Mrs. Ballnik's Second Grade

Classroom News from
Mrs. Ballnik’s Class My email is ballnic@dearbornschools.org
Friday, December 22, 2017
Important Days to Remember
No school -December 25 -January 5
Music Concert – The students did a great job! Thank-you to those that could come. Mrs. Bagnall is a wonderful music teacher!
Math Night -it was great to see those that could make it on Tuesday.
Gym on Tuesday-Please remember to wear tennis shoes and bendable clothes (not jeans or slip on shoes).
Holiday Party- Thank-you if you sent in anything for our holiday party today, before the two week break. VOLUNTEERS for ornament sale. Thank you to Rabih’s mom and Ayah’s mom for coming to help with the ornament sale! We sold ornaments on Tuesday and will give the money to the homeless shelter. The ecology club is sellling on the other days. Every student learned about assembling ornaments, supply and demand and the order that we supply and produce. Then every student had a turn to be at the store and sell the ornaments.

READING LOG -Dr. Moughni is sending home a reading log to be filled out as you read. There are some computer sites on it, also. Please send these back when you return.
FRIDAY SPELLING TESTS
Here are the words for the next spelling test. The spelling pattern is r controlled vowels ar and or..
The spelling words are: part, park, sort, horse, short, start, dark, fort, more, jar. The Dolch words are: very, your, its, around their.
Every Friday there will be a spelling test. Please practice every day with your child so that they will do well on the Friday Spelling test. Corrected tests are sent home on Monday for you to sign and send back to show me that you know the score.
We started to put the 16th word on the spelling test to challenge the students that get the spelling test correct every week. It is just for fun and no one is required to study these extra credit words. They come home in a worksheet each week, that we go over. They are not meant to be second grade level words and we would usually learn to read them and understand them, but not spell them.

MATH MATH MATH MATH MATH
Thank-you for sending in the signed study guide after you helped your child with the Unit 4 concepts. Our Unit 5 will start next year. It will be on Geometry (shapes). Please talk about different 2-D and 3-D shapes over the break, such as, trapezoid and pyramid.
Science
Our unit continues to be Earth Science and covers explorations that help us learn that Earth events can occur quickly (landslides, etc.) or slowly (erosion that carves rivers, canyons, etc.) We are making observations and discussing landforms and bodies of water.

Social Studies- .
We had a test on Unit 2 which is Geography and is called Communities Where we Live. Thank-you for sending in a signed study guide after you went over it with your child.
Our next unit will be on Government and is called “How do Citizens Live Together in a Community?”.

Writing
We continue to write real and imaginative narratives, now. The characters start to have dialogue and more details to them, The plot will have a moral or lesson learned. Characters should be acting and reacting to each other or the event. Ask your child about the character that they have developed and story they are creating.
Write stories over the break for Extra Credit.
Reading- Read, Read, Read!
BOOK BAGS! Please observe how your child does with these books. Every book at level 18 (the level for second grade entry) for example, may not be read easily depending on the words. Please ask your child to write a list of the words that they do not know, so you can work on them.
Please keep them in the bag and count the books, so they do not get lost. I will trade out the books every other week or so. Students should reread books until they are smooth and fluent when reading. Students record on their log when they read.

BOOK IT CALENDARS
Please send in December calendars for a pizza hut coupon.

Happy Birthday to Adam Hassoun on December 14!

Congratulations to Adam for being the star of the week!

Have a great break with your wonderful child!