Down Town Stroll and Halloween Festivities

 

      Happy November and it's snowing! Can you believe it? I hope you all had a safe and Happy Halloween. We didn't have one Trick or Treater at our new home. Such a switch from the many we had in our old neighborhhood. Oh well, now to the thoughts of Thanksgiving and the coming holidays.

      Thank you to all the parents who came along on our Reading Community Field Trip. We had a glorious day and the kiddos enjoyed meeting all of the town officials and community workers. Check out the fire fighters who entertained the kids with the fire apparatus. Thank you Officer Burns and fellow Reading fire fighters.

 

 

 

Friends Forever

 

Too much excitement

 

 

 

Check out our kiddos and friends at the other venues:

 

 

 

 

Thank you to Norah Daly for helping me organize our Halloween activities. Thank you too, to all the families who sent in supplies for that day. We had a great morning creating some spooky and cute Halloween projects. Thank you to Mrs. Daly, Ms. Michelman, and Mrs. Tittemore for helping out with centers and assisting with keeping projects running smoothly. You rocked! Here are some snapshots from our Halloween morning:

 

 

Mummies! Don't look too scary!

Pumpkin Patch sooooo cute!

Such focus!

Looking ahead, we are wrapping up our community unit with a project in the computer lab. More information will follow soon and you will be able to view our projects through EDLINE so stay tuned. The Community Portfolios will be given to you at conference time. Our next Social Studies unit is Mapping. Children will be exploring maps with a fucus on continents, oceans, major mountain ranges, major rivers and the countries of North America.
We will also be wrapping up Fundations' Unit 4 and InFocus Math Chapter 3. I moved Dictation to Monday due to our Halloween activities. Math will be assessed on Thursday. That is the chapter on subtraction with and without regrouping. Please remembrr that the old word BORROW is not used anymore. The proper term is regroup. To make more of a visual connection I say,

 "More on the top, no need to stop.
More on the floor, go next door and get ten more!
 Numbers the same, zero's the name."

The children over all have been doing pretty well with the concept. There is one more challenge and that  is crossing over zeros. This will be taught and practiced on Monday -Wedensday of this week.

In writing, we are still working on creating a great lead or opening to our narratives and small moment writing pieces. The children are learning to edit their work and "spice-up" their writing for their audience. (On Monday mornng, the children continue to write a narrative piece about their weekend. It's great to see the growth in this process. I will share these at conference time.) In grammar, we have been learning about proper nouns. Kiddos need reminders to capitalize proper names of people, pets, places, days, months and holidays in all writing across the curriculum.

Enjoy the weeks leading up to conferences and the holidays. I believe there will be a questionaire coming home this week so that you can think about talking points for a valuable conferene experience. I will also send reminders for times home next week. Have a great week everyone!

 



 

Importance of Reading Strategies and Other Things

Good Evening Families,

I'm winding down after another gorgeous weekend. My husband and I closed down our RV in Maine and are now settling in to our new home once again. We still have boxes to go through but it is more like home these days. We did manage to have breakfast with family on Saturday and a quick visit to Smolak Farm as well.

I just finished updating all the kiddos on Raz.Kids. As I read through their stats, I noticed a few kiddos have not visited the site in quite awhile. RazKids is a very valuable reading tool and I hope you encourage your children to visit it at least twice a week. The text are of high quality and the quizzes are very telling. If your child does not score well, please have them reread the selection for accuracy and comprehension.

Have you chatted with your children about reading strategies lately? I wonder how many strategies they could tell you. There are many. Reading strategies are taught in all grade levels through out your child's life. Looking at the pictures, do the words and pictures match,  back up and reread, reread easy text, be a voracious reader, tune into interesting words, ask good questions while reading, make text connections and read "good fit books" are just a few to ponder. Strategies are an integral part of reading and many I'm sure you use to this day. Beginning Monday, October 27, your child will begin intensive reading with children on their same reading level. They will be working on similar skills daily. Along with their reading teacher, your child will set goals in reading and will be given strategies specific to their needs. When you receive a PARENT PIPELINE (you received one a few weeks back on GOOD FIT BOOKS), it means a new strategy has been taught. The information will help you better understand the language to use when working with your child in the reading process. Reading Strategies will have your child unlock new words, key information and becoming more proficient fluent readers. I encourage you to have a book talk with your child if you don't already do so. Happy reading!

