February 25th - March 1st

ANNOUNCEMENTS AND REMINDERS:

Homework packets are due on Tuesday!  Please send them back to school in your child's boomerang folder!

While there is still snow on the ground, please remember to send your child to school with all of their winter gear!  They'll need their coats, snow pants, snow boots, hats, and mittens!

The end of February is approaching!  Remember to send back their reading log at the end of the month!  They'll be rewarded for all of those minutes they have been reading!

Ms. Thornhill, Mrs. Lupardo, and I are dancing at Dancing with the Staff this year!  Come out and show your support for GNG teachers and schools!  Tickets are $10 and can be picked up at Gray Parks and Rec!  The event will be GNG high school at 6 p.m. on March 9th!  We hope to see you there!

If you have any friends or family members that participated in our Flat Stanley project and have not sent our flat friends back, please give them a gentle reminder to do so soon.  Team Blowey has been anxiously awaiting their return!  We love learning about new places and calculating how many miles we've traveled!

What to practice on IXL: 

I would like for students' IXL practice to be focused on place value, time, and money.  Once students have mastered these goals, they are more than welcome to go back and review some of our previous topics.

Place Value:

I can read and write three digit numbers:  C.3-4

I can tell you what number is in the hundreds, tens, and ones place in a three digit number:  M.1, 2, 4, 5, 9, and 10.

I can tell you how many bundles of 1, 10, and 100 are in a three digit number:  A.5, M.12

I can write a three digit number in expanded form:  M.13

I can compare three digit numbers using <, >, and = correctly:  B.3-7

I can skip county by 5s, 10s, and 100s:  A.1-3, A.12

Time: Q. 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10

Money:  P. 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 15

Students should also be practicing their math facts at home!  Since we are just past halfway in the year, students should be close to or working on their subtraction facts by now.  Don't worry if your child isn't there yet!  It just means that they should be practicing a little more at home.  The tricky part about math facts in second grade is that they need to be able to recall the sums and differences from their memory in three seconds or less.  This requires lots and lots of practice!  Although students do get time to practice math facts at school, the more they practice at home, the faster they'll meet their goals here at school!  The best online resource for students to practice their math facts is on mathfactcafe.com.  On that website, students can practice worksheets and flashcards.

Classroom Wishlist:  Highlighters and markers

This week in...

Phonics:  We're working with r-controlled vowels with the spelling patterns /er/, /ir/, and /ur/.  Here are the words we'll be working with:  cleark, term, herd, skirt, sir, stir, churn, burst, hurt, and turn.  We'll say the words, sound them out, and sort them by their spelling patterns.

Vocabulary:  Our new vocabulary words are:  wider, saddest, balance, deserted, freezes, and imagine.  We'll define these words and build connections to them before searching for them in a short story called Bills Helps Geese Survive by Anthony Estes.  

Comprehension:  Our reading strategies that we'll be focusing on this week will be generating questions throughout reading and also identifying cause and effect.  Good readers are always asking questions.  These questions help us connect to the book and make reading meaningful.  When we are identifying the cause and effect in a story, we'll looking for why something happened (cause) and what actually happened (effect).  We can use the connecting word "because" to help us with this.  For example:  I used an umbrella (effect) BECAUSE it was raining (cause).  We'll practice these skills while we read Goose's Story by Cari Best.

Writing:  This week, we'll be working on creating our very own classroom newspaper!  Students will be working with partners to create news articles where they answer the essential questions:  who, what, when, where, why, and how.  They will also create illustrations for their articles.  These pictures and articles will then be assembled into our very own issue of Team Blowey News!  Our newspaper will highlight some of the fun things we've done this year as well as provide information about our team and our classroom.

Grammar:  We'll be working with helping verbs such as have and has.  Helping verbs help other verbs to show an action.  We use has when the subject is singular and have when the subject is plural or I or you.  For example:  My sister HAS learned a lot about insects.  Or,  those cows HAVE eaten a lot today.

Dr. Seuss Day:  Dr. Seuss day is usually celebrated on his birthday, March 2nd.  However, since the second is a Saturday this year, we'll be doing a couple activities during the week to celebrate such a fun and wonderful author!  Our first project will with his book Oh, the Thinks You Can Think! This is a great book that inspires creativity.  One of my favorite lines says, "Think right and think left and think low and think high.  Oh, the thinks you can think up if you only try!"  Students will be challenged to come up with any creative picture they see in their mind and describe it to their audience!  The second project comes from my all-time favorite children's book Oh, the Places You'll Go!  After reading the story, Team Blowey will be challenged to write about where they see themselves going in life.  Will they become President, will they play in the NBA, will they become a teacher, will they go to science camp, etc.  These writings will then be attached to their very own hot air balloon!

Math:  We'll be finishing up our focus on money for now, however, we'll be revisiting this topic throughout the year.  In order to meet this standard, students need to meet the following checklist:

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

2.  I can add coins up to $1.00.

3.  I can add coins and dollar bills with a sum greater than $1.00.

4.  I can use $ and ¢ appropriately.

5.  I can solve money word problems.

Our whole group lessons this week will focus on adding money and how to solve money word problems.  Small group and individual lessons will be targeted to each student's needs.