Week of October 2nd-6th

​​Hi Families,
What a busy week we had! Students definitely earned their 3 day weekend. They worked hard, showed respect, and persevered through many activities and challenges. We had some special events, such as our first meeting with our buddies! See below for more details.

Important Dates

• Monday, October 9th: No School, Columbus/Indigenous People’s Day
• Wednesday, October 11th: All School Assembly
• Monday, October 16th: Special Guest Mondays featuring Diane D’Angleo (Emma’s mom) who will share a presentation about Gardening.
• Friday, October 20th: PTO Monster Mash (rain date: 10/27).
• Tuesday, October 31st: Fall Party in our classroom! Parent volunteers needed. See below for details.

Important Notes

• Monster Mash Raffle: An email was sent about contributing toward the 2nd grade BARBIE raffle basket. A form also went home about purchasing raffle tickets in advance.
• 2nd Grade T-Shirt Orders: Our color t-shirt in Grade 2 is PURPLE. A form went home in students’ Home/School Folders about ordering a Barrows t-shirt. Orders are due by Friday, October 13th. Show some 2nd grade school spirit!
• Fall Party in Ms. Kimball’s Class: As part of the Barrows 2nd grade tradition, we will have a little party on Halloween day. For a little over an hour in the afternoon, we will take a break from our regularly scheduled academic programming to enjoy some Fall activities and spooky fun! I need parent volunteers to help! If you would like to lead an activity or support an activity, fill out a slot on our Fall Party document. Thank you!

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​Here are some highlights from this week:

Community Building

• We launched our first lesson from our new social/emotional curriculum, “Second Step,” by talking about being respectful;
• We met with our 4th grade buddies from Ms. Hirtle's class (see pictures below);
• Students shared more family photos during Morning Meeting; if you haven’t already, please remember to send in a family photo or email it to me!

Literacy

• Read aloud and discussed complex texts, including “Armando and the Blue Tarp School” and “Separate is Never Equal;”
• Exposure to new vocabulary words, including “trudged,” “foul,” “integrate,” and “injustice;”
• Practiced reading independently and improving our reading stamina and engagement;
• Continued reading aloud “There’s a Boy in the Girl’s Bathroom” by Louis Sachar;
• Administered reading assessments to determine students’ reading levels using the new independent reading level assessment from our new curriculum, ARC Core.

Phonics and Foundational Skills

• Exposure to suffixes -ful and -less, and the prefix -un;
• Exposure to multisyllabic words;
• Practiced reading and spelling words with consonant digraphs: ch, sh, th, ck, wh, ph, and ng;
• Practiced reading and spelling words with -nk;
• Took a spelling test to check phonics skills with consonant digraphs.

Writing

• Continued the stories from short decodable texts to practice applying spelling patterns and sentence construction;
• Learned about “run-on” sentences (which run rampant in many students’ writing) and practiced fixing them;
• Exposure to conjunctions (and, but, so, for, yet).

Math

• Created picture graphs and bar graphs from data tables;
• Asked and answered questions about various picture and bar graphs;
• Continued to work on strategies for solving addition and subtraction problems within 50.

Science

• Learned about engineering and the engineering design process;
• Did an engineering-based activity where students planned, designed, and tested free standing name tags for their desks (see pictures below).

Check out some fun classroom action below!

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