Good Evening!  I have a couple of announcements for this week.

-Hat day is Thursday January 27th.  Your child will be able to wear a hat if they donate a dollar towards the the fifth grade camp trip.

-There is NO SCHOOL this Friday January 28th. Therefore home work will be due Thursday and there will be a spelling test that day as well.

-We will be taking our second round of NWEA testing on Tuesday February 1, 2011 in the afternoon.  Please pack a brain healthy lunch so your child is ready for the test.

Valentine's day is coming quickly!  We will have our Valentine's day party on Monday February 14, 2011.  I will be sending a list of names of the class.  We will be giving valentine cards to students in the class.  The only rule that I have is that students must give a valentine's card to everyone so no one feels left out.
As a homework project, I will be asking students to make their Valentine's boxes/bags at home and bring in the Friday before.  There will be information sent home regarding this activity.

We have had an exciting week in math.  We have already discussed multiplication and division.  We have begun to investigate ways to show these two operations in math.  This is the first of many opportunities for you child to begin to understand these concepts.  If your child is having trouble remember to ask them to draw a picture to help you understand how they got their answer.

February is Black History Month.  We have learned many interesting facts about Martin Luther King Jr. through biographies written about him.  As a class we wrote a report on him.  In the next week your child will be partnered up with another student in the class and read a biography about an African American who has influenced our lives.  Together, they will write a report on the person that I have given to them.

We started our Science unit on motion.  Today we had our first exciting experiment.  Ask your child what the Objects in Motion experiment was about!

Keep checking in to see what you child is doing in class!
Stay warm.

Some big announcements!

Every day for the rest of the year, there will be ice cream sales during lunch time.  .50 will get you a popsicle and 1.00 will get you come other frozen treats.

We had our first day of our word study!  Our word of the day was dainty.  We used dainty as an adjective meaning very delicate.  Ask your child to use their word in a sentence!

We are now onto Unit 6 in math.  This unit will include adding three or more numbers at a time.  We will begin exploring comparison number stories.  An example is Silva has 17 CDs. Mark has 8 CDs. How many more CDs does Silva have than Mark?  The most important part is understanding the words HOW MANY MORE.  We will also be collecting, sorting, tallying and graphing data.  We will continue to discuss different strategies to use when adding and subtracting.  We will be exploring division/multiplication in the idea of creating equal groups.  They will be introduced to multiplication as an array (4x3 boxes).  Math will be getting more difficult as you can see.  Make sure to read the note home for parents at the end of each homework unit.

We will have NO SCHOOL next Monday because of MLK day. This week we will be discussing Martin Luther King Jr.  Every day we will be doing an activity discussing the wonderful achievements in his life and how they affect ours today!

I allow the students of have 20 minutes of DEAR time, which stands for Drop Everything And Read.  I have changed how the students are to record what they have read.  It is a much more genre based journal.  This will make your child aware of the different genres that are out there and find which ones interest them.

Happy 2011!

I wanted to remind everyone that homework is due Friday January 7. There will be a spelling test this Friday as well, don’t forget to practice!!!!
This week in math we will be reviewing what we learned before the break. We were covering quadrangles (four sided closed figures), parallel lines and other polygons. I will be introducing 3-Dimensional shapes this week.

In social studies, we will be reviewing laws, liberty, common good and freedom.
My second grade team and I have reassessed the reading groups and made adjustments where we saw fit. After the NWEA testing and DRAs are finished in February, we will reassess the students again.
I hope that everyone had a wonderful break and I can’t wait to see everyone tomorrow morning!