January 30-February 3

ANNOUNCEMENTS AND REMINDERS:

Please send in a plain white t-shirt for your child ASAP if you have not already done so.  Team Blowey is really eager to make our team jerseys but we need the supplies in order to do it!

This Friday is our "Glow in the Dark" party.  Students are allowed to bring in a flashlight if they would like.  We will be listening to some night time tunes with the lights down low.  We'll even have a special glow in the dark surprise!  Let me know if you have any questions.

Homework packets go home on Mondays and they return the following Monday.  That is when I will collect your child's work and count up the homework points that they have earned.  The more the practice at home the more points they will earn!  50 points gets them a prize from the prize box!  Even better than that, student's who practice more at home will meet their goals faster in the classroom!

Tomorrow is the last day in January which means that January reading logs will be due this week!  Students should be reading a minimum of 20 minutes every night!  Students will be recognized by the school for every 300 minutes that they read!

For homework, students should be practicing their spelling words at least once a week, reading for 20 minutes every night (Monday-Sunday!), and practicing their math goals at least once or twice.  

This week in...

Phonics:  We will be working more with r-controlled vowels.  Specifically, we will be working on er, ir, and ur.  To help us, we will be using the following words:  clerk, herd, sir, churn, hurt, term, skirt, stir, burst, and turn.  We will be reading, saying, spelling, and sorting each of these words into their appropriate category. 

Vocabulary:  Our new vocabulary words are:  wider, saddest, balance, deserted, freezes, and imagine.  We will use our elbow buddies to talk about what the words mean, how to use them in a sentence, and also build a connection with each of these words.  Throughout the week, we will be hunting for these words in everything we read!  The first story we will use to help us hunt for our vocabulary words is called Bill Helps Geese Survive by Anthony Estes.  This story will also help us to identify comparative words (words that compare two things and might end with -er) and superlative words (words that compare three or more things and might end in -est). 

Reading:  We are continuing to practice how to generate questions while we read.  By generating questions and then inferring what the answer to those questions might be, we will be better able to understand what is happening in a story.  We'll also be working on identifying cause and effect.  The cause being why something happened, and the effect being what actually happened.  To do this, we will be reading Goose's Story by Cari Best and illustrated by Holly Meade.  

Grammar:  We will be working with helping verbs this week.  A helping verb helps another verb show an action.  Have, has, is, are am, was, and were are all examples of helping verbs.  Together we will work to complete sentences that use these helping verbs in the correct way.

Writing:  We are working hard to finish up our persuasive letters!  Some of us have moved on to writing a rough draft and have our peers edit them for us.  These are sure to be some very convincing letters!

Math:  This week we are start to close our money unit.  We will be reviewing some strategies to help us solve word problems and also reviewing how to use $ and ¢ appropriately since these seem to be the two areas where we could use some improvement.  

We are also going to be spending a little bit of time reviewing how to tell time to the nearest five minutes, understanding and using a.m. and p.m. and also some strategies to help us add and subtract time.

Science:  Some of our flowers have started to bloom!  We will definitely start to have some exciting entries in our science journals this week.  Hopefully we will get a few minutes to share some of our most exciting journal entries and observations.  Then we will be able to compare and contrast each of the plants in room 10.

Other news:

We had a blast with our book buddies today!  Each little/big buddy group was given a book to read with each other.  Once they were finished reading the book, they were given a challenge.  They were to come up with a 30 second commercial to sell the book!  We had so many talented actors in room 10 today!  We saw books with great lessons, books with fun rhyming words, books with silly stories, and so much more!  All of these commercials made me really want to go book shopping!

I hope you all have a joyous week!

January 23rd-January 27th

Apologies for the late blog update!  Better late than never!

ANNOUNCEMENTS AND REMINDERS:

Students earned a BINGO!  Their reward is a glow in the dark party.  A lime green reminder will go home with the students tomorrow (Thursday).  It will be on Friday, February 3rd.

Calling all t-shirts!  Some students still need to bring in a white t-shirt to make our team jerseys.  Once all students have brought in a t-shirt, we will be able to make them.  (Special thanks to parents who have sent in extras and supplies!  It is a HUGE help!)

Book buddies will be happening next week, Monday, January 30th.  It is an early release day.  Our big buddies will be coming to Russell School for a fun "persuasive" activity as well as some buddy reading!  We are definitely very excited to see our buddies again!

