Week 3

 Dear Parents,

           This is our second week of school and this week was a FULL week! We worked hard in second grade and are already growing in so many ways. In math this week we began looking at coins. This unit moves quickly to counting coins up to $1.00. Any extra practice reinforcing this important skill is appreciated.  We sort the coins from greatest value to the least value and line them up. Here is an example: Quarter, Quarter, dime, dime, dime, nickel, penny. Under the coins they add up the value increasing one coin at a time. They can use a hundreds chart to add the amounts. This would be written as  25, 50, 60, 70, 80, 85, 86. This group of coins equals 86 cents. We will be practicing at school using simulated plastic coins.

             In writing we are getting used to writing workshop and what is expected of us during this time. Children are learning to flow between topics and are encouraged to visit older writings to add more, revise, edit or even publish them. We found that we could get ideas for writing by looking at books we read and finding the big idea of the books.

              In reading this week we focused on setting as we read the story Clark the Shark. We put the setting on a graphic organizer and took a comprehension test over the story. In social studies we continued adding to our class treatment agreement and finalized it. We made a poster and all signed it! This agreement states how the teacher and students want to be treated by each other. We brainstormed ideas and wrote it as a class.

               In science we sent home our science safety contract for students and parents to sign. When these contracts are all back each child will receive a safety license. I am still missing 2 signed contracts. We also wrote an emergency plan in case of an accident. We role played and put our plan into action. Learning about our science tools led to a matching quiz in which children matched pictures of science tools to their names and how they are used by scientists. It was a fun filled week of learning!

                I was so happy to see that the class worked hard to learn their sight words. Thank you parents for supporting this important skill! Next week, and the rest of the year there will only be one list of words. Thank you for doing both list one and two this week. I also appreciate the hard work filling out the reading logs. Only a few students left theirs at home today. If your child’s did not come back to school today, please send it on Monday. They are filled out Monday- Thursday and return to school on Fridays.

                 I appreciate those of you who attended our virtual second grade parent orientation. If you were unable to attend, the slide show that is linked in the invite e-mail has wonderful information. Please let me know if you have any questions!

  Have a wonderful weekend with your families!