Weekly News January 30-February 3, 2017

Homework: The math packet and reading log are due on this Friday. Please return it in your Yellow Reading Log/Math Homework Folder. Please make sure you sign your child’s reading log.

Language Arts/Social Studies: We will look for leadership traits and evidence from the text to support the trait. In addition we are learning about learning about character’s feelings and how those feeling change in stories. We will work on the vowel team ea/ee in our word work. We will work on writing poetry this week. The students will write Haiku, Cinquain and Limericks.

Mathematics: We have finished our first workbook. It was sent home last week. You will find that we did not do two chapters. These chapters do not correlate with our second grade curriculum here in Shrewsbury so our district has decided for us to skip these chapters. Certainly they are still good pages if you chose to work with your child on them. We are beginning chapter 10 on mental math. The students will learn that mental math can be used to find the exact answer in addition and subtraction. Estimation can be used when an exact answer is not needed. The students will learn how to use number bonds to add and subtract two and three digit numbers with and without regrouping. They will also learn how to round numbers to estimate sums and differences and check for reasonableness.

Valentine’s Day Information: Please remember that our Valentine cards must be candy/snack free.  Thank you for your help with this.  I am sending a list of our classmates for you to help your child make a card for each classmate. We will have our celebration on Valentine’s Day. 

Supplies:  We just passed the half way point of the school year. It is a good time to check in with your child about his or her Twistables. These are the one item is not a part of our community supplies.  Our classroom community is in need of more tissues, erasers (the block eraser or pencil toppers) and glue sticks. Thank you in advance to anyone who is able to volunteers to help out our classroom community with supplies.

Ways you can help at home: Read with your child and discus the character traits. Read a biography together. Look for ea/ ee words as you read. Practice spelling sight words. Go on Greg Tang Math and play some games with your child. Practice asking your child what is 10 more, 10 less, 20 more, 20 less than a number, 100 more and 100 less.  Talk about how to add numbers. Review weekend activities with your child on Sunday night or Monday morning so your child will be ready to write in his or her journal about the weekend.

Cursive: We will continue to practice the cursive a.

Weekly News January 23-27, 2017

Homework: The writing homework is due this Friday. The math packet and reading log are due on Friday. Please return it in your Yellow Reading Log/Math Homework Folder. Please make sure you sign your child’s reading log.

Language Arts/Social Studies: This week we will learn about Jacques Cousteau. We will work on identifying a leadership trait to describe Cousteau then we will find evidence from the text to support that trait. In our reading groups we will be reading about leaders. We will read about the Chinese New Year in our Scholastic News. We will continue to review magic e words. We will continue to work on opinion writing. Later in the week we will learn about Haiku poems and try writing our own.

Mathematics: This week we will be solving real-world problems using metric length. We will practice the problem-solving strategies of making sure we understand, then represent, solve, look back and clearly show the answer. We will be solving one-step and two-step problems. Most likely the chapter 7 test will be this Wednesday. We will begin chapter 10 on mental math.

Ways you can help at home: Read with your child and discus the character traits. Read a biography together. Look for magic e words as you read. Practice spelling sight words that you see your child missing in his or her writing journal. Help your child take time to edit for capitals and end marks in their writing in their homework. Practice measuring objects in centimeters. Talk about what is longer shorter, taller and by how much. Work on solving addition and subtraction word problems. The students need to understand what operation is needed. Drawing bar models helps students represent the problem. We talk about the parts we know. For example if we know the whole and a part we know that subtraction is needed to find the other part. If we know the parts we need to add to find the whole.

Cursive: We will continue to practice the cursive a.

Weekly News January 17-20, 2017

Homework: The math packet and reading log are due on Friday. Please return it in your Yellow Reading Log/Math Homework Folder. Please make sure you sign your child’s reading log. Work on the writing homework. We are on week 3. Monday night’s math and reading homework are optional.

Homework Survey: The second grade teachers made a survey about homework. We would like your feedback. Please look for the link in your email sometime today or tomorrow. Thank you for your help.

Language Arts: We will continue our study of fables. This week the focus will be on character traits. In addition we will read the book Stephanie’s Ponytail and identify character traits and the author’s message. In our word work we will be reviewing magic e words. In writing we finished the final copy of our opinion piece on our favorite gift. This week we will write an opinion piece about our favorite game. We will work with a partner to revise and edit our writing. Students will be looking to see if the writing makes sense, it has an introduction, reasons with examples, conclusion and transitional words. We will look for capitals, end marks and our best spelling.

