Dear Families,
Welcome to our classroom blog! I greatly enjoyed getting to know your child last week. I look forward to a wonderful year in 2nd grade.
Every week there will be a new class blog. Please read the class blog with your child. Reading the class blog with your child counts towards your child’s nightly reading time. This week’s homework includes nightly reading and nightly math sprint practice. For the nightly reading, I am asking your child to read to an adult for 20 minutes a night. During this time, I’m requesting your child practice our classroom reading strategies. This week’s homework will have information on the reading comprehension strategies of check for understanding and back up a reread it. Thank you for looking over the strategy sheets with your child.
Students will also be asked to practice their weekly math sprints. Math sprints help your students build math fact fluency, which will be instrumental when we introduce two and three digit addition and subtraction in the winter. Math sprints are introduced to the children on Monday. During this time, students have a chance to practice solving math problems in a short period of time. Student scores are kept confidential and students set a reasonable goal for improvement on their Friday math sprint. Please note, the practice of math sprints is not to focus on “how many we get,” but rather, “how can we improve with a week of practice and of study.” During the week, we will engage in a series of number talks where we will solve problems highlighted on the math sprints. This gives your child and an opportunity to learn new strategies for solving the problems from their peers. At night, I am asking your child to practice his/her sprints for three minutes in a quiet area. He/she can score the sprints using the answer key in their homework packet. On Friday we retake the math sprint and celebrate our fact fluency improvement.
Thank you to the parents who submitted their volunteer forms. I will have the tentative parent volunteer schedule at the parent volunteer meeting this Thursday, September 1st from 3:00-3:30. If you are unable to make the meeting, I will email you the information and schedule. I look forward to meeting then.
In this week's reading folder you will find a Scholastic book order. Ordering books from Scholastic is a great way to find high interest affordable books for your child while earning points for our classroom. I use the points to purchase new books for our classroom library. This week's book order is due on Friday. If interested you can hand in the form to me with cash/check or you can order online at https://clubs.scholastic.com/ with the order code NGD4M.
Important Dates:
9/1/16-Parent Volunteer Meeting. 3:00-3:30 outside the 2nd grade classroom.
9/5/16-No School for Labor Day
9/21/16-6:30 p.m. Back to School Night (Parents Only)
Week in Review
Starting next week, this portion of the weekly class blog will be written by two students (the class assistants for the week).
Reading:
This past week we began our reading workshop. During reading workshop, we will be working in small groups, in partnerships, and on our own to improve our reading and spelling. The first step in building a reading workshop is developing independent reading stamina with an activity called Read to Self. This week students received their book boxes, collected books from our classroom library, and practiced focused reading. We made it to five minutes of reading stamina and our on our way to 20 minutes of Read to Self stamina needed to implement the full reading workshop.
Math:
Writing: