December Days

Well now that the dust has cleared from the Thanksgiving holiday, conferences and report cards, I am back and reporting updates weekly. I hope you all had a fabulous Thanksgiving and that you are looking forward to the frolic ahead.

It was a pleasure to meet with all of you during conference time. Thank you for all your kind words. I just love working with your kiddos and it is a joy coming to school each day. Thank you too, for your support with homework and school projects. You are all a fine tribute to the Killam community.

Grade two is wrapping up its unit on mapping this week. The students have reviewed and can identify the seven continents. They know the three countries in North America. They learned the five oceans of the world and their locations, the five major rivers of the world and their locations and will end with the important mountain ranges. Ask your child about their discoveries. What is the longest river in the world? What is the ocean off the west coast of the United States? The highest mountain is in what mountain range? You just might be impressed! Our next unit in Socials Studies will be an extensive study of Native Americans.

We have begun Unit 7 in Fundations and Unit 4 in Math. Please refer to the letters in EDLINE for details on skills that will be covered. I will also post a list of Fundations words and trick words separately. Keep your child practicing whenever possible. Use old worksheets from the Fundations program as these words cou;d show up on a dictation at the end of the unit.

Finally, I would like to share photos of the GARAGE SALE that was held last week. I am sure you heard great things about it. Most kiddo thought it was the "best day of their lives"! This experience provided the children the opportunity to interact with classmates buying and selling merchandise, supply and demand, counting and making change or saving not squandering money. It was an enjoyable learning experience for all!

Report Cards and Conferences

It's that time of year where students are settled in and true learning has begun. Not that learning wasn't happening early on, that was about building classroom relationships, learning new routines, bonding with their teacher and establishing their place in the scheme of new placement. Now, learning new math, grammar, spelling, writing, social studies and science is well underway. Some students are jumping through hoops, some pacing themselves and some still keeping their heads just above water. Most importantly, all need to feel safe and secure knowing they are doing their best and there is a "coach/cheerleader" willing to help whenever needed.

I am looking forward to meeting with you all to discuss your child's progress. Conferences will be held from November 17-19 as scheduled. Report cards will be sent home on Tuesday, November 16 giving you time to view your child's progress and come to the conferences with any questions you may have. Please remember that all children develop and bloom academically at different times. Your children are working very hard trying to focus on new skills as well as review strategies or rules that were previously taught and might apply. The most important factor at this age is the effort they are putting forth and are they behaving as a respectful, responsible classmate.

Fundations unit lessons are becoming move involved and some of you have asked for a list of practice words. I was under the impression the newsletters offered these words as they did in first grade. Having said that, I have added a list on EDLINE that you can access at the beginning of each unit. I hope this will be helpful in increasing your students dictation scores. While we work on multisyllabic words, we are also working on compounds words. The practice of compound words will be celebrated on COMPOUND WORD DAY, Wednesday, November 17. Your child can come to school dressed with compound word attire and accompanying artifacts. A letter with more information will come home this Wednesday with more detaiils.

In grammar we will continue looking at nouns and proper nouns this week. Nouns name people, places and things. Proper nouns give a special name to these people, pets, and places.

Your children are so excited about Math Fever. This practice should add to the automaticity of their facts for other skills they need. The math lessons this week will be reading bar graphs, review of frames, arrows and function machines. It will also look at how to make change when shopping. Making change is a very challenging task. Allow your child to make change whenever possible. When shopping, have you child pay and predict what the change may be. This will be highlighted with a GARAGE SALE on Wednesday, Nov. 24. More information will follow soon.

This week in social studies we will begin mapping. We will review what was learned last year and add to the development with a focus on waterways and mountain ranges. The children will compile a book of maps and will be able to locate the continents learned last year, mountain ranges, major oceans and rivers both on a map and the globe.

This week Killam will participate in a practice "lockdown" on Wednesday, Nov. 10. Our class will view the "lockdown" video on Monday. Please discuss this with your child Monday or Tuesday in prepartion for the practice on Wednesday morning.

Finally, there will be a Pillars Assembly on Wednesday in honor of Veteran's Day hosted by the fifth grade. Please have your child wear the second grade Pillars color of yellow or their Pillars shirt that day.

Have a fabulous week. I look forward to seeing you at conferences. This will be the last post until after Thanksgiving.