October 1st-October 5th

ANNOUNCEMENTS AND REMINDERS:

THANK YOU SO MUCH to all of you parents who were able to chaperone on our field trip last week!  Team Blowey has so much fun and learned so much with your by their sides!

Team Blowey has earned their reward for filling their marble jar!  They voted and chose to have a stuffed animal day!  Tomorrow, October 2nd, students will be allowed to bring a small stuffed animal to school.  If you have any questions please let me know!

I will be hosting a Parent Night on October 11th at 5:45!  More information about the Parent Night will be sent home in paper form later this week.  Keep an eye out for it!

Conferences are coming up during the week of October 15th.  I'll be sending home a sign up sheet for conferences in the totes this Thursday!  Remember, it will be first come first serve for time slots so please return those sheets as soon as possible!  Specific information regarding conferences will be on the sign up sheet.

We have been doing a phenomenal job collecting box tops and labels for education!  Keep them coming!

September reading logs are due!  Please send them in ASAP!

Remember your child's boomerang folder (the two-pocket folder) must come to school EVERYDAY!  If you need a replacement boomerang folder, please let me know!

I've had a couple questions about working on IXL at home.  Students may pick and choose to work on any of the skills on IXL.  Here are some of the specifics that we are working on in class:

Math Facts:  L.1, L.2, L.3, L.4, and L.5

Line Plots:  R.4, R. 5

Geometry (later this week): T.1, T. 2, T. 3

Already covered in class, bar graphs and pictographs:  R. 2, R. 3, R.6, R.7

This week in...

Phonics:  We are studying the short and long a sound.  The words we will be practicing with are:  bag, mad, cap, back, ham, cape, bake, made, ate, and rake.  Today we listened for the sounds, spelled them out, and sorted them into their appropriate categories.

Vocabulary:  Our new vocabulary words are safe, flames, tell, forest, and heat.  We will work together to figure out what these words mean, how to use them in a sentence, and build personal connections with them so that we can remember and use our new vocabulary words.  Then, we'll tune into our new interesting words while listening to Firehouse Friendships and A Special Bear.

Comprehension:  We'll be working on summarizing and identifying the main idea and details of a story.  When we summarize, we are retelling a story using the main idea and important details.  We'll practice using these skills in a story called Fighting the Fire.

Grammar:  We'll be talking about the parts of a sentence, the subject and the predicate.  The subject tells who or what the sentence is about and the predicate describes the action.

Writing:  This week, students are challenged to show me three pieces of writing that show me all that they can do.  I'll be using these pieces of writing to make individualized writing goals for each student.  They are also going to be introduced to the writing process through our next project:  Team Blowey in 20 years.  You can only imagine the fun they had envisioning themselves in 20 years!

Daily 5:  Today we introduced our final part of the Daily 5, listen to reading.  Together we created an I-chart to show the responsibilities of students and the teacher during this time.  Throughout the week, we will practice the correct behaviors.  I will also model and teach how to use the resources that we have around the room that allow us to listen to reading.

Here's our I-chart for listen to reading!

CAFE:  We'll introduce another CAFE strategy during our comprehension lesson this week:  summarizing.  We'll  add it under the "C" on our menu.  Here's a picture of our menu now!

All Star of the Week:  This week, I am the All Star of the week!  I'll be sharing pictures, my favorite book,  a letter from my mom, and something special to me.  This will be the model for the rest of the class for what to do during their All Star Week.

Read Aloud:  We are getting into the final stages of Charlotte's Web!  My hope is that we'll be able to complete a fun craft to go along with the story this week!

Social Sciences:  We are putting the finishing touches on our ABC's of the Cumberland Fair book!  

Every week, we read out our popcorn kernels.  Students earn popcorn kernels if they are spotted making the classroom vision come true!  Just last week alone, Team Blowey made our vision come true over 50 times!!

 

Also, last week was our first classroom store experience!  It was great!  We had to make a lot of really hard decisions around spending and saving money.  Team Blowey was also in charge of adding up their purchases and making sure that they handed the store owner (Miss Blowey) the correct amount of money!  Now, we'll have an entire month to save up for when our store opens up again, on the last Friday of this month.  

Every Friday, however, students get to cash their checks.  Their checks reflect how many "B" bucks they have earned in one week.  Our pay period is Friday-Thursday.  Students earn "B" bucks for keeping their tokens, earning a special blue token, giving "WOW" answers, being the first to get to work or being on the rug, or even just doing something out of the kindness of their hearts.    Every week, one student's job is to be the banker.  They must cash Team Blowey's checks and give them the correct amount of money in return.  Here's a look at our bank.

Math:  After a meeting with the other second grade teachers last week, I decided to introduce students to the world of line plots!  So far, we have made lots of graphs together and explained the data it showed us.  I even asked some tricky questions to get our brains thinking a little more!  This week, students will have the chance to collect data to make their own line plot.

Students are also continuing to learn and practice all of the menu options for our math facts.  In the classroom, students have a gumball machine to keep track of which math fact families that have already accomplished.  When students meet a math goal, +1 for example, they get a matching gumball to glue onto their machine.  Their goal is to fill up the entire gumball machine by the end of the year!

Here is the math fact fluency standard unpacked!

Later this week, we'll also begin to unpack our geometry standard:

MA.02.G.01.01  

Recognize and draw shapes having specified attributes, such as a given number of angles, or given number of equal faces.  Identify triangles, quadrilaterals, pentagons, hexagons, and cubes.

Whew!  We are one very busy team!  

Please keep in mind that the things posted on this blog are flexible plans and may change throughout the week depending on the progress Team Blowey.