This week in...

Reading:  We will be reading a photo essay called Splish! Splash! Animal Baths.  Together we will work to generate questions while we read.  Asking questions is a great way to help us understand what we are reading!  We will also be talking about what it means to compare and contrast.  Using the animals in the book, we will work on comparing and contrasting the ways that different animals bathe themselves.  

Vocabulary:  Our vocabulary words this week are:  itches, puddles, preen, beasts, handy, and nibble.  We worked together to talk about what the words mean and also how to use them in a sentence.  A huge part of our vocabulary time is also working with our elbow buddies and making connections with each of the words.  The greater connection a student has with something, the more they will be able to retain it and use it!

Phonics:  This week focuses on r-controlled vowels such as /ar/ and /or/.  Together we practiced words like:  part, start, park, farm, dark sort, storm, short, for, and horse.  We then sorted these words into the two groups:  /ar/ and /or/.  We also worked to use these sounds to build new words such as car, star, or fork.

Grammar:  We will be doing an activity together about capitalizing proper nouns.  For example, the name of a day, month, or holiday should begin with a capital letter.

Writing:  We are working on a really fun project at the moment!  We are writing persuasive letters.  Some students chose to write to their parents, some chose to write to me, and some chose something entirely different.  Examples of letters:  getting tickets to a Celtics game, getting a puppy, being allowed to stay up later at night. 

Here is the fun letter Team Blowey worked together to write.  We chose to write to Mr. Joseph and tell him that the second graders should really be in charge at Russell School.  Enjoy!

Dear Mr. Joseph,

We think second graders should be in charge.  We have very convincing information that will blow your mind!  Here are the top three reasons why this is the best idea you’ve ever heard!

First, if you put second graders in charge you won’t have to work so much.  If you don’t have to work so much, you’ll have more time to spend with your family and your friends.   You might even be able to go on a vacation with them.  You could even go to Las Vegas!  There are some really cool attractions there that your family will love!

Second, if you put kids in charge you won’t have to deal with punishing kids anymore.  We think you might need a break from it.  We know how much you do not like to punish kids so we will do it for you.  When kids don’t show green or blue behavior there needs to be consequences.  When kids need consequences, we will take away their recess and call their parents.

Third, second graders are very responsible students.  We have shown this to you because we do not drop our lunch trays in the cafeteria.  We know how to be quiet in the hallway.  We know to how to act here at Russell School.  The second graders are role models and can teach the other students what to do. 

We think that second graders can be in charge because you can count on us!

Sincerely,

Team Blowey

Math:  We have been working hard at meeting our money standard!  We are still counting money in our Team Blowey piggy bank at morning meeting as well as talking about different strategies for counting money (including using skip counting and place value).  We have also been playing math games to help us add money together and also how to use $ and ¢ appropriately.  If that wasn't enough, we've also been hard at work trying to solve some money word problems!  We've been talking about pulling out the powerful facts in a word problem that will help us solve it.  It's pretty tricky, but we've really been working hard!

Science:  Students are continuing to document the change to their brassica plants in their plant journals.  We've seen some pretty exciting changes with some of the leaves lately!  We've also seen that sometimes in nature, not everything has the chance to grow.  We'll be having some conversations very soon about all of our observations and how they might be similar or different when compared to the observations of our teammates.

Read Aloud:  We began an all new read aloud book this week.  It happens to be my FAVORITE children's book, Sideways Stories from Wayside School.  When we finish this wacky book, we'll have a wacky writing project to go along with it!  That's all I will say for now!  I don't want to ruin any surprises.  

Other News...

In order to help some students with proper playground behavior, Mrs. Sylvester and I decided to get our classes together for a special lesson.  Tomorrow (Thursday)  we will be talking to students about what recess should look like.  We will also be incorporating some of our panther paws!  When we've have finished the mini lesson with students, they will have a chance to practice what they learned when we have a shared recess at the end of the day.  Students who are caught being successful will earn panther paws!

