Final update for the year!

Hello Families!
I can't believe the school year is so close to being done!  We only have 5 days left after today!
Our last day of school is next Friday, the 20th, with a 12:00 dismissal.
It's been a busy week finishing up our unit on Ghana, practicing our math skills and challenging ourselves with math circle sums, writing poetry about our year and the summer, and having a closing circle each day to leave on a positive note.  We also finished sharing our projects!  They were fabulous and we learned so much!  A huge thank you so much to those that were able  to make it this past Wednesday to our celebration!  The students were so thrilled to share their work with you and share what they're proud of and their strengths. Don't forget…in the bag is the end of the year trick word test and math test.  Please look at these and use them to help your child get even more prepared for next year.
Don't forget to check out "What did we learn this week?" to see our favorite memory of 2nd grade!
As the year comes to a close next week, I want to thank all of you for your support and commitment to your child, me, and the whole class.  I feel very lucky to have had a wonderful group of students this year and I'm amazed at how far they've all come in their own ways!
I wish all of you a wonderful, safe, and happy summer and I look forward to seeing them in the hallways next year!
Thank you again!
Megan DeKing

Weekly Update 6/6/14

It's June!  I'm sure your child is very excited!  I know I am!  Did you get a chance to go to Springfest?  I took my daughter and she had a great time!  It's nice to see our families outside of school time.  I love this time of year…it's great to be finishing up units, work on some other activities that allow us to have some more fun and socially interact more, see their progress since the beginning of the year, and get outside with the better weather!
Here's some important dates to keep in mind…
* If your child hasn't brought in their projects yet, please do so on Monday so we have time to share!
* Wednesday is our parent celebration at 2:00.  We hope you can make it!  If you can't, don't worry, I'll still be sending all their work home that day.
* Tuesday, the 17, is Color Day!  It's a great day for fun, good sportsmanship, and lots of laughs!  I'll be sending home more info next week regarding t-shirt color.
* The last day is Friday, June 20.  Dismissal is at 12:00!

This week, we've been finishing up a lot of activities and started a few new ones!  In reading, we continue to work on poetry and noticing poetry features.  I've also completed the end of year assessments and they all improved so much!  We will keep working on poetry and also focus on some end of the year and summer books.  In writing workshop, we've been writing poetry such as list poems, place poems, haiku, cinquain, and a poem when two voices read.  It's been great to see their creativity come out!  We'll continue writing poems as well as start reflecting on the whole year.  We've also been taking a trick word test based on the trick words we've worked on through Fundations this year.  The test will go home in their bags on Wednesday.  Please look for it and practice any words missed over the summer so they are more prepared for next year.  In math, we've been reviewing all our units we've covered, including clocks, telling time, interpreting graphs, adding and subtracting, and problem solving.  We also took the unit 12 test and the end of the year test.  This will also go home and can give you an idea of somethings to practice this summer so your child doesn't lose anything learned.  In science, we let our butterflies go last week and it was awesome to see them fly away!  We now have a Cabbage White butterfly and hopefully will have one more soon.  We've made charts and diagrams of the butterfly and plant life cycle.  In social studies, we started working on Ghana by focusing on it's location and the parts of the flag.  We also had a great time before library!  We Skyped with our pen pals in New York!  It was a bit fuzzy and all but the kids loved it nonetheless!

I hope everyone has a nice weekend!
Megan