Spelling

New spelling words came home on Friday along with their spelling tests from this past week. Yes, the words are more of a challenge this week. These words are vocabulary used in our subject areas throughout the units of the curriculum. Hopefully these extra couple days over the weekend are helping students for that extra practice. 

Move A Thon

Thank you to parents who came and joined us for the Move A Thon! The rain held off and all kids were moving one way or another to get their laps in :) No one gave up and were rewarded with an apple and water in the end. Fun morning! 

6 Minute Fluency

Six Minute Fluency is a program we have started in the classroom for reading. This quickly builds fluency through interactive, peer-to-peer repeated readings of high interest, targeted readability passages. It will help students develop a foundational knowledge of phonetic elements, automatic sight word vocabulary, and the ability to read text fluently. Six Minute Fluency will only use six minutes of our instructional day. Students are paired with a "literacy buddy" reading informational text passages based on social studies and science content. This helps to enhance their background knowledge and content area vocabulary. Paired buddies will be given a new passage every Monday to read for the week. Students are working together with their partners to track one another, help solve errors, and graph results each day to show growth. This is our second day using Six Minute Fluency and the students are doing great! I will be more than happy to have this available to present at parent/teacher conferences or at a separate time if you have more questions or concerns. 

Unit 2 - Shapes, Blocks & Symmetry

Unit 2 is underway! This unit is part of the geometry strand of our Investigations curriculum. It develops students' ideas about 2-D and 3-D shapes and their characteristics and attributes. Students work on how to compose and decompose the shapes in different ways, and how to sort, categorize, name and think about the relationships between them. Students do in-depth work with rectangles and rectangular prisms and also investigate symmetry. They use a variety of tools, including pattern blocks, Geoblocks, and Geoboards. 

Please look for Unit 1 coming home with students (last Friday). Any pages not done can be done as extra practice at home. Let me know if you have any further questions or concerns. Thank you!

MOVE-A-THON

Friday, October 17

RAIN or SHINE

Parents are welcome to come and cheer students on!

9:05-9:35 – Chouinard, Gaudard, McNitt, J.Fehrenbach

9:35-10:05 – VanHammen, Thompson, S.Fehrenbach

10:05-10:35 – Walter, Johnson, McPherson, PreSchool

10:35-11:05 – Maxbauer, Wright, McCain

11:05-11:35 – Kaberle, Kramer

Lowry's Book Fair

This went home with all students yesterday in their communicator. Please take a look. Lowry's will be in the library during all parent/teacher conference times and other times listed on the attached note. 

Homework 10/13-10/17

NEW Spelling Words

Spelling lists came home on Friday! They did come home on their own this time instead of with the homework packets on Monday. Graded spelling tests came home as well. Please make sure new spelling words aren't recycled or lost in the mix. Here is a copy just in case that happens :) I know Friday evenings are busy with everything that comes home and the beginning of the weekend. 

My hope is to give students an extra couple of days to practice their words. Monday the routine homework packets will come home, just without new spelling words. 

Hope everyone had a nice weekend!!

Creating Communities

In Social Studies students were placed in small groups and created their own communities. They incorporated homes, where people work, and where people have fun. They were very strategic when it came to where community pieces were placed. Such as if homes should be close to businesses or where people go to solve problems and what should be next to these places. They really connected with this activity and were fully engaged working as a team, being flexible and using each members ideas. 

Continuing our personal narratives

Students are working hard on their personal narratives and adding more ideas to their tiny topics. Last week students set goals towards their structure and development as authors. We continually discuss our learning goals as writers in second grade as we are expanding stories, adding more detail, and keeping the structure of our work a priority. I have already seen a lot growth and progress in so many students during my conference time with them.