Second Grade Update

Dear Second Grade Families, 

I hope you are all safe and well. 🙂 

Report Cards – These were sent home on Friday. All students have made progress in the core areas of reading and math this past trimester. Daily practice plays a huge part in this. Please encourage your child to continue good practice habits each week. 

During trimester three, we will be reinforcing key reading comprehension skills for both fiction and nonfiction. Mastery of addition and subtraction math facts through 20 is also extremely important at this point in the year. If your child has not quite mastered their facts, I recommend they do a session of Xtra Math at least four times a week (this takes about five minutes and is well worth their time).

Alameda Food Bank Drive – As we continue our drive to support the Alameda Food Bank, some more of our second graders shared reasons to help during the Wednesday SLC video! Go second grade – AGAIN! If you didn’t have a chance to see it, it’s worth the watch! Here is the link (our second graders come on at minute 2:39). 🙂

PLEASE donate what you can to our drive. Money is preferred (cash or check to SPN), but food is welcome, too! I would like 100% participation from our second grade class because we need to lead the school by example. 🙂 Please send donations in with your child this week.

Below is our weekly update:

Focus Areas for Our Learning:

• Reading – We will finish our SUPER magazine this week. Students will practice making connections with nonfiction texts, understanding vocabulary, and reading fluently (accuracy, pace, and expression).
• Grammar/Spelling – In Superkids, students will practice with conjunctions (and, but, or) and practice adding -ing and -ed to base words.
• Writing – Students will start practicing letters of the alphabet in cursive. We will also revisit the main parts of a well-organized paragraph.
• Math –Students continue to practice subtraction with regrouping and skip-counting forward and backward by 10s and 100s within 1,000.
• Religion – Students continue to learn about the different parts of the Mass with a focus on the Liturgy of the Word.
• Science – The class will continue our unit on plant adaptations by exploring what plants need to grow.
• Social Studies – We will start our new unit about the U.S. Government and connect why communities need government. We will also continue celebrating Women’s History month with read-alouds and discussion about women who have contributed to positive changes in our world.

Other Updates for this Week:

• Art Docent – At 1pm on Monday, students will join our Art Docents on Zoom. They should have the following:
  • Yellow painted wood panels (sent home)
  • Pencil
  • Eraser
  • Scratch piece of paper
  • Parent (or older sibling, if available)
• Stations of the Cross – Instead of afternoon prayer on the schedule, students will watch two stations of the cross. These are posted on Clever (under Religion), and each station is only 1-2 minutes. These reflections remind us not only of Jesus’ sacrifice, but also of the needs in our world today and how our faith calls us to serve others.
• Dates to remember:
  • April 1st: Holy Thursday and Cesar Chavez Day, No School
  • April 2nd: Good Friday, No School
  • April 5th-9th: Easter Break
  • April 12th: Return to School

Key Documents/Links (master file attached – please print):

• Schedule – 
  • Monday – All students should get on Zoom at 1pm for Art Docent.
• Weekly Assignment Matrix
• Become a Writing Superstar worksheet – If your child needs additional paper, I have included a template.
• Glory Be prayer worksheet – Students will work to memorize this prayer over the next week.
• Subtraction with Regrouping worksheets – I included both 2-digit and 3-digit subtraction. Your child should choose the version that feels right for them. They do not need to do both – only one.

We look forward to seeing all of our students on Monday!

All the best,
Catherine