What a busy week! We finally began benchmark and our days seem jam packed! As I keep telling the class we are still working out some kinks and I am playing with the schedule to make sure I can fit everything in the best way. We always begin our mornings with ELA and morning Montessori work times. This gives us a nice and peaceful start to each morning. I have them in groups now and their book bags will come home today! These will be switched out each Friday with leveled readers! My goal was by October so I am happy to start a coupe days before hand!

You will see lots of spelling activities they worked on in the mornings and benchmark writing this week. Our benchmark reproducible had short stories that taught us about the emperor penguin habitats and a short read called Postcards by Alex. We did lots of recall and exploring the texts. We examined new vocabulary, circled paragraphs, and picked out important information to make sure we new the key details from the stories. I will note—- some of the pages we changed the directions around a little to make it easier…. they were intimidated by doing these things independently at first but did AMAZING!!! I am SO PROUD of them!!! We will continue to build upon these skills throughout unit one in hopes that as we progress throughout the year they will become more independent with their comprehension and answering questions. That is a big part of the IReady and MSTEP testing.

Lots of questions are coming up about homework!

It begins NOW! 🙂

In todays folder you will see the “Spelling Choice Board”. You have one week to do FOUR ACTIVITIES from the front page. (**** You do NOT have to turn in the papers proving you did them.. you can just do them. I provided copies for this time only as an example. I will NOT be providing them each time. Think of this as your master copy or example. If you want to make copies you can. If you do not— then just have your child use a spiral notebook or plain piece of paper). YOU ONLY TURN IN THE TOP CHOICE BOARD PAPER EACH FRIDAY! Each week you will get a new choice board paper and the week flier with the new word list. Remember I will have all 10 spelling words and 5 high frequency words on the test the following Friday. I give this on Friday because I understand that kids have after school activities and plans. This way if you would like to do an activity or two over the weekend you may. Or if you want to do all six you also have the time. I require four to get full points on the report card grade.

Part two of homework:

READING BOOK BAGS 🙂 Your child should read 20 minutes nightly. They have 3 books at their level in the book bag. They can read to them selves or you. We are working on building our reading stamina as a class but I would love for them to build this at home also. If you would like additional work then some of these books have writing ideas in the back of them. They are a great resource.

I will not be sending home math homework at this time however- Math Iready pathways AND fluency flight on iready are great practice for them!

I hope you all have a great weekend!

I am out tomorrow for a personal day so I am posting the updates today!

First and most important- Coffee with the Director is on Wednesday, September 25th at 8:45 am! Sorry for the miscommunication I did not know it was wrong on my calendar.

This week we have FINISHED Iready and DRA reading level testing! Wahoooo! All of the kids did a great job doing their best. Starting in October book bags will be coming home with leveled books. They have an expectation of reading nightly!

We have had a great time measuring with cm cubes, rulers, meter sticks, arms, and hands! They are getting lots of partner work this week while measuring and its great to see them working in teams.

Benchmark begins on Monday! The spelling list is coming home tomorrow. The focus letter lets you know our theme, essential question, phonics, spelling words, and high frequency words. I will choose all 10 spelling words and 5 high frequency words for the Week 1 Spelling test that will be on Friday, September 27th! We will be practicing those in the classroom during our Montessori ELA worktimes.

For science we continued talking about Bengali Tigers and their habitats. This morning we did a comparison between there habitats and ours. You will see the bubble map coming home in todays folder.

The students will have Ms. D subbing again tomorrow and I hope the earn some stars for our reward jar while I am away!

Have a great weekend!

Please consider supporting our Howe School PTA by enjoying a meal from Royale with Cheese TONIGHT!

The restaurant will donate 15% of the sales to our school if you mention Howe School when ordering between 3:00-10:00 PM on Wednesday, September 18th.

We appreciate your support!

Amal Ayad- PTA President

Iready math is tomorrow morning at 8:30 am! Get a good nights sleep tonight. Eat a good breakfast and be on time for school! A great morning will help us have a calm and peaceful testing environment again.

Coffee with the Director is on Friday at 8:45 am. All are invited!

I had to alter the math lesson today. We forgot place value over the summer. I had the students do it with me because we drew it to find the answers.

Hello Parents!

We have had a great week! All students completed the IReady reading test. They did a great job of trying their best, having a calm and comfortable learning environment, and being positive when some of the questions got hard. I am so proud of them! On Tuesday of next week we will take the IReady math test.

Just a reminder that IReady scores will not go home until conferences in November. We do this as a whole school because it gives us a chance to talk about them together in person.

This week we started Amplify science. We began by going over our Scientist Rules and discussing what we already know about Plants and Animals. Our unit question is: Why aren’t new chalta trees growing in the Bengal Tiger reserve. The unit began with explaining about the tiger reserve in India and showing us how to use handbooks. We will be continuing our investigation and exploring next week.

For Eureka squared math we took our first quiz on Tuesday! The students did awesome at drawing, labeling, and reading graphs. We have moved on to measuring.

I am still assessing for reading levels and so we will have one more week of review before we begin Benchmark Unit 1.

Have a great weekend! 🙂

If you wish to buy popcorn please put the $1 in yellow daily folders.

It will be passed out at dismissal.

We started with computers today!

Each student has a card to help them (one for school and one for home).

Please DO NOT do Iready pathways for reading or math yet. We need to do the assessment first. Your child can play on Raz Kids, Epic, Abcya in the mean time.

Hello Parents! We have had a fabulous four day week! We started Eureka math squared and our morning Montessori work times. The students are doing great learning to work independently. So far we are not using any materials because we are reviewing first grade work. I am finished assessing phonics and need to assess reading levels next week. Once completed I hope to start reading groups and begin sending home book bags with appropriate leveled books.

Today you are getting an extra math book sent home. We are adjusting to the pacing and work load of second grade however the apply math books seem to be a lot of work after we already spent an hour on the lesson. I am sending them home in case you would like any supplemental things. The students can do them if they would like. It is not required. It is just for extra or a reference. We completed Eureka math lesson 1-4 this week.

Our handwriting books have not arrived yet but are on their way. We will have print in the first half of the year and cursive in the second half. Since they are not here yet we started with just some simple pages I already had.

From now on I will be spot checking planners! 🙂 I do not have time each morning to check but I hope you will be able to continue signing each night. I am hoping to only post each Friday with updates. Most will have information in their planners nightly.

We have begun our star jar for class rewards and are up to 6 compliments in the hallway and classroom! When our jar gets full we will have donuts & bagels together for breakfast one morning. 🙂

Just a quick note that not all math will be corrected. I walk around during math and take notes of who is doing it correct and incorrect. That is how I will pull math groups in the afternoons. If you see something incorrect you can also go over it that night with your child.

Request- We have had lots of spills! I bought a paper towel holder and a couple to start us off. If anyone can donate a roll of paper towels we would be grateful!

Have a great weekend! <3

PTA meets today at 2 pm in the cafeteria!

Reminder tomorrow is our first Early Release! The students are dismissed at 1:50 pm.