Week ending 9/12/14

Hello families!  We've had a great first week!  We continue to take time to get to know each other, learn classroom routines and expectations, and start working on our academic skills.
Important information you need to know:

• Open House for parents is on Tuesday starting at 6:00 with meeting with the PTO followed by our principal and vice principal, then meet with classroom teachers in K-2 (GRADE 2 will be in the music room near the auditorium to start, then we will come back to our room for a few minutes to do an activity for your child), followed by 3-5.  I have added the important documents typically given out to my website, under the Open House tab.  Also added there is 2nd grade classroom policies and common language informationPlease see them there as they will not go home.  
• Our specials each week are: 
• Monday is library - bring your books back
• Tuesday is PE - remember your sneakers
• Wednesday is PE and music - remember your sneakers
• Friday is art - wear clothes that can become artsy
• If you haven't added yourself to my blog updates, please do on the blog page under "Follow me by email".  Thanks!

What's been happening in room 250?

We've worked a lot this week on coming together as a community.  We've written our hopes and dreams for the school year and they've been placed on the bulletin board so we can see them all year.   The class brainstormed classroom rules and each one of us signed them to be recognize we all agree to try our best to follow them.  I've also introduced our "rest stop" area.  This is a calming station in our room where students may go if I ask them to sit there after repeated redirection or they may choose to go when they're feeling sad, tired, frustrated, or upset.  Ask you child what they can do in rest stop and strategies for getting themselves ready to get back on task.

In literacy, we've started talking about why we choose different books (by genre, author, topic, etc.), the places we love to read, types/genres of books, and expectations of reading workshop.  We've also been building our reading stamina by reading to ourselves and charting the number of minutes we are a all reading.  The most we've read is 35 minutes!  We've talked about how reading is reading the words and "reading" the pictures.  This helps the students feel successful no matter where they are in their reading journey.  Next week, we'll talk more about how to choose a book that's just right for them.  

In math, we've worked on number scrolls, math boxes, coins, dollars, and telling time.  Much of unit 1 is practice to be sure we're all ready to continue on after the summer.  Next week, we'll be working in groups and with partners to practice our money  and addition skills and review temperature.

During writing workshop, we've been writing about our summers and next week we'll start talking about tiny seed stories to start our narrative writing unit.

Hope to see you all at Open House!  Enjoy the weekend!

:)