Second Grade Update

Dear Second Grade Families,

Happy Friday! 

A big thank you to Mrs. Frentzel for a lovely art docent lesson where the kids were able to reflect on their experience at the Alameda Food Bank. Wonderful!

Celebrating Halloween was also great fun! It was awesome to see the kids in their costumes – we have a very creative and fun bunch! 🙂 Even in the midst of exciting activities like the Halloween parade and carnival, your children continued to be hard workers, drafting some wonderful opinion paragraphs about their favorite holiday! Well done! Attached are some pictures for you to enjoy. (Thank you to parents who sent me photos they took as well!)

Below is our weekly update:

Focus Areas for Our Learning Next Week:

• Reading – Students continue book club, with a focus on understanding characters, making inferences, and connecting how the illustrations support their understanding of the text. Fluent reading (reading at an appropriate pace with accuracy and expression) is always a focus for all students. 
• Grammar/Spelling – In Superkids, students will practice decoding or/ôr/ and ar/är/ words. Many students are doing great on Friday spelling tests. Practice at home definitely helps! If your child is having a hard time with these quizzes, please encourage them to practice during the week to prepare. Thank you!
• Writing – Students review their opinion writing drafts with a classmate and work on revising and editing. The focus will be on clarifying ideas, ensuring proper sentence structure, and including correct punctuation. Later in the week, students will illustrate and share their opinion pieces with the class.
• Math –Students will practice measuring objects with non-standard units (unifix cubes). Precision is a focus – lining up the first cube with the beginning of the object and ensuring there are no gaps.
• Religion – We will start our chapter about Jesus, the Son of God. Students learn about the virtue of mercy and understand that God sent his only Son as a sign of his commitment of loving kindness to his people.
• Science – In our new unit, students explore the properties of materials and matter! They describe and classify different types of materials by properties like hardness, flexibility, and absorbency, and they investigate how those properties are useful in meeting basic human needs (such as clothing and cooking). Our first activity will be to construct hats that can keep us cool and protected from the sun.
• Social Studies – The class will start our new unit about our Earth’s land and waters. This week, we will recognize that the U.S. is made up of 50 states, and that each state has its own symbols: a state flag, state bird, state flower, and state tree. We will also start developing map skills.

Other Updates for this Week:

• All Saints Day Prayer Service: Students are invited to celebrate their favorite saint by dressing up as them for our prayer service on Monday, Nov. 1st. If your child would like to do this, please see link for details.
  Star Testing: The second STAR tests are coming up. Our class will complete these the week of Nov. 8th. I will send a reminder next week and provide the exact days so that you can make sure they have a good night’s sleep and hearty breakfast. 🙂
• Dates to remember:
  • Monday, Nov. 1st: All Saints Day Prayer Service (on the yard)
  • Wednesday, Nov. 10th: Noon dismissal, teacher PD
  • Thursday, Nov. 11th: No School – Veterans Day
  • Friday, Nov. 12th: End of the 1st Trimester
  • Nov. 15th-19th: Scholastic Book Fair
  • Tuesday, Nov. 16th – Free Dress for November Birthdays
  • Friday, Nov. 19th: Report Cards
  • Nov. 22nd-26th: Thanksgiving Break

We hope you enjoy the weekend and look forward to seeing our students on Monday!

All the best,
Catherine