October 24, 2012

It was an exciting day 5 today as we played Flashlight Tag in PE to start off the day!  Later on, we got to hear a story another student has written using the Harris Burdick pictures we are using.  Then we started our own stories based on the pictures of Harris Burdick, a portfolio collection from author Chris Van Allsburg.  This afternoon, Pam Holz, the Washington County Naturalist, came today to talk about stewardship of the land. This was a good tie-in to our unit on Soils.  We began an experiment to see which of the 3 soils we have been studying is the best soil for growing cucumbers:  clay, sand, or humus.

I will throw out that reminder that homework needs to be done nightly, and returned the next day.  If your student doesn't have their homework at school the next day, they will do it at recess.  Building responsibility is SO important!

I hope you have taken advantage of the Allentown math website and the Tumblebooks website I listed in last Friday's note.  I will work on getting those links onto this blogger, but this is a new skill for me, so be patient with me.

We are finishing Unit 3 in math and will be taking the progress check tomorrow.  In this unit we have begun the basics of making change, so that is a skill you can be practicing with your student.  Here is the way I would suggest making change:  1)  get to the closest number that ends with a 5 or 0; 2) get to the closest quarter; 3) get to the dollar; 4) count up to any other dollars. 5) Add up the change.   An example of this would be:  I pay $1 for something that costs 37 cents.  1) Get to the closest number that ends with a 5 or 0- that would be 3 pennies to get me to 40 cents.  2) Get to the closest  quarter, (which is 50 cents) and that would be 10 cents.  3)  Get to the dollar-50 more cents to get to $1.  4) No other dollars to count up to 5) Add up 3 pennies, 10 cents, and 50 cents, and that equals 63 cents.  I hope this will help as you practice.  Take the opportunity to use objects at home and assign them money amounts and practice counting up to $1.  If your student gets good at $1, work up to $5.

Hard to believe that we are in the last full week of October-my how the time and days fly!

No Time Like the Present

Last year my technology goal was to start a blog.  Well, I got the blog started, but didn't stay as current with it as I could have.  Since I have a fresh group of students and we are still in the beginning of the year, there is no time like the present to try it again-so here we go!  Be patient with me as I try to keep up with the blog, as our days at school seem to fly by, and as my children at home grow, the nights seem as fast, by the time we run from activity to activity.  Alright- enough about beginning, now on about 2nd grade!

We have had a great first six weeks in 2A!  We have done our beginning year testing for our core areas of reading and math.  We have worked through the first 2 units in math and created our reading goals for each individual student.  In a nutshell-we are off and running!  Our classroom has gained a new student today named Dustin.  I was proud of how the class took right off getting to know him.  It won't be long and he will be just one of the gang!  I am impressed with how intelligent the class is. We do tend to be quite social, so we are working on remembering to be respectful of the everyone in the classroom so they can hear the teacher and each other.

Tomorrow night is our Curriculum Night-Taco Supper-Fundraiser Book Fair.  Students can bring their purple book vouchers tomorrow night and choose the books they would like to get.  The Wellman Elementary PTO is sponsoring a free will donation walking taco supper.  Mrs. Cayton and I are looking forward to you stopping in the second grade classroom to find out more about second grade curriculum and expectations.  There are 3 sessions that should give you the opportunity to find a time that meets us.  

Well-I will be looking to meet parents tomorrow night-bring me your questions and I will do my best to help with anything you wonder about in second grade!