An Eventful Week

This week there are so many exciting things going on! 

We kicked the week off with a successful day as we demonstrated quality behavior with our substitute teacher. Today, the class also came to school with a note from the pillownapper who stole our beanbag and seat cushions. The pillownapper says they will only return them if we are on our best behavior for the substitute teacher. The class will have a substitute through Wednesday as Mrs. Thomas continues to pull students individually for reading testing. These tests provide excellent data on student reading accuracy, fluency, and comprehension. If you would like to meet after this week to discuss your child's reading skills, feel free to call or email me to set up a conference.

We ended our day with a fantastic Chuseok celebration, with plentiful amounts of food. Thank you all for sending in your delicious treats as well as your helping hands. We could not have done this without you!

Tomorrow evening, I look forward to seeing you at our Open House. You will have the opportunity to see student work, understand a little more about your child's second grade year, and meet other teachers around the school. 

On Thursday, we have some fun in store to go along with our story about Henry and Mudge going camping. Make sure to ask your child about this on Thursday.
Below is a picture of some excellent math words we came up with today to help us solve word problems.

Interesting Conversations

This afternoon we had some interesting conversations in class. We discussed the events of 9/11 and read a paragraph introducing us to the events of that day, and looked at a before and after picture. Students were curious as to why someone would do this, and I explained that some people believe their religion says that they will get rewards in heaven if they kill people that don't follow their religion. This led to a discussion and many questions about heaven, hell, God, and the devil. I tried to share multiple viewpoints and explain that some people believe in God, others do not, while still others believe in many gods. While understanding various religious beliefs may not be part of our core curriculum, these conversations are important for understanding the ideas and background of people who may be different than our own.

After this conversation, we read "14 Cows for America." This book is about a tribe in Kenya who hears about the events of 9/11. They are deeply moved at the tragic events and decide to gift the United States with fourteen cows. This gift was a meaningful symbol, as cows in their culture symbolize life.

Two weeks down

Dear parents,

We learned a lot this week, from adding doubles, to identifying the characters and setting in our reading. As a class, we continue to work on procedures and practicing our class rule of being respectful towards others, our selves, and our school. I was very impressed this week with our first spelling test in which we scored an average of 82.6%. Thank you for all your support from home in helping to study these words as well as complete the rest of the homework this week. We enjoyed listening to students share about their families today.

Starting this week, there are some adjustments to our schedule. I will send home our updated schedule this coming week. We will also be starting to have centers in class this week. This will be an added change to our schedule as well.

As we commemorate 9/11 this weekend, we will be reading books and discussing this event as a class on Monday. It would be meaningful for students to have an understanding of your experiences relating to 9/11. I encourage you to talk to them about where you were, and how this may have impacted your life.

This week, we also celebrate Chuseok. Therefore, there will be no school on Friday. The following Monday, on September 19 we plan to have a small class celebration in the afternoon. If you would be willing to help serve or bring in cultural treats/ snacks for the class, please let me know by Wednesday, Sep. 14.

Finally, some of you will notice that the spelling list has been adjusted for your child. If your child missed a word on their spelling list that was not one of our three hardest words (engine, lettuce, pocket), they will be repeating this as one of their spelling words for next week instead of one of the hard words that are on the list. Please let me know if you have any questions.

Great work!

Dear parents,

Our class worked hard last week on the timelines of our lives. Look at the final product of our work. I would say this was a great success! Please continue working, sharing the stories of your lives with your child, so that we can compare our lives to those of our parents and grandparents. Thank you for all your support from home!

Happy Labor Day!

Dear Parents,

I hope you are having a wonderful labor day weekend! In the link below is some reading about labor day that I encourage you to read with your child. While this is not a class assignment and is geared for students starting 4th grade, it has some great resources for students to learn why we celebrate this public holiday. You may have to copy and paste the url in order to get to the articles.

file:///C:/Users/Erika.Thomas/Downloads/SummerReads-Labor_Day.pdf

Our First Week/ Homework

We had a great first week of school! We learned about each other's lives, how we grow, words with short vowel sounds, Antarctica, our muscles and bones, and our class rule: Show respect to ourselves, others and our school. We worked hard on math and reading assessments and have one more math assessment left for this coming week.

On Friday, I sent home the first homework packet of the year. In it, there is a reading log that needs to be filled out each day. There is also a spelling activities list. Students need to complete one spelling activity each day in order to prepare for our test on Friday. There is also a math sheet with a hundred chart behind it. Monday to Thursday, students need to fill in the column for that day. I will be checking these each day, so please ensure they are complete. This week, as we are learning about family relationships and family history in both Social Studies and Health, I sent home interview questions for homework for the students. The responses for these questions need to be completed by Friday. Please let me know if you have any questions or if your child is spending too much time on this homework and I need to make adjustments.