November 28th-December 2nd!

Welcome back Team Blowey Parents!

I hope you all enjoyed a wonderful, relaxing, and fun-filled vacation!  I was thankful to be able to spend some time with my family for Thanksgiving and eat lots of delicious food!  It was a great time for creating more happy memories together.  Of course, we had the normal family bickering but what would Thanksgiving be without that!

I did, however, re-injure my knee at school on the Friday before break.  It was rather upsetting after I was feeling so great!  Luckily (I guess)  I already had a doctors appointment set up for after school.  I did the same thing again.  I dislocated my kneecap but not as severe as the first time.  I will have to continue wearing a knee brace for the next month and do some physical therapy.  Hopefully it heals completely after that!  If not, surgery might be needed.  Yikes!  Fingers and toes crossed that a brace, physical therapy, and some rest will make it heal!

This week in:

Literacy:  

Our cafe time menu choices got a slight makeover over vacation so that students had a few more really specific choices to help them meet their goals for comprehension, accuracy, and fluency.  Our trial run today seemed to go pretty smoothly!  I'm hoping these new menu choices will help engage students but also give them a more specific focus during cafe time.  Our major categories now spell the word "FACE" and help us to build our reading skills.  They are:  fluency, accuracy, comprehension, and expanding vocabulary.  Throughout the week, we will have mini lessons to help model some of our new menu choices and hopefully help students become more comfortable with them.  

Our phonics lessons will revolve around introducing the long /i/ sound with i, igh, ie, and y. 

Our comprehension lessons will be centered on a story called Farfallina and Marcel by Holly Keller.  It is a fantasy story about a goose and a caterpillar.  While we are reading we'll not only be focusing on comprehension but we will also focus on building inferences  and generating questions.  We'll be talking about how generating questions about a story can really help us understand the story better and also how making inferences by using the clues in the story helps us answer those questions.

Our new vocabulary words this week are:  giggled, fluttered, peered, recognized, vanished, and snuggled.  We'll be talking with our elbow buddies about what the words mean and also how to use them in a sentence.  Then, we'll read a story called Leo Grows Up and listen for our new vocabulary words. 

In grammar we will be possessive nouns and how to use apostrophes when we write. 

In writing, we are still working on publishing our pieces on how to blow a bubble.  Some students, have chosen to take a different route with their "how-to" stories and have picked a different topic.  Soon, their writing pieces will be on display with an art project to go along with it!  I'm so excited to see how they turn out!  Team Blowey has been putting a lot of time and effort into these pieces and practicing so many writing skills, especially those transition words!

Math:  

We are still working extremely hard primarily on our math facts and on place value.  

Team Blowey is really spread out in our place value goals and our menu time is an excellent time for students to focus on specific parts of place value.  Right now, students are working on knowing how to read and write three digit numbers in words, with numbers, and in expanded form.  They also need to know what number is in the hundreds, tens, and ones place.  Additionally students are working on knowing how many bundles of 100s, 10s, and 1s can be found within a 3 digit number.  Finally, students need to know how to compare two three digit numbers using < = and >.  (Later, we'll be adding the topic of skip counting.)

Every morning, students have the chance to work on their own specific goals.  Many choose to focus on their math facts which is great!  I encourage you to work with your child even more at home to help them learn their facts in a snap!  Remember, in a snap means to know the fact in less than 3 seconds. By now, many students have great strategies to figure out addition and subtraction facts.  However, our goal in second grade is to know the facts fluently.

This week, we also bumped our practice with analog and digital clocks by finding out what time we do specific things in our schedule like lunch for example.  Students have been practicing how to right the digital and analog time for any activity we participate in.  

We've also been continuing our work with Team Blowey's piggy bank.  At every morning meeting, we have the chance to add up money to find out how much money we have added to our "piggy bank".

Science:

Soon we will be planting our very own plants and watching them as they go through their life cycles.  We'll be observing and recording what we see and what we find.  

Before break, students did a great job recording what they found when they conducted their experiment with food coloring, celery, and water.  There was a lot of descriptive writing and a lot of beautiful drawings!

Homework:

Homework packets will look the same as they did last week.  Students came to school today, earned points for the practice they have put in so far, and then chose the activities that they wanted to help them meet their goals.  If you have any questions, please let me know!

Our Parent Night is still TBD.  More information will come your way as soon as things have been set!

Announcements:

Team Blowey is VERY close to earning two very special rewards!  

If we earn a BINGO we will be getting a class fish!  If you and your family would like to donate any supplies for a beta fish, just send a little note my way so I know what to expect.

We are also close to filling the marble jar!  If we fill the jar, we will be making our very own team jerseys!  Once we are little closer, I'll send home some more detailed information for you.

Reminder:  The Winter Concert is coming up soon!  It will be on December 5th, at 6:30 and the Middle School.  I can feel the excitement building already!

As always, if you have any questions, observations, or feedback please let me know!

I hope you all have a joyous week!