Mathematics: We continue to learn about measuring. Last week we spent time working on learning about how to measure by lining up the zero with what we are measuring. We discussed how some rulers start at the edge but most of the rulers in our room begin at zero. We will learn how to measure objects using different start points. We will compare objects using centimeters. We will work on solving real world word problems using units of measure.

Social Studies: We will begin our study on leaders by identifying leaders and what makes them a leader. We will make a chart of these qualities of a leader. To begin with we will read more about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Our All School Book of the month is Martin’s Big Words.

Cursive: We will begin to learn cursive. We use a program called Loops and Groups. The students will be introduced to a group of words that all start with the same beginning stroke. Our first group is called clock climbers. The students will learn a, c, d,g, and q. We will work on a letter or two each week. I encourage the students not begin to use cursive too fast so bad habits are not formed.

Look for the Share Calendar for the rest of January, February and March.

Weekly News January 9-13, 2017

Homework: The math packet and reading log are due on Friday. Please return it in your Yellow Reading Log/Math Homework Folder. Please make sure you sign your child’s reading log. Work on the writing homework. We are on week 2.

Remember to read and sign your child’s writing journal tonight. Return it for Tuesday.

Flat Stanley update: I noticed that I didn’t get my letter that helps explain Flat Stanley in the envelope. Please pass along the following to the relative or friend that is receiving your child’s Flat Stanley. 

    Thank you for participating in our Flat Stanley activity. Please send us 1 or 2 pictures and tell us about where you live. Please return Flat Stanley back to us as well.  We look forward to hearing from you.

  Please return to:

   

Student’s Name

C/O  Mrs. Porter

Spring Street School

123 Spring Street

Shrewsbury, MA 

                        01545

Thanks again for your help in this activity.

Your child wrote a letter that explains it but it didn’t give the address of our school. If someone sends one back to you just have your child bring it to school. Thanks1

Language Arts: We will begin a study of fables. The students will be reading and sharing the moral of the stories. We are reviewing how to make words past tense by adding –ed. We discussed the different sounds used to make the words past tense. Students will revisit opinion writing. We will review what an opinion is and how to make a fact into an opinion and an opinion into a fact. For example, I lived in a two story house is a fact.  Two story houses are the best kind of house to live is an opinion. The students will write an opinion about the best gift they have received.

Mathematics:  We will be working on chapter 7 in math on metric measurement. Please see the Home School Letter about this chapter in your Spring Street folder. This chapter reviews addition and subtraction with regrouping along with word problems and using bar models to support our understanding of the problem.

Social Studies: We will read and discuss Martin Luther King, Jr. in our Scholastic News. We will use a map of North America to identify our countries boundaries. 

Scholastic Book Order:  There’s a Scholastic Book Order Form in the Spring Street Folder. If you would like to place an order you can do so online. Our class code is GVN48.  Please have the orders in by Tuesday, January 17th!  You can always send me in the order form and a check and I’ll place the order for you. I get points for every order to the buy books for the classroom.

Remember to sign and return your child’s reflection.

Have a great week!

 

Weekly News January 3-6, 2017

Your thoughtfulness is truly amazing. Thank you for the generous gift this holiday. I am very appreciative to work with Spring Street students and their families. I hope you had a wonderful break.

I didn’t send the Spring Street Folder home tonight.

Homework: The math packet and reading log are due on Friday. Please return it in your Yellow Reading Log/Math Homework Folder. Please make sure you sign your child’s reading log. Look for the new Writing Homework for the month of January. Let me know if you have any questions. Please help your child work on it a little bit each week.  Monday homework is optional this week.

I kept the writing homework. We are doing an activity at school with them. The boys and girls did a great job. Thanks for your support that you provided at home.

Language Arts: We will write a personal narrative story about something that happened over our winter break. We will continue to work on finding the main idea as we read an article about animals.

Mathematics: We will continue our work on multiplication. We will focus on multiplying by 5s and 10s. We will investigate what makes numbers even and odd.

Social Studies: We will finish working on our map books and study the map of North America.

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