Week of November 6th-10th

​Hi Families,

Although it was a short week, it was jammed-packed with learning! I’m impressed with how much we did in only 3 days. We kicked off the week with a fun visit from Amanda (Hannah’s mom) who works at Goldfish Swim School. She read a book about Gertrude Ederle, the first woman to swim the English Channel, and answered students’ swim-related questions. Thank you Amanda! We also wished Hannah a happy birthday.

I would like to apologize for my delays in getting back to you if you have emailed me recently. I’ve had some extra demands on my time this past week and haven’t been able to keep up with non-urgent matters. Thank you for your patience as I try to catch up over the weekend. Life as a teacher with little kids is quite a whirlwind!

Important Dates

• Wednesday, November 22nd: Turkey Trot and 11:00am dismissal.
• Thursday and Friday, November 23rd and 24th: No School
• Monday, December 4th: Report Cards mailed out
• Thursday, December 7th: Early Release; Parent Teacher Conferences
• Friday, December 8th: No School, Parent Teacher Conferences

Important Notes

• Food Drive: 2nd grade is collecting Brownie Mix (canned pumpkin, pie shells, evaporated milk) and or Canned Vegetables (e.g., corn, green beans, peas, or carrots) to help families in need.
• Documents to send back to school: Please cut and return the slip of paper letting me know that you reviewed your child’s Fall Progress Check. I would also appreciate it if you could return the Pre-Conference Questionnaire. These documents went home in students’ Home School Folders this past week. Thank you!
• Conferences: I will send out a conference sign up sheet by Friday, November 17th.

Here are some highlights from this week:

Community Building
At our All School Assembly, we honored Veterans Day by celebrating many of the veterans in our school community. It was a very moving ceremony! In our classroom, we worked on showing respect even when using the comfy chairs. We practiced using “self-talk” to keep ourselves calm and focused during learning.

Literacy
We launched our informational reading and writing unit this week. We will be studying Bugs in their Ecosystems. Students took a pre-unit assessment to gauge their skills with informational reading and answering text-dependent questions. We then began building our background knowledge and vocabulary about bugs through whole-class read alouds and independent reading. We also learned about informational text features and how to use them to enhance our understanding of informational texts.

Phonics and Foundational Skills
This week we continued working on reading and spelling multisyllabic words by studying open syllables and compound words. In-class tutors and I worked with small groups of students who need more practice with previously taught phonics concepts to help close learning gaps.
​
Writing
Students took a pre-unit assessment on informational writing to gauge their skills. We then learned about sentence types (statements, questions, exclamations, and commands) and practiced writing them. Being able to write using a variety of sentence types will really enhance students’ informational writing. We also applied our skills with sentence structure using Sentence Scrambles, where students ordered words from mixed up sentences using their understanding of English syntax.

Math
We continued in Unit 2 on Addition and Subtraction within 100. This week we looked at different methods for solving 2-digit addition and subtraction with composing and decomposing a 10. I began administering an assessment to determine each student’s ability to break apart numbers 4-10.

Social Studies
This week we learned a little about how the geography of a community can influence the jobs and activities that take place there. For example, we learned that communities by the ocean are often centered around fishing, boating, and shipping.

​​Thank you for taking the time to read the update! Please reach out with any questions.

---