It looks like their calling for rain on Thursday, the day of our community field trip. There is no raindate so stay tuned. Please have your child dress appropriately because if it is just drizzly, WE WILL GO! Remember that your child need a DISPOSABLE tree nut/peanut free lunch including a drink. It such a fun day, I hope the forcast changes as it often does.

Thank you to all who offered supplies and to volunteer for our Halloween centers. I have several enjoyable craft activities planned. It is always an exciting time. Please send in supplies by Wednesday, October 29. Thank you to Norah Daly for organizing this for us.

Our Star Student of the Week this week is Molly. I look forward to hearing and witnessing some interesting things from her. Thank you to Sofia, our former Star Student. I love your bracelets and your art work.

Lastly, I will be assessing Chapter 2 of the InFocus Math program on Tuesday which was addition within 1,000. We will then work on Subtraction and learn some important subtracting strategies. In Fundations, we will be beginning Unit 4 of the program which is suffix endings. There will be new and review trick words this week as well.

Please stay tuned for conference information. We were told you will be asked to submit questions ahead of time as talking points. I will be filling out a conference form with data collected by that point in the year. Your children are all working hard academically and practicing their school expectations.

Enjoy your week! Make it a STRATEGIC one.

Communities Within Communities

Hello Families! I am anxiously watching the Patriots game as I write this post. I still believe in Tom Brady but I can't believe all of the penalty calls. Team work and community building is the key.

Speaking of communities, our Room 14 community has been very busy over the last two weeks learning about rural, suburban and urban communities. They are experts now and are learning about goods and services, service workers and government. Our community field trip permission slip went home on Friday. Please return it as soon as possible. Everyone who is interested in chaperoning is invited to come along that day so please sign the chaperone sheet as well. I will remind you all before the field trip about the disposable nut free lunch. The date is Thursday, October 23 and we will be visiting the police station, fire station, town hall and cable studio. The children are quite excited about it and it is a fun day.

Our Grade 2 community has begun working in the second chapter of our Math program. The chapter focus is on adding to 1000 with and without regrouping. The children will continue to work on place value throughout this chapter as well. They need to carefully line-up their problems vertically for accuracy. This precision is important and their understanding of place value will validate that. Please refer to Math Infocus parent letters on Edline.

The focus of Unit 3 in Fundations will be the Closed Syllable Exception. The spelling of these exceptions are: ild, old, ost, ind and olt. The result of this Closed Syllable Exception is a long vowel sound. New trick words will come home on Tuesday and this unit will last only ONE week. So, there will be another Dictation assessment on Friday. Our first Dictation went very well!

In writing, your children continue to work on narrative writing. Ask them about the watermelon and the seed. The watermelon is the big picture (attending a birthday party) and the seed is the small moment (playing in the bouncy house). We are working on details, capitals and end marks. I have read some very interesting pieces and we have many good writers all ready this year. I am very proud of them.

Room parents for our class community are Mrs. Daly (Liam's mom) and Mrs. Tittemore (Molly's) mom. They may be emailing or calling about supplies, goodies and  volunteers for our Halloween Celebration on Friday, October 31. Our activities will be happening from 9-11AM. Please consider helping out that day. I will need 4-5 volunteers to run centers (crafts). Thank you in advance for generous donations and your time.

Lastly, kuddos to Abby for doing such a great job as our first STAR STUDENT of the Week. She was really cute, talented and handled herself with confidence. Our class community is looking forward to hearing from our STAR this week; Sofia.

Have a great week everyone. Remember to send in the permission slip and sign up as a chaperone to join us.

