Week 1

Dear Parents,

          It was so wonderful meeting most of you at meet the teacher. Some of you were able to come to our parent orientation on Thursday night to learn more about second grade. If you were unable to attend, you may find the information covered in a packet that went home in your child’s black Coyote Folder on Friday. Please take time to fill out the pages at the back and send them back to school next week. If you have any questions, please feel free to email me and I will answer your questions right away. This Coyote Folder comes home on Fridays with important flyers, our second grade newsletter and graded papers. Please take everything out and return the folder on Monday. The blue daily folder goes home each night and should also return each morning.

        In math this week we are learning about our daily routines, and IPS. IPS stands for intentional Problem solving. We have a problem each day that your child solves as many ways as they can. They then share with friends, then the strategies used are shared by students. Daily routines vary, but the main one we went over this week was time. We discussed the two types of clocks and their parts. We looked at our daily schedule and drew hands on clocks to match the times.

         In writing, we began our kick off to writing workshop where we created play doh creations, added to them, took things away, and compared this to the writing process. We learned that we write about things close to our heart and made some journal entries.

        In reading we started the kick off to reading workshop where we learned our gathering spot, how to turn and talk to a buddy, how to read to self and build stamina during guided reading. They are so proud to have increased their stamina from 20 seconds to 9 minutes already! We also listened to some wonderful books and had wonderful discussions to check for comprehension.

        In social studies we discussed our rules, classroom procedures, and began our review of the Leader in Me program.

       Science was kicked off by setting up our science notebook and learning about what scientists look like, what tools they use and what they do. It was a great first week of school! If you click on the blue link below you will be able to see our class blog. I post all my e-mails to you as well as pictures and videos of activities we do in our class. I posted some of the play doh creations from writing this week as I do not know as of yet who can have their picture taken. If you could respond to this e-mail with just your child’s name and whether his/her picture can be posted on our blog, I can start taking pictures of the children.Example: John, yes you may post his picture on the blog.

Have a great weekend!