Week ending 12/9/16

Hi Families!
Only 2 more weeks left before the holiday break!  I'm sure everyone is looking forward to it!
This has been a busy week and we've been involved in finishing up our Social Studies unit and beginning our reading unit of determining what's really important when we read.

Important Information:

• Don't forget to start sending in the warm clothes and perhaps extra pants and socks for when we get out during lunch, and sometimes snack, in case they get wet.  
• We will continue to be in school through December 23rd.  If you're child will be out, please let us know.  Thanks in advance. 
• The Heritage Bears look fantastic!  I can't wait to start hearing about each child's bear next week as they start to share with the class.  
• Please visit this sign up to help us collect materials for a winter project we'll be working on before vacation.
• Link: http://www.signupgenius.com/go/10c0a4ea8a928a20-2ndgrade

3, 2, 1 things you should know...

3 non-fiction reading skills we've been working on this week are determining what's important versus interesting, paraphrasing important information into our own words, and identifying what we've learned, still question, and think were "WOW!" parts of the text when reading.  * Ask your child, when they're reading with you, if they still have any questions.  Asking questions after we read is a great strategy to help readers retain what they've read, think beyond the text that's right in front of them, and to help them predict what will happen next.

2 math addition strategies we've been working with in this unit are adding 10 on an open number line and splitting numbers.  * Ask your child to add 34+57 = ?  Encourage them to solve it by splitting numbers and ask them to explain how they solved it.  Explaining their thought process and steps, helps to solidify their learning of this skill.

1 new thing we started today was "Stump Mr. DeKing'!  We call and ask him a question based on what we've been learning this week and see if he can answer it.  We like to challenge him!  

Today we asked him "What does the landform "plains" look like?  *Ask you child that questions or better yet, have them ask you! ;)