An Amazing Start to the School Year!

Hello Everyone! It was so nice to see all of the parents (and grandparent!) at Curriculum Night on Thursday. Hopefully I answered any questions you might have had about what the children will be learning in second grade this year. Thank you for sitting through all of that information, I know it was a lot! As I mentioned, our first field trip will be a walking trip to the Police Department on October 19! We hope to have a few of you along with us! Thank you in advance to Mrs. Strimling, our room mom, who will help us to coordinate. The children and I have covered a lot of ground in our first 7 days of school together. We spent a lot of time going over and practicing classroom routines and procedures. We learned about the class rules, discipline policy, and homework expectations. The children learned about the different “classroom set-ups” that we will use to arrange our desks based on different activities (working alone, with a buddy, or with a group!) We also went through the building safety checklist. The children practiced where to go in case of an Evacuation drill (formerly known as a fire drill), a Shelter-In –Place drill (formerly known as a Tornado drill), and both Hard and Soft Lock-Downs (formerly known as our “Code Red” and “Code Blue” drills). The children already put this practice to work with our first school-wide fire drill on Friday afternoon. Our class did a really great job staying together and quiet during this time. The children have listened to many of my favorite “back to school” books since our first day including: How I Spent My Summer Vacation, First Day Jitters, The Teacher from the Black Lagoon, Wemberly Worried, Nobody’s Mother is in Second Grade, and A Fine, Fine School. They are starting to see just how much I LOVE to READ! They also had the opportunity to go "book shopping" in the classroom. We talked about what makes a good book choice for us (it should be a book that interests us, we should be able to read the words, and we should be able to understand the content.) The children chose 5 books for their book bags (2 fiction, 2 non fiction, and at least one picture book) and we got to work on building our reading stamina. The children reached 9 minutes and 33 seconds of silent reading without any interruptions! Way to go, Class! We will continue to work to build this stamina next week. We will begin our actual reading curriculum next week. These skills will include spelling, grammar, vocabulary and reading comprehension. The children have begun learning about the "Daily 5," which is what we call the reading centers that the children will be working through while I teach small guided reading groups. We have already worked on "Read to Self" and "Writing" and coming up we will learn about "Listen to Reading" "Read with a Buddy" and "Word Work." We are learning about the expectations that go along with each of these centers! The children took their first spelling test today! They will usually take their spelling pre-test on Mondays, but since we have a short week next week, the children took their first pre-test today. They will take their final test next Friday. They will receive homework activities throughout next week in order to help them to practice their spelling words. The children will be asked to list their new words on the back of their reading log each week. Please encourage your child, however, to keep their spelling list in their red folder. We need to use it to practice at school, too! Our introductory math lessons refreshed our memories on the use of number lines and completing patterns, using a calendar, and telling time. We reviewed the months, as well as the number of days and weeks in a month. The children became familiar with the math tools we have available in the classroom, including dice, shape templates, tape measures, rulers, etc. Coming up next week the children will begin working on their addition facts, ways to properly work with a partner, grouping by tens and exchanging money. The kids and I also decided to log in to our Xtramath.org accounts on the laptops yesterday for the first time. With the help of Mrs. Breaux, we were able to do it. The children learned how to sign in and took their preliminary test. They should be all ready to go if they want to practice at home! Remember you can find their log-in information in your folder from curriculum night. We've begun practicing our addition facts this week in the classroom, so any additional practice at home would be awesome! We have been reading and learning about various landforms this week! The children were exposed to these terms using our Social Studies text book. After brainstorming about each of the landforms during our “Vocabulary Visit” around the classroom, the children went back to their desks and located the glossary in the back of their textbook. We learned that glossaries only contain words that are found in the text we are reading! They practiced identifying our new terms in their glossaries, and transferred the definitions to their landform packets. Illustrating these terms really helped bring them to life! The children will be working on a “Landform Mural,” next week which will allow them to demonstrate their understanding of each term in a visual way. Terms include: River, lake, ocean, plain, desert, mountain, hill, peninsula and island. We will also be practicing the 7 continents! Don't forget, there's no school on Monday due to the Labor Day holiday! I wish you all a nice, long, relaxing weekend! :) Miss O'Sullivan