Sunday, January 19, 2014

A New Year To Grow and Learn

Hello Families and Happy Martin Luther King Weekend. My husband and I are enjoying a quiet weekend at home in our cozy little apartment. We finalized our plans on our new townhouse and can now relax for awhile. The relaxation will be short lived as my mom is having knee replacement in about a month or so and will be needing some care. That remains to be seen and only time will tell what will happen, how long she'll be in rehab and what she'll need for assistance at home. So, having said all that we'll take it one day at a time.

Your children might have told you that we started our unit on Native Americans. It's so exciting and engaging for them. Each second grade teacher is responsible for a region of North America and every Wednesday the students will rotate to the other classes to learn about; climate, terrain, animals, resources, tools, weapons, food, clothing and shelter of each of the regions. So far, our lessons have covered terrain, climate and animals. On January 28, we will have a visit from a real Native American, Dan Krips. On March 6, we will visit the Peabody Museum at Harvard. Clear your calendars because chaperones will be needed. It is a wonderful museum if you've never been there.

We are also finishing up our mapping unit with a final assesment which was given on Friday. The children learned a lot about the continents, major mountain ranges, oceans and rivers of the world.
Their Mapping portfolios should be coming home in the next week or so.

In Fundation's, we are working on the R-controlled syllable type (R controlled vowels), Unit 8 of the Fundation program. We will work on this unit this week and next having Dictation on the 28. If you are looking for words to study, practice spelling trick words that went home last week and all Fundation's worksheets that go home over the next two weeks. Fundation's words that we'll cover are: part, cart, bird, her, port, burn, turn and words that are in these word families. Also words such as; partner, carport, sport, hurt, manner, partnership. Refer to Edline for more information.

Second grade will be finishing up Chpater 4 of InFocus Math. We will all be reviewing bar models and assessing the chapter on Friday. It was a very difficult chapter but all the students should "GRIT" and stayed with it.

Finally, there has been much talk about the anticipated safety drill called ALICE. I will begin to talk about this drill with the kiddos on Tuesday. Some students have already heard information from parents and who are beginning to discuss it with their children. There have been a public meetings about the new safety procedures. Mrs. Giles will have an assembly on Wednesday morning, January 29 the day of the safety drill ALICE. All classrooms in the school will be at the assembly and will have had a preview of the procedures for their teachers. These new procedures are to be put into place when there is danger or an "intruder" in the building. An "intruder" is someone who is not suppose to be in the building. I will do my best to answer all the questions the children may have. Please know, all the people in the Killam SchoolCommunity, will work to provide a calm, safe and informative drill with all the students and faculty in the building. (The Barrows School had a very safe and successful evacation this week due to high levels of carbon monoxide.) Our school psychologist has put together a photo story to assist us with an appropriate explanation of the ALICE plan. Please take the time to discuss it with your child over the next couple of weeks.

Enjoy the rest of the weekend. Stay warm!
Deb Dellovo



Thursday, January 2, 2014

Happy New Year! Welcome 2014


Hi Friends, I've missed you all and I hope you all had a fabulous holiday break. Due to my pending move I was very happy to have an extra few days off. I will be closing (hopefully) on my old house on Tuesday, January 7. We are temporarily moving to an apartment in Burlington making some decisions of permant residency shortly after that. It was a quite hectic last couple of weeks. We had a huge estate sale, purged, donated, cleaned, dumped and cleaned all 11 rooms. We are down to a few boxes, clothes and a small dumpster load before the closing. It has all been an eye-opening experience. My husband and I have had our moments but we look forward to our new adventure in 2014. May you all find happiness and new adventures too!

So, looking ahead, we have many exciting things in store. First of all I have added a few new websites for math and reading to this blog. I hope everyone spent sometime reading and practicing some math facts over the vacation. Please keep your kiddos reading, writing and working on math daily.

Informative writing continues to be our focus in January. The children will be informing their audience on many topics and reporting on their favorites as well. As soon as we get back, all second graders will be setting goals for themselves for 2014. This will be be their first writing assignment for the new year.

In Fundations, our kiddos will be learning to tap, read and spell words with the r-controlled syllable type (r-controlled vowels, "bossy R". If you have any questions about rules and words to practice this month in Unit 8 or any other unit you can refer to Edine or check out this Fundations link.

The children will continue to ractice the use of BAR MODELS in Math In Focus for the next few weeks. Bard models are similar to part-part total diagrams for the old Everyday math. Children learn the bar model that equilibrates to a number model. When a part of the bar model is missing, the kiddos learn whether to add or subtract to find the missing number. Refer to In Focus Think Central for video help.

We will be finishing up our Social Studies unit on mapping. In the coming weeks we will begin work on Native Americans. It is a very engaging unit with the kiddos getting very excited about the learning and artifacts. To enrich this unit, we will have a visit from an actual native amenrican, David Krips and we will take a field trip to the Peabody Museum. The Peabody Museum at Harvard has a wonderful display of native american artifacts and educators that will lead us in talks about the regions of America. This field trip will be by bus to culminate the unit. More information will follow as the time approaches.

So stay warm and safe! Give the kiddos a hug from me. I look forward to great things in 2014!