This ties in perfectly with the read aloud book we just finished.  In The Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Estes, there is a girl who is very rude and teases the main character, Wanda.  However, there is another character in the book who doesn't say anything at all.  She's not mean to Wanda but she also doesn't tell her friend that what she is doing is wrong and she doesn't tell a grown up either.  Team Blowey had a lot of conversations about how not doing anything at all is just as bad as being the person who is saying hurtful things.  When you let someone bully others, you are just as much as a bully yourself.  Together we talked about what to do if you were put in that situation and how the characters should have handled themselves differently.  We also talked about what might have happened in the book if the characters had made good choices for themselves instead.  Hopefully the lesson with Mrs. Sylvester's class will really solidify some of the things we learned from The Hundred Dresses but also gives a chance to really show what great teammates we can be!

I hope you all have a fabulous week!

January 17th-January19th

 

REMINDERS:

NO SCHOOL on Friday, January 20th!  

Every member of Team Blowey needs to bring in a white t-shirt for their team jerseys.  So far we have only had 3 teammates bring them in!  Send in a plain white t-shirt for your child at any time!  Once everyone has brought in their shirts, we can start to decorate!

Send in pictures of your child doing their favorite wintertime activities!  We love adding them to our Team Blowey News bulletin board.  If it is easier for you, you can email the picture to me and I can print it here at school.  

Some students still need to bring in an expo marker and an old (but CLEAN!) sock to use as an eraser.  Please send them with your child (if you have not already done so) ASAP!

Announcements:

Starting this week, students who are in the yellow flower pot at any point throughout the day will be taking their yellow reflection sheet home to be signed.  It must be signed and brought in the following day.  If not, the student will lose 5 minutes of their earned time.  Students will still be given the chance to change their behavior back to "green" behavior.  If students are able to do so, I will note that at the top of the reflection sheet.

***Previously students who were able to earn their way back up to green by the end of the day did not have to take home any reflection sheets.  Lately, however, we have had too many students taking advantage of this.  My hope is that this new rule will help students reflect even more on their behavior so that they may turn it around the next day and stay in green or blue the entire day.

This week in:

Reading:  We will be continuing our work with visualizing and talking about why it is so important to visualize what is happening  in a story based on description, dialogue, and illustrations.  We will also work to identify the cause and effect in a story.  We will do these things while we read the fantasy story Click, Clack, Moo:  Cows that Type. 

Phonics:  We are working with words that have these initial triple consonant blends:  scr-, spr-, and str-.  We will study the following words to help us with this:  screen, scream, scrape, stripe, struck, strict, sprain, spring, spruce, and strap.  We have already worked together to organize all of these words into the three groups (scr-, spr-, and str-).  Throughout the week we will working on building and blending words with these blends.

Vocabulary:  Our new vocabulary words are:  sincerely, impatient, furious, demand, emergency, and snoop.  We talked with our elbow buddies about what each of the words mean and how to use them in a sentence.  We then listened to a story called Iggy Pig Saves the Day and put our finger on our nose when we heard a vocabulary word.

Writing:  We will be introducing the idea of persuasive writing.  Together we will talk about what it means to persuade someone and how to do it.  Then, we will write a persuasive letter as a class about a topic that we have yet to vote on.  When the letter is finished, students will be challenged to write a persuasive letter themselves!  (This will be a great introduction to the fun activity that we will be doing with our book buddies soon!)

Math:  We are continuing to focus on our money standard.  We have been looking very closing at the penny, nickel, and dime and brainstorming their distinguishing features.  Tomorrow, we will finish up with the quarter.  We have also been working hard at becoming familiar with our menu choices and how they can help us meet our money goals.  

Here are the pieces that make up our standard:

1.  I can identify a penny, nickel, dime, quarter, and dollar.  I can tell you the value of each.

2.  I can add coins and dollars together by using what I know about skip counting and place value.

3.  I can tell you what $ and ¢ means and label money with those symbols.

4.  I can solve word problems involving coins and dollars and label them with symbols.

Students must be able to do each of these parts correctly and consistently in order to meet the standard.

Later this week, we will be exploring different ways to count money as well as different ways to make different amounts of money (i.e. using 25 pennies or 5 nickels to make 25 ¢). 

Science:  Our Brassica plants are growing!  It is very exciting to see how they can change from day to day.  We have been very busy little scientists and writing our observations twice a week.  As scientists, Team Blowey has been challenged to draw an accurate picture of their plant and also write detailed observations.  Our observations have proven to be a little bit of a challenge for us!  Sometimes it's hard to think like a scientist and write about ONLY what we see instead of what we hope will happen next or about how beautiful our plant is.   As scientists, we have to be very literal and detailed about what we see happening in the cups.  However, it will be very exciting to see what happens next with our Brassica plants!

