Weekly update for 10/17

Hi Families,
We had another great week! Even though it was only 4 days, it felt longer, especially since we were so productive. Students are getting the hang of routines and expectations, I'm getting the hang of our curriculum, and we're all learning a lot. 

This week I sent home a Fall Progress Check packet which included 2 recent assessments of student progress (one math, one phonics), a progress sheet with feedback on how your child is doing, and a sample of student work from the past 2 months. Please cut, fill out, and return the bottom of the progress sheet to confirm that you received and reviewed the packet. If you have any questions, concerns, or feedback, please reach out.

Important Dates this Week:

• Monday 10/17: Special Guest: Chris Baptist (Violet's mom) a sleep consultant will be teaching the 2nd grade about important sleep facts and habits.
• Friday 10/21: PTO Monster Mash! 3:30-5:30 PM. See the Starburst (linked below) for more info.

Weekly Barrows Newsletter
​Here is the link to the latest Starburst from Principal Gallegos loaded with useful school-wide info and updates

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Above: Students playing math games to practice their fluency with adding and subtracting within 10 and 20.

Here's what's been going on in our grade 2 classroom:

Literacy 
Last week I administered another reading assessment to check in on students' reading progress. While I read with each student, the rest of the class did a great job practicing independent reading, word skills (with our Word Ladder packets), and oral fluency (through "partner reading" our decodable story of the week).

This week I'm looking forward to getting back to our usual Literacy block by reading aloud some great stories about solving problems, persevering, and being kind. We will engage in thoughtful class discussion and then write responses to the readings using our two writing protocols, "Because, But, So," and "Sentence Expansion." I will also have small groups meet with me to work on whatever skill they need, such as applying phonics patterns to decodable texts, reading with fluency, or analyzing a text for its deeper meaning.

Writing
In writing last week we began writing stories about our own experiences: personal narratives. Students learned how to create a story plan and then add words to the plan. From there, we began turning our plans into sentences. I modeled how to draft and revise using a short story about a time I saw a really cool bug in my backyard.

This week we will attempt to take one or more stories through the writing process (plan, draft, revise, edit, publish), with the goal of sharing our published stories with the class. I hope to teach students that writers always try to improve their writing with clear, vivid descriptions and interesting, specific vocabulary.

Phonics
Phonics has been going well! Students are learning the sometimes tricky rules of English very well! Last week we reviewed spelling with bonus letters (ff, ll, and ss in words like puff, pull, and mess). Ask your child if they know the "Bonus Letter Rule". We also learned about the sound made by the spelling "all" as in "ball" and "stall." We also learned an exception to this spelling/sound correspondence with the word "shall."  

This week we will review sound/spellings that have "an," "am," in them. The nasal /n/ and /m/ sounds change the vowel sound. We'll also review more glued sounds: "-ng" and "-nk," such as "sing" and "song," and "sank" and "sink." Plus lots more!

Math
In Math last week students took a mini assessment to check in on their understanding of concepts so far. We practiced our fluency in adding and subtracting within 10 and 20 with two days of math games (see photos above). This week we will look at diagrams to compare quantities that include an unknown quantity (the beginnings of algebra!). Students will learn to use tape diagrams, a simple mathematical visualization, to help make sense of the relationship between two quantities and between addition and subtraction.

Science
Last week in Science we learned about scientists, different types of scientists (botanists, marine biologists, geologist, etc), and the scientific method. We then started our unit about Weathering, Erosion, and Our Changing Planet. We looked at images of landscapes affected by erosion (without giving away what had happened) and shared what we noticed and wondered. The weathering and erosion experiment will be happening this week, in which we will investigate how wind and water change the land. Students will get science notebooks to made a hypothesis, record observations, analyze results, and draw a conclusion.

Any scientists or engineers in our parent community interested in a classroom visit to share about your field? Please let me know!

Thank you for reading! Please reach out with any questions or feedback. Have a great week!