Mrs. Ballnik's Second Grade

Friday, January 10, 2020 Mrs. Ballnik’s Classroom News     My email is ballnic@dearbornschools.org

Important Dates –

January 14 & 15 – NWEA computer reading tests will be on Tuesday and Wednesday next week,

 Please be sure that students come in the morning on those days and get sleep and eat breakfast.  I bring in a small ½ bagel and juice for those days.

Please make sure that your child has been reading and you are helping them understand main ideas and sounding out words.

 Friday, January 17 -1/2 day – morning only

Wednesday January 22 and Thursday, January 23- NWEA computer math test

Monday, January 20 (Martin Luther King Day) and ½ day on January 21- No school & ½ day of school

To help your child practice for the computer tests, please try prepdog, if you have a computer.  Thank-you if your child has been trying these practice tests, but if you could go over what they miss, it would help them learn more.  Thank-you, if you are doing this.

Math help- Try this Eureka math help and games to make your child a top math student- https://bit.ly/35QeXMc     It is also on my BLOG.    Math concepts are going to be quickly reviewed or introduced (we will go over them in more depth later in the year) in the next week and a half, but they should all be doing their addition and subtraction homework that we have been working on.  They will score higher on the computer tests if they know about these concepts; addition, subtraction, money, time, measurement, shapes, fractions, and understand multiplication and division.  Again, we will get to all of this, but I just mention it for a short week and half, right now.  Please talk about these at home, also.  Use computer sites (see BLOG) to practice, if you have a computer.

SCIENCE – We are learning about bodies of water and landforms (earth science) in our unit.

SPELLING WORDS FOR NEXT WEEK ARE some more consonant digraph words.   Please continue to point out the pattern of the spelling words each week and help your child discover words with these patterns in their reading.  Soon, your child will be pointing these out to you, if they do not already.  A good idea is to get a blank notebook and keep a list.  Send them in for extra credit.

The words will be: chick, shop, when, think, thin, chop, ship, thing, whip, then, with, dish, each, itch, stich.

Social Studies– Our unit is, “Where my community and what is is it like?  Ask your child to name the transportation that they see in their community.  What are the physical/natural characteristics that they see in their community (grass, river, trees, hills…)?  We are learning the positive and negative consequence to an action (such as littering has negative consequences).   We will have a test next week.