Next week we will be webbing and charting our findings as well as talking more in debth about how plants are used in almost everything we use or do.

Social Studies:

What an exciting unit we have begun this week! Our unit is all about the countries and cultures around us in the world as well as what products they produce there. The students learned this week how grain, apples and other plant products begin and then how they end up in our grocery stores and homes and the process along the way. Along with this we learned about the Native Americans and how they produced paint, found food and also who their culture has changed from back then to now.

Reading/ Writing:

The students this week had the chance to read in their anthologies the story Click Clack Moo. This story brought along a new found love of fantasy stories and also strengthened their imaginations for writing time. This week in one of their writings the students were asked to write an unlikely event or events that would take place on a farm. Their stories I have to say are hilariously creative and full of wonderful descriptive words! I can’t wait to have them each illustrate, edit and type them out and then finally read them aloud to the class using strong verbal emotions. What a day that will be!

Religion:

Mrs. Price is asked each of the students to bring in a name of a family member or friend who has passed away that we could honor at school on the feast of All Souls Day. She will be having the students decorate a cross in memory of that person/persons and will be hung in the classroom. Please help your child write down a name for Monday.

Overall it has been a very exciting week and ended with a wonderful Halloween celebration that was wonderfully arranged by many fantastic parent volunteers. Thank you to all of my mom’s who helped put together such a wonderful party for us all, we all appreciated your hard work and dedication. I hope you all have a happy and safe Halloween and don’t forget to change your clocks on Sunday.

God Bless,

Mrs. Shoemaker