Second Grade Update

Dear Second Grade Families,

I hope you are enjoying the weekend and finding ways to stay cool! We have a special guest for our morning meeting tomorrow – Ms. Andie from the Alameda Free Library has responded to the kids’ letters and is excited to join us! Yay! She is always a treat. 🙂

Focus Areas for Our Learning:

• Reading – We will begin Book Clubs. As always, we will be practicing fluent reading with a focus on decoding, speed, accuracy, and expression.
• Grammar/Spelling – In Superkids, students will review common long-vowel pair spelling patterns as well as short-vowel and long-vowel patterns with CVC, CV, and CVCe words.
• Writing – Students will practice sharing their feedback on others’ work. They will focus on one classmate’s personal narrative (assigned below) and use the blog commenting guidelines to develop a thoughtful comment.

• Math – We will reinforce our understanding of place value as well as strategies for using skip-counting and a number line to support addition of larger numbers.
• Religion – As October is the month of the rosary, students will learn about the Rosary as a prayer. Next week, we will incorporate the mysteries.
• Social Studies – Students will explore what artifacts are and how they help us learn about and understand history and the lives of the people who have come before us.
• Science – This week, students will focus on learning about the different types of landforms.

Updates for This Week:

• Birthdays! – 
  • This week, we have two birthdays: Christine (10/21) and Maxx (10/22). 
  • With each birthday, we will start our day with a blessing and a bit of fun, and end with a special wrap-up padlet where classmates are invited to share birthday wishes, greetings, photos of special times, songs, etc. Students can be as creative as they want – this will be our virtual class card! 🙂
• Reading Groups – 
  • Teacher Switch – This week, we will start book clubs, which will last the next few weeks. Groups will switch teachers (you will notice this in yellow on the schedule). 
  • Materials – Students received their materials at the materials pick-up last week (book, book talk journal, and practice pages packet). They should bring all of these things to reading groups each time we meet.
  • Assignments – During groups, we will often review assignments from the previous group time, so children should stay current with their reading group assignments so that they can actively participate. Once book clubs are done, I will collect the Book Talk Journal and Practice Page packet.
• Seesaw Blog – 
  • Seesaw has a blog functionality that I have now turned on. It is private, and only we can see students’ work. The purpose of using the blog feature is so that I can tag specific work, and all classmates will be able to see it, easily. I will not tag all assignments, and students should not tag their own work (at this point, at least ). The blog will be meant for specific assignments (like the personal narrative writing, which students will be commenting on this week) or “wow” work (work that demonstrates exceptional effort or creativity).
• Star of the Week – Your child received an “All About Me” poster in the materials pick-up last week. Please have them just put this in their bin for now. We will start Star of the Week in a couple weeks and your child will have a week’s notice to complete the poster once they are chosen.
• Personal Narrative Writing – I am so pleased with the effort your children put into this assignment. Fantastic! Please have them save all these pages in their purple folder. When we return to school (based on the current plan), I would love to hang these up for display! 🙂
• Thursday’s Science – Just a heads up – the Plum’s Island Explorer site works best on Chrome or Firefox. There is also an app that can be downloaded for free, if necessary.
• Dates to remember:
  • October 21: Noon dismissal – Teacher work day
  • October 30: Noon dismissal – Halloween Wave Parade (11:30-12:00)

Key Documents/Links (master file also attached for printing):

• Schedule – Please notice that reading groups switch teachers this week. This is to give students the opportunity to work with both Mrs. Serles and me and to keep things fresh for them. Also, Wednesday is a noon dismissal day, so I have made the afternoon assignments optional. I encourage students to still do these activities if they are home and available.
• Weekly Assignment Matrix – As usual, it is important to review this with your child. All assignments should be completed by Friday end-of-day. If something comes up, please reach out to let me know.
• Guidelines for Blog Commenting – Students will be learning how to comment on and share feedback about each other’s work. This is a useful framework. Written commenting is a form of writing, and students will need to use full sentences, etc.
• What is an Artifact worksheet – This sheet is for Social Studies on Friday, and students will glue it into their Science/Social Studies Notebook.
• Skip-Counting By 2s worksheet – This sheet is for the Math Interactive Notebook assignment on Wednesday.
• Setting worksheet – This sheet is for the Reading Interactive Notebook assignment on Wednesday.

Wishing you a wonderful week ahead!
All the best,
Catherine