Newsletter 12/23/15

It was a magical day in 2D. We started with a full hour of Reader's Workshop and then enjoyed snacks and gingerbread house decorating with families and friends. Thank you for all of your generosity this holiday season and for the thoughtful gifts. I am so lucky to be teaching this wonderful group of amazing people! Enjoy your winter break!

Dragonfly News

We raised $125.26 for the Make A Wish foundation! The students were so into this and it really taught us how great it feels to give and make a difference. Thank you for your help and support with this! 2D was able to attend a "Broadway like" performance in the SMS cafeteria on Tuesday morning. The staff presented The Christmas Butterfly. There are some backstage photos mixed in with this week's photos for your enjoyment! See you next year!

Newsletter 12/18/15

Thank you to everyone who helped make our Make A Wish Day possible by sending in talent gear or coming in to support and watch! It was a very exciting time for the Dragonflies and we appreciate all of your support! I was so proud of everyone for sharing their talents and interests for such a great cause! We will be counting our donations and cards on Monday!

Reading

We have really stepped it up in reading this week. We are noticing trends in the series books we are reading. We have gotten to know our characters so well that we can now make predictions! Many of us have been right in our predictions and it is so fun to keep reading and find the answer!

Writing

We have talked about each part of a lab report in more depth this week. Next week we will continue to experiment based off of the questions we came up with from our last experiment. We talked about how scientists don't always get one right answer. Sometimes they leave an experiment with MORE questions! We are still working on our States of Matter Unit. 

Word Work

I am so glad we took an extra week to review our sort words. We are truly experts now and I have seen such an improvement in applying the word rule to writing this week! Thank you for taking the time at home with this as well!

Math

We have been working so hard on place value this week and we are ready to move on to measurement! The homework that was sent home was a review of place value. This is a tricky concept for some students. If you have time over the weekend or the winter break please go over this with your child! We will continue working on it in school as well. Also, please keep studying math words, as it is a big part of Unit 4 as well. If you want to review place value at home: 

To write a number in expanded form, it looks like this: 617= 600+ 10+7

To write a number in word form looks like this: six hundred seventeen

The VALUE of the 6 is: 600

The PLACE of the 6 is: hundreds

The VALUE of the 1 is: 10

The PLACE of the 1 is: tens

The VALUE of the 7 is: 7

The PLACE of the 7 is: ones

Have a great weekend!

A HUGE THANK YOU

Thank you so much for donating to The Society of St. Vincent De Paul. It means so much to me that you were so generous to this amazing cause. The Dragonflies were very proud of their contribution and it is a great feeling knowing that 2D has brought joy to others during this holiday season! Thank you again and Happy Holidays!

Make A Wish Day

Hello 2D Families! Tomorrow, Friday December 18th is our Make A Wish Day! We have done such a nice job making cards and contributing small donations for children in need. To celebrate- tomorrow we are having PAJAMA DAY and our "2D's Got Talent" show! The show is just to share our interests with our classroom family. Everyone has a little something planned and the stage is set and ready to go! If you are planning on popping in- the show will be directly after lunch around 12:50 and it will be wrapped up by 1:30 since we have reading buddies with the third grade. I hope you are having a great week!

Newsletter 12/11/15

Hello Families! What a whirl wind this week was! I am so pleased with the hard work that happens daily in our classroom. This is such an exciting time of year but the students are truly working so hard in school and trying their very best! It would be very much appreciated if supplies for gingerbread houses were turned in by Friday the 18th. This way, I can organize them and get them ready for the celebration- but I can also see what we may be missing and get it in time for our event. We will also be having our pajama day and "2D Has Talent" show on Friday the 18th. Please let me know if you have any questions!
Reading
We have been working so hard to get to know the characters in our stories. We have talked about personality traits, physical traits and looked closely at how our characters solve problems. Everyone has done such a great job recording their thinking and finding places in their stories where the character shows emotion, a memorable action, sayings or thoughts.
Math
We have been working on place value! Place value is so important with what is coming up in math. Students will be adding and subtracting with regrouping and understanding place value is crucial. We have been practicing looking at various numbers in the hundreds and thousands- and within them figuring out what each number is worth and what their place value is. The students have been working on writing numbers in word form and expanded form. We have also used base ten blocks to help visualize these numbers and become familiar with the difference between ones, tens, hundreds and thousands. Math vocabulary will be sent home to study this week in place of weekly sight words!
Writing and Science
The students have loved our states of matter and lab report unit. We have been working hard to understand the elements of a lab report and conducting experiments. So far we have tested if a lego would sink or float. The students were looking so closely at the air pockets and made many great predictions. We then tested if an eraser would sink or float. Our latest experiment was all about the question- "Can solids change their shape?" The students found out that with applied force such as heat and pressure, it certainly can! We are now practicing the skill of concluding our lab reports and recording what we have found out and why it has happened.
"Now Watch Me Sort..."
Word sorts continue to become more challenging and the students are working so hard each week on the different activities we do with our sorts. Since the sorts are more complex, we will work with the same words this week. Additional words will be added to the classroom sorts for an extra challenge. Please have students study last week's words at home and practice writing them with their specific rule. When students can apply the rule to their writing, they are truly showing mastery of the rule. This is something we are working on during writing!