No school Tuesday Nov. 7 due to it being Election Day.

Parent/Teacher conferences begin this Thursday. If you don’t remember the day or time you are signed up for, please email me and I’ll get back to you.

This week’s spelling words focus on the long I sound: try, cry, pie, tie, wild. The Dolch words: my, fly, by, why, write

Our focus in reading and writing continues to be informational/non fiction. This focus’s on facts and finding the correct information in the text we are reading.

Math will begin lessons on telling time on a “regular wall clock” not digital to the nearest 5 minutes. Any help at home with clocks of those types will help your child immensely. I know many of us rely on digital clocks but beginning learners need to understand why it’s 10:20 for example–20 minutes after 10. AM–morning, PM–after 12:00 noon.

Maps will be studied in social studies and Earth science will be our new topic for science. Both water and landforms will be studied so that ties in very nicely with maps.

Enjoy your week and I look forward to seeing all of you at conferences either this week or next.

What a fun day we had! 🙂  Thank you so much to everyone who sent candy in for today’s party. The children enjoyed our day very much and so did I!!

Have fun if you go out tonight and stay safe. I’m looking forward to hearing all about it tomorrow 🙂

Conference Notes came home today. Please check that the day and time listed works for you, sign and return. Please, please check the box if a translator is needed. I need to schedule someone to be here with me during those conferences. We cannot use family as a translator–it needs to be an employee of Dearborn Public Schools.

Tomorrow is Halloween and the school parade will begin at 2:00. Weather depends on if it will be held outside or inside. Our classroom party will follow. Any treats send in should be individually wrapped.

1/2 day Friday. School lets out at 11:45. No lunch served.

Library books if at home, should be returned to school by Wednesday.

Spelling words this week focus on the long a sound spelled either — ay or –ai. Sail, main, jay, stay, may, (3 more that I’ll write tomorrow) The Dolch words are: come, said,

Math begins a new unit and focus’ on 3 main things: identifying and counting coins, telling time on a analog (clock with hands) clock, and reading and writing numbers using base 10 blocks.

Both our writing and reading strategies will focus on non-fiction text.

Social Studies will begin a unit on map reading skills and Science continues with properties of matter.

Stay warm this week!

I hope everyone enjoyed this beautiful weekend 🙂  Jackets will now need to be worn to school from what the weatherman says.

Today is Picture Day 🙂 All money or checks need to be in the envelope sent home. 

The PTA Pumpkin Patch will be this Friday. Money can still be sent in if you haven’t done so already.

A note is coming home today about Halloween costumes. The party will be at the end of the day Halloween, Oct. 31 after the school wide parade. Wrapped candy, treats or healthy treats are welcome.

This week’s Spelling words focus on s clusters–slide, skin, skip, step, spell. Dolch words are: best, came, you, new, help

We are learning about onomatopoeia as our reading skill this week. Those are words an author uses to describe sounds, ex. crash, bang, whizz.  We’ll be reading some poems and looking for sound words in our stories.

We’re finishing up our opinion writing and will be bringing home our best for now, finished writing for you to read and respond to. Look for that Wednesday or Thursday. 🙂

We’re also finishing up our first social studies unit about communities.

Math will finish up with reviewing open number lines and missing addends before our computation and unit test later in the week.

Science continues with properties of matter and this week we’re exploring changes and phases of matter. This can be done by observing water both frozen and melted but we’ll be observing candy melting instead 🙂  Much for fun before Halloween!

Enjoy the week!

Good morning!

Late Start tomorrow, Wednesday. School begins at 9:35. Morning bus pick up will be 1 hour later than the usual time.

Social Studies Family Night is this Thursday 5:00-6:30. Many fun activities are planned so I hope to see you there!

Unexpected day off yesterday but we are back to our usual schedule today 🙂

Book Orders and money are due today. I will order the items online and they should be here next week. PTA pumpkin patch money also due today–$4.00

Our spelling words this week focus on the sound of the vowel u: cut, cute, tube, jump, cub. The Dolch words are: pull, just, must, they, soon

We are continuing our reading strategy of sequencing events using a realistic fiction story and understanding how the main character responds to a major event in their life.

We are also continuing our opinion writing unit and our topic is what we like to do/play outside. The students choose their activity and this week they will write their reasons why.

Math this week will focus on more strategies to help students learn their basic facts to 20-both addition and subtraction.

We’re finishing up our social studies unit about communities with the topic “what we like about our community”. Look for a homework sheet coming today 🙂

Library books are due Wednesday because we have book check out Thursday morning.

Enjoy your week!!

Good morning!

We are continuing to settle into a nice routine and welcomed a new student, Abdul, Friday. A note will be coming home today regarding socks needed for a science activity. Please ask your child about it. We will be doing the rock painting activity this Wednesday afternoon. If your child has not brought in a rock, please have one in by then. Please remember 1/2 day this Friday. No lunch will be served at school.

