First Newsletter 🤓

Hello Families! 

I apologize for the double blog post today! We have had a such a fun few weeks back to school. It's been so fun getting to know new friends and beginning our life as second graders here at SMS. Although these weeks have mostly focused on community building and getting to know one another, we have been very busy with academics as well! Please remember that Tuesday, September 11th is picture day! 

Math

We have been learning how to play some fun math games- all revolving around fact practice! These games will be in our math activity bins throughout the year to access during math centers when we need to practice our math facts! We also practiced moving around our classroom during math time in centers. At each center we complete a different task related to that day's learned skill. We are ready to dive into Unit 1 of our math curriculum Monday morning! 

Word Work 

We will be focusing on vowel work for the beginning of the school year. We will start with short vowels and then make our way to long vowels. The second grade team has recognized the importance of reviewing this work before diving into weekly word sorts. Students will also start working with the second grade sight word list during the beginning of our word work time!

Reading

This week we practiced treating our library and books well, picking our independent reading spots and modeling what a good reader looks like! We focused on what we were doing as a reader in the classroom and if we were helping to create a distraction free reading zone for our classroom family. We are so ready to start working on our reading habits and choosing just right books to keep in our book bins! We have some exciting lessons in reading coming up!

Writing

We've been "free writing" to get back into the swing of writing. This class already LOVES to write! We had short stories, instructional writing, personal narratives, and poems during our free write time this week! We will be focusing on stretching words, handwriting, punctuation, and writing personal narratives in our first writing unit launching Monday!

Science

Our science time has been inquiry based for the start of the year. We have been collaborating with kindergarten buddies and another second grade class to come up with student interests and questions we would like to investigate. Although most of our work has focused on community building with these learners, we have created some pretty cool creations as a large group and broken up into small groups. Together we have created chalk murals, constructed our tallest and longest structures, and put together neighborhoods and dinosaur jungles. The students have lead the way with these interests and their building has been very impressive! Deciding on one topic can be challenging between 60 students but we have come up with some great strategies and loved how this work is going so far! 

Upcoming events:

Picture Day-- September 11th.

Johnny Appleseed Day-- September 26th (Students will rotate between second grade classes for a fun apple activity! Please provide one apple for your child on this day. More info to come!)