Off And Running

Hello families! I hope you enjoyed your weekend and the first day of fall. I was up in Maine for the weekend enjoying time with friends as well as some quiet time. Congrats to the Pats for another win today. They really keep us on our toes.

These last couple of weeks the kiddos have become more comfortable with their new surrounding, new friends and the captain of the ship (me). We are well on our way towards a happy and productive year. All areas of the curriculum are up and running. Though at times some areas need to be fine tuned, we are collaborating, sharing and learning from each other. I will post some pictures at the end of this post that show our class engaged in learning partnerships.

This week we will continue in Chapter 1 of our InFocus math program. Our lessons so far have been focused around numbers to 1,000 introducing standard number form, the written number form and the expanded number form. Next the children reviewed greater than and less than (>,<) with Ali Alligator. Finally, the emphasis will be identifying patterns in numbers. In these lessons, the children will learn to use numberlines and number grids to determine if a pattern is counting by 2s, 3s, 5s, 10s or 100s pattern. They will learn strategies to fill in missing numbers to these patterns. A final assessment to this chapter will be a week from Monday (Sept. 29).

We will begin Unit 2 in the Fundation's phonics program. This lesson reviews the glued sounds of: ang, ank, ing, ink, ong, onk, ung, unk and the bonus letters of f, l, s. There will be second grade trick words this week as well. The words will come home on Tuesday. This unit will be assessed a week from Friday (Oct.3). Most units last 2-3 weeks. The children will be bringing home their Unit 1 assessments. Please review this with them and used the attached pyramid to practice the missed trick words from the test.

All children enjoy writing about themselves and what they do. This information is very familiar to them and easy to access. We are focusing on "small moments" in our lives (a seed inside a watermelon analogy). Narrative writing will be developed and refined over the first term.

Clear your calendar and stay tuned for more information to follow about our Community field trip on Thursday, October 23. All second graders will be walking downtown to visit the police station, fire station, town hall and cable studio. Chaperones will be needed so watch for the field trip letter to be coming home later this week. We need lots so please try to join us. This field trip is a culmination of work already begun on communities. Ask your child if he/she knows what a community is? The study of communities involves rural, suburban and urban areas, governement, goods, services, and workers. The childern will be completing a research project on a community worker with a partner and produce a project in the media lab with the assistance of our Media specialist Mrs. Adamo.

Finally, our kiddos are reading up a storm. They have been learning to choose "good-fit" books so important to reading.  As they READ TO SELF they are working to build stamina each day. Last week they began READ TO SOMEONE. Each asked a buddy to read with them sharing a good story together. Read To Self and Read To Someone are part of the DAILY 5/CAFE that I spoke about at open house. If you want more information you can access the website thedailycafe.com. All grade 2 teachers will begin their bench mark assessments this week and RazKids will be updated soon.

Thank you for your continued understanding of the technology issues. Technology is a wonderful thing when all goes well. Please know that any practice you do for spelling, math and reading is very vital to your child's sustained growth and learning. I applaud you for your efforts.

Enjoy the following pics! Have a great week.

Welcome To Second Grade Another Year of Growing and Learning

     Welcome to Room 14. I am happy to get to know some new families this year but I am so excited to see many familiar faces. We are all off to a great start! YAY! Thank you for sending your kiddos so well prepared. It is very appreciated.

     This is my class blog. I write information here to clarify curriculum, give heads up on projects and post pics of the kiddos doing interesting activities. I would be very pleased if families would read the blog (check every other week). I can see the numbers of views so if it is read I will gladly continue to POST. At times I may post personal items like my number two son, Tony, getting engaged this summer. I have two boys. Tony is 28 and Ken is 32. I have beautiful daughter-in-law Ari and a soon to be just as beautiful Sara. Let's not forget my kitty, Betty and my husband Rick.

      I think that does it for now. I will update next week after OPen House with curriculum updates. Enjoy the last few days of summer!