I hope you all have a wonderful week!

Correction!

Oops!  I looked at the wrong notes.  Ignore the vocabulary notes in the previous post.  Here is what it should have read instead:

This week's vocabulary words are:  effort, mood, perform, proud, remember, students.  We will be talking about what these words mean and also how to use them in a sentence.  We will be searching for them in a story called A Little Symphony.  

Happy Monday!

January 9th-13th

HUGE apologies!

I'm am so sorry I haven't had the chance to update the blog recently.  My schedule with physical therapy has been so chaotic lately.  Hopefully my knee will be strong enough soon and then I can get back into a more regular routine.  The last update on my knee was positive so fingers crossed that it will be fully healed in the very near future!

Announcements:

As mentioned before, Team Blowey filled their marble jar and their reward was to make team jerseys!  Every student will need a plain white t-shirt.  You may send one in for you child at any time.  If you would like to send in supplies (puff paints in navy blue and red or fabric markers in any color)  it would be greatly appreciated!  Once we have the majority of the supplies, I'll send out a note with the exact day that we will be doing the project.  We are definitely very eager beavers for this activity!

The chilly weather has definitely arrived!  Please be sure to send your child in with their winter coat, hat, and mittens everyday!  Winter is much kinder when you are dressed appropriately.  I know from experience.  I grew up in California and then moved to Maine a few years ago.  Winter really isn't that bad... as long as you have the right amount of layers!

Reminders:

Send in pictures of your child doing some of their favorite wintertime activities!  We love adding pictures to our Team Blowey News bulletin board.  It's always fun to see what our teammates are up to outside of room 10.  

If you have not done so already, please send in an old (but CLEAN!) sock and a dry erase marker.  

Next week there will be NO SCHOOL on Monday, January 16th (MLK day!) or on Friday, January 20th (records day).

THIS WEEK IN...

Reading:  

We will be continuing our work with finding the main idea of a story and supporting it with main ideas.  We will also focus on the skill of summarizing something that we have read.  Something new that we will be introducing is the idea of a reading rate.  Basically, Team Blowey and I will be talking about when it is really important to slow down our reading rate to really make sure that we are comprehending what we are reading.  We will practice this with a few pieces of writing that really jam pack a lot of details into a short space. 

Phonics:  

We will be talking about the consonant digraphs /th/, /ch/, /sh/,  and /wh/.  We will be practicing how to build and blend words with these digraphs but also how to read and spell words with these digraphs. 

Vocabulary:  

Our vocabulary words this week are:  ancient, hopeful, unable, confirm, valid.  With our elbow buddies we'll be talking about what these words mean and also how to use them in a sentence.  We'll be searching for these words in A Very Old Fish and Boy Finds Fossils! 

Grammar:  

We will be reviewing past tense verbs.  Together we will review the rules for adding endings onto words that end with one consonant or words that end with -e. 

Writing:  

We recently reviewed our routine for how to practice our writing goals.  We talked about why we practice our writing, what materials we need, where we can practice, and we also brainstormed ideas that we could write about.  We will continue to practice the routine so that it is truly fresh in all our minds!

Math:  

We have unpacked our money and time standards.

Time:  Tell and write time from analog and digital clocks to the nearest five minutes using a.m. and p.m.  

Money:  Solve word problems involving dollar bills, quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies.  Use $ and ¢ appropriately.

Together, we put on our investigator faces and solved the mysterious words hiding within these standards!  Now we know exactly what is expected to be able to pass the standard.  

We have had some time to go over some of our menu options for when we have goal time.  Once we have had the chance to practice all of these menu options, the students will be able to choose which activity they want to practice during their goal time.  This allows for goal time to be differentiated and for students to move at their own pace.

Science:  

Last Friday, we were able to plant all of our brassica seeds (thank you, Mrs. Lefebvre!) and begin our observations.  For the next six weeks, we will observe these plants through their entire life cycle and make observations twice a week.  Students will draw and write exactly what they see happening to their plant.  It will definitely be a challenge but we are so excited for it!

I hope you all have a truly wonderful week!

P.S.  I have no idea why some lines are highlighted in white and I can't figure out how to change it!  Just a heads up, the highlighted words are not highlighted for importance.