Our spelling words this week focus on the letter o sounds: fox, pop, lock, cone, poke. The Dolch words: open, old, cold, those, stop

We will begin a new writing unit–opinion writing. Students always like this genre. One way you can support them in this area is to always ask the question “why?” do they like or not like something such as a food choice, game, etc. Students really need to be thinking about their reasons why.

Math this week will focus on using doubles the help with adding and subtracting. Using doubles +1 strategy then get into even and odd numbers review.

One of our reading strategies this week will be discussing how a main character responds to a major event.

We continue to discuss and compare/contrast different types of communities, urban/suburban/rural.

I hope everyone enjoyed the beautiful weekend!

This week’s Spelling words focus on the sound of i, long and short. did, fix, trick, fine, hike. The Dolch words: find, like, live, five, little

The students are settling in very well to our Daily 5 routine. We have been doing Read to Self, Work on Writing, Word Work, Read to Someone and will begin Listen to Reading this week. I am still assessing some students with their reading levels and will begin meeting this week with everyone in their strategy groups.

Our reading strategy this week is Summarizing a Plot for a realistic fiction story. We’ll also be reading the illustrations to help us understand the story better, and writing the Beginning–Middle–End summary together.

We’ll continue this week with writing a personal narrative this week.

Math will begin our unit of addition and subtraction strategies that does not focus on using our fingers 😉 though I know this is very common at this age and so I try to diminish the use of fingers as the year goes on.

Social Studies will continue with our study of communities and the similarities and differences between rural/small town–suburb–urban/big cities

We’ll continuing our study of the properties of Matter in Science by making hats that can protect us from the sun using everyday objects such as a paper bag, paper plate, string, and aluminum foil. It’s always fun to see what each student creates!

Enjoy the week 🙂

I hope everyone had a nice weekend and enjoyed the beautiful weather!

This week’s Spelling words focus on the “a” sound, long and short. cap, cape, back, bake, ate. Dolch words: make, black, can, cane, pick (an exception word this week)

We are continuing our learning about writing personal narratives–a true story about me that is memorable.

In Science we are learning about Matter and the properties used to describe objects. We are going to do an activity that involves creating something based on the properties.

Social Studies continues or study of communities and we will learn about small town, rural and urban areas in addition to natural and human characteristics that make up each.

For Math this week, we are continuing our review of reading and writing numbers within 100, using the symbols < > = to compare 2 numbers and build numbers using base 10 blocks.

Enjoy your week!

Good morning 🙂   I enjoyed meeting those who came to Open House. If you did not come and would like to sign up for a conference time, please email me at herrodl@dearbornschools.org and I will let you know what times are still available. Otherwise, I’ll just assign a time and day to you.

NWEA testing for Second grade is this week. Our class will be testing part of Tuesday morning and part of Thursday morning. Please make sure your children get a good night’s sleep and eat breakfast.

Our spelling words this week focus on the short e and o sounds: went, jet, dog, job, rub. The Dolch reading words are: yes, not, but, put, jump

Our reading strategy this week will focus on asking and answering questions about a text. Readers are always asking questions about who, what, where, when, why, and how as they read. They then answer those questions using the book (text).

We are continuing our personal narrative writing this week. We wrote our opening sentence last week and today will write our first action.

Math this week will review reading and writing numbers using base 10 blocks.

Properties of Matter is the focus of our Science unit this semester. Mystery Bags will be coming home with directions for filling. The students always enjoy this activity.

Why do people live in communities? To get their basic needs met (food, clothing, shelter) will be the topic for Social Studies.

Whew! Lots of learning going on for week 3 🙂

Enjoy your week.

Good morning and welcome to our first full week of school 🙂 Open House is this Thursday from 6:00-7:30. I look forward to meeting all of you!

We will have Spelling tests each Friday. The students will write them a few at a time, daily in their Planner. Please ask to see it. Here is the list of this week’s words: has, sat, am, can, ran, will, fix, him, his, did. 5 of the words will follow a spelling pattern, this week it is short a and short i. 5 words are sight words that will help the students with their accuracy for writing and reading. I also do 5 Mystery Words that are given the day of the test that follow the weekly pattern. For example, if the students can spell “fix”, they can spell “mix”. I guide them through this but I encourage practice at home.

We are continuing building our stamina for reading to ourselves and writing during our Daily 5 rounds. We are discussing the elements of a narrative story this week: character, setting, as well as plot–beginning,middle, end.

Math this week will begin with number pattern counts within 1000. The focus is by 1, 5, 10.

Social Studies is learning about what makes a community–the people and places.

Homework will be coming home this week Monday-Wednesday.

Enjoy the sunshine 🙂