Hello Parents!
We have had a fun week celebrating what makes Howe a special place and celebrating Care to the Core day activities! We are excited to begin working with our buddy classroom- Mrs. Adams preschool/kindergarten and first grade special education students. Throughout the year we will do activities with them. We wrote them a letter introducing ourselves today and next week they will be visiting us during our snack. We look forward to seeing these students interact and create friendships.
Next week is our last week of the marking period. We will pause on reading groups as I will be finishing up last minute assessments for report cards. Science and benchmark unit 2 will carry over into marking period two but we will finish eureka square module 1 and social studies what is a community unit. We will move on from these units and start new ones!
Quick reminders: students need coats every morning! Yesterday and today it was 45 degrees when we outside and they needed them! I encouraged the students to wear coats but bring sweaters in case they might be needed for lunch recess but they might not be. That way no matter what they will be prepared.
Have a great weekend! 🙂
Dear Parent & Guardians,
Now that cold weather is here, it’s important for students to dress appropriately for the conditions. Students need to wear a winter jacket to school and also bring a hat and gloves when the temperature hits a certain number. When snow is on the ground, students need to bring boots and snow pants. If the temperature is 20 degrees or warmer, students will still be going outside for recess. A copy of our Winter Guidelines for student dress is outlined below.
Winter Guidelines for Outdoor Recess
Students go outside for recess two times a day, even during the winter months. We use the following guidelines to determine when it is safe for students to be outside. To make this determination, we use the “feels like” temperature (wind chill) as reported by the National Weather Service. Please make sure your child is prepared with the necessary outerwear.
TEMPERATURE GUIDELINES:
Clothing
During the months of November through March, students should bring boots every day as there are many areas on the playground that can get quite snowy and/or muddy. Labeling items with your child’s first and last name can help us to return any lost items. We expect that students will wear the following winter gear when heading outside for recess.
CLOTHING RECOMMENDATIONS:
Students who do not wear snow pants and boots will not be able to play in the snow or on the playground.
Students who do not bring boots will still go outdoors, but are expected to stay on the sidewalk.
Thank you for helping to make sure your student is prepared for the Michigan Fall & Winter!
Mrs. Alcodray & Mrs. Fournier
Please choose a time slot and sign up! 🙂
https://www.signupgenius.com/go/70A0B4AA8AE2CAAF58-52178895-fall#
Hello parents! It has been a fabulous and BUSY week in second grade! We have finished up Benchmark Unit 1, worked on Social studies, had a pistons assembly, continued working on our daily scheduling and tweaking our times to help fit everything in, and of course got to play outside in this beautiful weather! Next week we will finish up the social studies unit and swap back to science.
You will not see our writing, spelling, and benchmark work coming home today because I will be looking over and grading it this weekend. Since it was the last week of the unit most of it was modeled but not done together so I can use it for grades. The class did great think through questions, annotating text, and writing responses. They all agreed writing was their least favorite thing at the beginning of the year but they are liking it a little more I hope. It will all come home on Monday for you to look over.
New spelling choice boards and words are coming home in folders today! 🙂
I also gave new books in book bags. Remember we have an expectation of reding for twenty minutes each night. They have leveled books in their bags for this purpose. They can also borrow one of my chapter books in the classroom or use one you have at your home.
In eureka math we are finishing up our place value lessons and working with the straws. If you do not follow our school Instagram page you should! I posted pictures earlier this week of us counting and bundling as we were doing our math lesson. We are moving on to writing numbers in multiple ways.
We will end our Friday with donuts and cider from PTA! They provided this for the membership drive in September. Thanks to the families that joined and Thanks PTA for the treat to end our school week 🙂
Have a great weekend!
*PTA Trunk or Treat – Friday, Oct. 25th at 5:30 pm in the back parking lot.
*Classroom Halloween Activities—Thursday, October 31st
***Please send in the treat or goody bag that will be passed out to friends by Wednesday, October 30th!***
Visit sign up genius below if you are able to donate things that we need for that day!
https://www.signupgenius.com/go/70A0B4AA8AE2CAAF58-52153085-halloween
This week has flown by and we are officially into in October! We celebrated the end of September with our Character Trait Assembly this morning at breakfast. Isa won the second grade award for Responsibility. i had such a tough choice because they have been doing so well! We talked about how to show responsibility at school. This includes planners being signed, folders emptied each night and shown to parents, taking care of things in our classroom, being responsible and taking things to the office for Mrs. Angela and many other things. Isa was surprised this morning. It was so cool to see so many friends cheering for him when I announced him as our winner…. so many great friends and sports in this classroom. In October we will be working on Kindness!
We are still working on benchmark, eureka math and science and will continue the next few weeks before report card grades are due. Thanks to all who turned in the spelling choice board homework today. Your new spelling words and choice boards come home in todays folder for Unit One Week Three today and are due next Friday. All students all got new books in their reading group bags.
Have a great weekend! 🙂
*Spelling Choice Board due TOMORROW!
*PTA Bake Sale Tomorrow at DISMISSAL! All baked goods are $1. It will be in the cafeteria.
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!