Wednesday, April 19, 2017

Fun Articles for a Home and School Connection!

Hello 2D Families!
As you know, we have entered our plant unit and the students have come up with some great investigative questions! We have also been looking at digital literacy and using our amazing reading skills when we are on technology! We will be planting and researching as our unit continues but I did come across some fun kid-friendly articles about plants if you would like to explore them with your dragonfly! This connects science and literacy and the students know this is what the college students do, which makes it really cool! These articles could be great conversation starters for you and your dragonfly and a great opportunity to connect to what we are doing in school! You could let them explore these articles on their own by looking at pictures or key words that stick out to them. Or you could closely read together and spark up some great conversations! Here are some of the articles I found and wanted to share! We will be exploring some others in our classroom, as well! 





Here is another article that connects to our fairy tale unit and our work with growth mindset and positive thinking! 


Happy reading, if you choose!



Friday, April 14, 2017

Friday Quick Note

Happy Friday Dragonfly Families! 
I just wanted to inform you that report cards are going home today! Inside your child's Friday folder, you will find their report card. Please sign and return the envelope to school. It was so great meeting with each and every one of you. I can't say enough how lucky I am to teach this fabulous group! Pictures and this week's newsletter will be posted in the near future! Enjoy your weekend! 

Tuesday, April 11, 2017

Quick Note 4/11/17

Hello on this bright and sunny Tuesday! 
I wanted to send out a friendly reminder that tomorrow 4/12/17 is an early release day due to Family/Teacher conferences. Students will be dismissed at 12:50. I hope you are enjoying this nice weather!

Friday, April 7, 2017

Newsletter 7/7/17

Happy Friday!
Thank you to everyone who came to the wax museum! The students had so much fun and it was definitely a success! It was a great way to celebrate our unit and talk about the stories we have been reading so closely. The students were so proud to share the "heart" of their stories. Thank you for all of your help with costumes and making this event so fun for the students! Just a reminder that the variety show is tonight at 6:30. If your child is performing, they should arrive to the music room for 6:15. Next Wednesday is an early release due to more family/teacher conferences. Students will be dismissed at 12:50. I look forward to meeting with you!
Reading
As you know we have been reading fairy tales and looking at them very closely. We have also been exploring folktales and their lessons. This week we talked about the importance of problems in a story and continued to zone in on our study of villains. We also listened to some songs from musicals of our favorite fairy tales to help inspire our own fluency and expression in our reading of these fun tales! We will be starting our next unit of series books clubs, soon!
Writing
We are still working on writing beautiful poetry. We have talked about how poets use honest, precise and powerful words. We have been working on our choice of words for our poems and how quality is more important that quantity. The students have explored with many types of poems so far and we continue to work on the concept of phrasing and line breaks. We will focus on tuning into our five senses to help us write our next series of poems. We learned about compound words this week! We are now finding them all around us, wherever we go! 
Math
This week we entered our new math unit and our focus was on collecting data and graphing it. 
The students learned the importance of correctly collecting data and double checking that it is accurate. The students also learned how to create their own bar graphs. We then used our data to create word problems. Next, we will work on answering word problems that require us to read different types of graphs with all types of data! We will also be working on adding and subtracting with the traditional method. 
Dragonfly News
Our next big class event will be our Author's Tea. We will be inviting you into our classroom to share our writing from throughout the year and recite our favorite poem. We have A LOT of work to share and it shows so much growth. We will have this event in May. The date will be determined in the near future. The second graders will also begin working on the second grade play soon! This year's production is an SMS original! It's all about plants. Friday folders will not be sent home today due to our crazy week with the wax museum. Each and every dragonfly had an amazing week. Have a safe and happy weekend. 

Questions to ask your dragonfly:
What was the best part of the wax museum?
What is a compound word?
Which fairy tale villain is your favorite? 
Why is the problem of the story actually a good thing?!
What type of data did you collect for graphs this week?