Post 10

IMPORTANT DATES:

December 1st from 6:30-8:30: Responsive Home Workshop - The Social and Emotional Learning Department of the Newton Public Schools will be sponsoring Responsive Home Workshops for families to help you create a calm, supportive and encouraging environment at home. This workshop goes hand in hand with the Responsive Classroom work that we are doing in the classroom. I attended the workshop on November 7th and would highly recommend it!  

November 11th: Veteran's Day - NO SCHOOL 

November 17th: Ralph Masiello, a local children's book author and illustrator, will be presenting to the second grade classrooms. Here is his website if you would like to check him out!

November 23rd: 12:00 dismissal (This is one of 2 early release days at noon (not 12:30) during the school year. The other is on the last day of school. There is no extended day or ASCA on these days. Please plan accordingly.)

November 24-25: Thanksgiving Break - NO SCHOOL 

NEW NOTICES:

Tanglewood Marionettes: Today we had a CASC presentation from the Tanglewood Marionettes. They performed The Dragon King. In our discussion after the performance, your children discussed how they were "dumbstruck" by how amazing the performance was and how their bodies felt like they were actually part of the performance. Ask your child about it! 

REMINDERS: 

Homework: Homework will continue to be sent home each Monday, should be completed one day at a time throughout the week (days are written on the bottom of each page) and should be returned on Fridays. On Thursday nights, there is dictation that parents need to help with, as you will dictate sounds, words and sentences and your child will write them. The sheet that you will read and the recording sheet are both in the packet. Here is a link to an article about ways to help your child with homework at home for some tips on how to manage homework at home. 

Wow words: Thank you for your increased participation with this! Many children came in with words to share and our sharing was quite rich! Please continue to make it part of your daily routine. Each Wednesday in our class is Wow Word Wednesday. Our Wednesday morning work is to write and decorate a Wow Word and we need your help with this. During the week, as you are reading and talking with your child, there will be words that are new to him/her. I encourage your children to inquire about these unfamiliar words and I would like you to do the same, as this is one way your child can be in control of his/her own learning. These new vocabulary words are wow words - words that they can teach the class so that we are all increasing our vocabulary! Please help your child to learn what these wow words mean (Here is a link to Merriam Webster for kids - Word Central). If it is helpful to your child to help learn these words, s/he can jot them down on the Wow Word worksheet in our child's folder. If your child encounters many wow words each week, feel free to have him/her write them on the sheet, but they will pick 1 word to teach us each week. Here is a link to the wow word worksheet in case you need a new one.

Home Toys: Please remind your children to leave all home toys, phones, trading cards, etc. at home. They can be a distraction to our learning and are best left at home.

Snack: We have combined our 2 snack times into one that falls in the middle of our morning. During this time, kids are reading and eating. Please try to send snacks that are clean while eating, such as a piece of fruit or a cheese stick. Greasy or crumbly snacks, such as chips or baked goods, can ruin our books. Also, please remind your children that there is no food sharing in school. Thanks! 

CURRICULUM UPDATE:

In reading we: 

• Read The School Mouse by Dick King Smith, Spaghetti in a Hot Dog Bun by Maria Dismondy and Time for Kids about Veteran's Day.
• Continued practicing making connections (text-to-self, text-to-text and text-to-world) to help us comprehend a text. We discussed how meaningful connections can help us make predictions, understand how a character felt or understand why a character did something.  

At home, continue to have books talks with your child. If you have already had your conference, please use the red bookmark or the white sheet about reading that you received for question ideas. Also, as you are reading, "think aloud" to help them notice you using the same strategies that they are learning at school, such as activating prior knowledge about a topic or making connections to a text. Say things like, "This reminds me of the time..." or "This reminds me of the part in The Cricket in Times Square when..." Also, please discuss rich vocabulary that you find in the books you are reading. Have your child record these on their wow word worksheet and see if you can use some of these words in your daily conversations.  

Next week, we will discuss story elements (setting, characters, plot, problem and resolution).  

In Fundations (Word Study) we: 

• Practiced reading and writing words with the closed syllable exceptions and began reviewing vowel teams.   
• Trick words: pretty, done, goes

At home, Please refer to the  Unit 4 family letter to learn how you can support our word study work at home. Also, look though the fundations - word study section on my website. There, you will find all of the first and second grade trick words. If your child needs practice with these words, please practice through activities such as playing bingo, memory or through reviewing them on flashcards. Here is a link to a great website with different sight word games that you might like to try.

Next week, we will begin unit 4, which focuses on the suffixes -s, -es, -ed and -ing. We will learn that -ed may sound like /ed/ as in rented, /d/ as in banged, and /t/ as in fished. We will also learn more vowel teams. 

In writing we: 

• Continued our work on writing small moment stories. We continued playing with our stories to add strong beginnings and more details. We are using Owl Moon by Jane Yolen and The Leaving Morning by Angela Johnson as our guides.  

At home, continue to support your child's use of his/her tiny topic notebook. Here is the bit on tiny topic notebooks from the previous blogs if you need a refresher: We are learning that authors often get their ideas from events that occur in their lives. To help us remember meaningful moments in our lives, we each received a tiny topic notebook. These notebooks will go to and from school in your child's folder and are a place for your child to jot down meaningful moments that s/he may want to turn into a Small Moment story for writing. If you notice a meaningful moment, please note it with your child. You could say something like, "That was such a meaningful moment. That would make a great Small Moment story." and suggest that s/he jot it on the tiny topic notebook.

Next week, we will continue our work on small moment stories.

In math we:

• continued our unit on place value, money and time. 
• Used base-10 blocks to show various 2 and 3 digit numbers.
• Practiced buying items with coins in different ways.
• Practiced reading and writing times to the nearest quarter hour.

At home, continue to work on fact fluency. You can use games, such as Math Facts Basketball on ABCYa.com. They also have games connected to our current unit on money, time and place value. If your child needs practice with these concepts, please check them out. 

In Social Studies we:

• Read Grace For President, Duck For President, and My Teacher For President. With each book, we evaluated whether we thought the candidates would make a good president. We then held a mock election. Grace won!  
• Read If I Were President and each child wrote about what they would do if s/he were president.

At home, discuss the election with your child if they are curious about it. With this election, there has been strong rhetoric that students may pick up at home or in school and may have questions about what it means for their place in the world. If you find it helpful, here is a link to an article that many of the classrooms in our school used to help frame our discussions following the election.

Have a great long weekend!