ANNOUNCEMENTS AND REMINDERS!
Can you believe it's June already!?! School will be over before you know it and our super second graders will be off to Dunn School to be terrific third graders! Whoa... 12 more days!!
FIELD TRIPS GALORE! Woo! We have LOTS of field trips coming up! By now, I have received the permission slip and admission fee from most of you for the Wildlife Park. If you have not done that yet, I need it by tomorrow! Three more permission slips went home with your child today: Weather Presentation at Memorial (6/5), Historical Tour of Gray (6/10), Step Up Day at Dunn (6/14).
June 5th: Weather Presentation at Memorial School. We will be combining the second grade classes from Memorial and Russell School for this very special presentation! Mallory Brooke from Channel 8 will be coming and doing a presentation for us! Be sure to check out the morning show from 4:30-7 on Wednesday morning for their report on their visit to our schools! PLEASE SIGN AND RETURN THE PERMISSION SLIP BY TOMORROW!
June 7th: Wildlife Park trip. As a celebration of our animal study unit, we will be going to the wildlife park to check out some awesome animals! Students and chaperones should have sent in $3.50 each for the admission fee. Also, students will be allowed to bring two extra dollars if they so choose to buy an ice cream or a drink from the snack shack. Please do not send the money ahead of time. Please send it with your child on Friday morning! Students will also need to bring a packed lunch! A paper reminder will also be sent home in totes on Thursday. Remember to dress for rain or shine! We'll be going no matter what the weather brings!
June 10th: Historical Tour of Gray. Some students from GNG middle school will be leading us through a historical tour of Gray. We'll be visiting Mayall Mills, Fire Station, Forest Ranger, State Police, Warden Service, Libby Hill, and the historical society. Please remember to send a bag lunch with your child! We will be eating lunch on this field trip and not at school.
June 14th: Step Up Day! To help ease some of the nerves, we'll be visiting Dunn School. We will have the chance to enjoy some activities with a third grade classroom, have lunch in the cafeteria, and play on the playground! Your child can bring a packed lunch from home or choose to have a school lunch prepared at Dunn School. Please note your choice on your child's permission slip.
As a reminder for all permission slips, please remember to write your child's name on the designated line at the top of the permission slip!
That last homework packet is due tomorrow! Please send it back to school with your child!
This week in...
Phonics: We are working with the "or" sound with these spelling patterns /or/, /ore/, /oar/. Here are our words: board, roar, oar, north, port, fort, store, more, tore, and wore.
Vocabulary: Our new words are: invented, design, products, instrument, powerful, and allowed. We'll figure out what these words mean and develop connections to them. Then, we'll search for them in the short story called Kid Inventors: Then and Now by Kali Capria.
Comprehension: We'll be using a comparison matrix to compare Benjamin Banneker, George Washington Carver, Sarah E. Goode, and Patricia Bath after reading African-American Inventors by Jim Haskins. While reading, we'll find information about what they invented, what their inventions are used for, a little about their childhood, and whether or not they were born free or into slavery. Using the matrix, we'll talk about ways they were alike and ways they were different. COMPLEX THINKING SKILL! WOOHOO!
Writing: This week, we'll be working on our final writing project: personal narratives. A personal narrative is a story that is about a memory or important event in your life. Today, students started brainstorming different memories they had... fun times, angry times, scary times, etc. From there, they chose the memory that they would be most interested in writing about and sharing with others. Then, they created a web of details that they could remember. We really tried to emphasize using their senses. What did you hear? What did you see? What did you taste? What did you smell? What did you feel? Later, they will use their webs to write a rough draft. Then, they will self edit and publish their final draft. Here is what we're looking for in their writing:
1. Student uses adequate details that describe the actions, thoughts, and feelings of an event or sequence of events. (Does your writing give us enough details to make us feel like we're there with you?)
2. Students stays on topic. Their story goes in order and they use appropriate transition words to make writing flow. (Do you use transition words to help your writing make sense and keep your story in order?)
3. Student can spell second grade words correctly. (Do you spell your priority words correctly in your writing? Are most of your words spelled correctly?)
4. Student uses appropriate capitalization and ending punctuation. (Do you have capital and lower case letters where they belong? Do you always capitalize the word "I"? Do all of your sentences have commas in appropriate places and correct ending punctuation?)
Math: We are continuing with our measurement unit. Students have been working with several measurement standards. First, they are learning to estimate the length of something in appropriate units. For example, they can tell if an object is about an inch, a foot, or a yard long. They can also tell is something is about a centimeter or a meter long. Second, students are learning to make numerical estimates as well. For example, they can look at a pencil and estimate that it might be about six inches long. Third, students are selecting and using appropriate tools to measure various items. That means student can decide when it is best to use a ruler, yardstick, meter stick, or measuring tape. Fourth, students can use a tool with both standard and metric units and correctly identify and measure with those units. For example, students can use a ruler with inches and centimeters. If they are asked to measure a pencil with inches and a marker with centimeters, they can correctly choose which side of the ruler to use. And last but not least, students can measure to the nearest unit by following our measuring rules. Those rules are: start at the zero mark, correctly choose a tool and a unit, read a measurement to the nearest inch or centimeter, if you use more than one measuring tool, you make sure they are placed exactly next to each other without overlapping or leaving any gaps.
We've been doing this with a variety of activities. My hope this week is to review our measurement rules and put them to the test in a measurement craftivity (craft activity). Then, we might be able to begin our performance task: Fairy Houses! When we build fairy houses, students will be able to gather supplies from outside, measure them, and then use them to build some fairy houses in the woods.
Social Studies: We are continuing to focus on our leadership qualities. Now that we have had a day to focus on each of our habits, we'll be deciding as a whole group, which leadership quality will be our new goal for each day. Basically, during morning meeting I will give the class a chance to say which leadership quality is the one they think we need to work on the most. Then, we'll spend some time reviewing that quality and be on the lookout for those who show it! Those who do will earn leadership certificates! Please refer to my previous post for more information on the specific qualities we are focusing on. They come from the book Seven Habits of Happy Kids by Sean Covey.
Please let me know if you have any questions, comments, or insights! I hope you all have a wonderful week!
