Friday, September 18th

 Friday, September 18, 2020

Hello Parents!!

We did it!! Now we can say we survived our first FIVE day week learning virtual!! Wow have we come a long way in three weeks… it’s pretty amazing how tech savvy our kids are going to be when our virtual learning concludes! I am just SO proud of them! They are resilient and we are DOING this!

This week we tried a lot of new firsts and had a lot of great success stories to share... Seesaw, Literacy Footprints, Scholastic News and more! Thank you to all of the parents who attended our first ever, “Virtual Curriculum Night” this past week. Our FAPEs (fine arts and physical education) teachers will be leading their own Curriculum Night this coming week on Tuesday, September 22nd in the evening. Mr. Drewno will be communicating with parents on the times/links for these informative sessions.

Supply Pick Up

We will be having a “Second Grade Supply Pick Up” next week in front of Dublin. Please plan to stop by Dublin on Thursday, September 24th between 4:30 and 6pm to pick up a plethora of supplies for your children to use at home with their online learning. We are also asking for a $7 one time donation per child to help cover the cost of our Scholastic News subscription. The kids this year will have access to hard copies of the magazines we will distribute as well as a digital access. These are awesome and educational to follow along with our Social Studies curriculum as well as other important things for second graders to learn about happening around them! Please plan to turn in a clearly labeled envelope with: your child’s first and last name on the front as well as their teacher’s last name. Please include $7 in cash in the envelope. Thank you for your support with this great subscription!

Phonics

In Phonics this week we dug deeper with bloopers in our spelling! We took time to look at sample writing bloopers and notice when the wrong vowel was used to make the “r” sound. We have now looked at words with: ar, er, ir and ur sounds in them. Students have been checking their own writing and items around the house for words with these sounds in them and generating awesome lists for each. In your child’s writing folder they will get next week there is a page with SNAP words listed for second grade as well as their own word wall on the back of the page. We will be using these pages frequently in phonics instruction moving forward!

Readers’ Workshop

In Readers’ Workshop this week we finished establishing our routines for workshop time and then spent time talking about going on “Reading Adventures!” We took a look at the front cover and table of contents inside new books to make predictions about the story ahead. We then took information from the storyline to predict what might happen next! I have begun doing our DRA testing (Developmental Reading Assessment) with several of our kids. This will take some time as we go back to their reading levels from last January and test for growth and progress so we can know exactly what just right books will work best for them! Information about Literacy Footprints will be coming home, a fantastic collection of digital stories our children will also have access to at home that are set to be at their “just-right” reading level and will continually change as we check in on their reading abilities this year!

Writers’ Workshop

Our writers have continued to dig deeper into writing a story about a time they went somewhere, did something or experienced a big feeling! Writing can be tricky for our young writers, especially to get them going. In the writing folders coming home next week we will be making a “Heart of a Writer” page which will help give them inspiration for future writing pieces. Please encourage them to come up with their own writing work and to work on their own to spell words correctly! We have talked this week about where stories should begin and end, how we can revise our writing to make sure it answers the questions of: how, what, where, when and why. Last we talked about how we can break tricky words down to learn how to spell them by looking at each part of the syllable in a word.

Math Workshop

In Math this week we have really been working on counting with numbers!! We have been reviewing counting by 1s, 2s, 5s and 10s. We have created number lines that we can use to help us count, add and subtract.  We have learned how to play “Number Line Squeeze” on Connect Ed to help us practice getting comfortable with number lines! Next we spent time reviewing the values of coins - pennies, nickels and dimes. The kids were asked to begin to gather a coin bag they could use at home to help them count coins in math. This includes: 8 quarters, 12 dimes, 10 nickels and 20 pennies. Please have them keep this handy with their math supplies. Last we took a look at number grids. We talked about the patterns we can find on a hundreds grid and how we can use this to help us count, add and subtract! We practiced writing our own number grids on scroll sheets. Last our students learned how to play “The Number Grid Game” on Connect Ed.

Social Studies

In Social Studies we continued our look into communities by talking all about the different places we can go in a community and all of the community helpers who help make a community a good place to visit and live! We brainstormed a list of community places and people while listening to the story “On the Town” by Judith Caseley. We also spent time this week talking about Constitution Day! We talked about the importance of this document and then brainstormed our own ideas for our classroom constitution (we will call it our Classroom Promise). 

Seesaw Assignment Check-In

Please check in with your child’s Seesaw account this weekend logged in as the student. Many are missing assignments being posted. They need to upload a picture of:

• My First Writers’ Workshop Story

• Known Words list

• Number Scroll page(s)

Please make sure to do this in a timely manner! Thank you!