Week of 6/12/15

We are in the home stretch!  I can't believe how soon school will been ending for our year!  I am so impressed with how far the students have come and I can see where they are headed!

Important things to know…

• Monday is our celebration!  Please join us to see your child's work from the year and a few presentations.  Please wait by the auditorium and at 8:45, we'll come down and get you when we're ready to go!  :)
• Tuesday is Color Day.  Your child brought home a sheet yesterday regarding their color and other hints for Color Day. (The rain date is the Thursday.)
• Step Up is Friday, the 19th.  Our 2nd grade classes will be meeting with the 3rd grade teachers to hear about next year and see the teachers face to face.  They can ask questions and get a sense for  what's to come.  Talk to your child about it…they may be excited, nervous, or have questions.  I can't wait to hear what they think!
• The last day of school is Wednesday, the 24th, with dismissal at 12:00.  

We've been working on many things to get ready for our celebration, finishing up our opinion writing unit, continue working on our poetry reading unit, learning more about Ghana, and then later next week we'll be doing some fun writing for poetry, end of year activities in reading and writing, and more!  

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

Week ending 5/29/15

It's been a beautiful week!  We're all so in love with this weather and I hope it continues into June!
Here's some important things to remember:
* Please be sure your child has sneakers or sandals with a back in school.  Sneakers on PE days especially.
* Yesterday an email was sent regarding homework and an end of year project.  Also, one about behavior at the end of the year.  Please be sure to read them when you can. :)
* On Tuesday, we had an evacuation drill to the Temple.  The students did fantastic!  We could evacuate for a number of different reasons such as no heat in the building and it's important for students to know where to go and what it would look and feel like.  It's the same reason we practice fire drills.
* The Museum of Science field trip is June 8 for the whole day so it's very important your child is here on time and ready to go.  A different email will go home next week with specifics.
* Keep June 15th open for a celebration in the morning.
* June 16th will be Color Day.

3, 2, 1 things we've worked on this week…
3 math things we completed were Kojo's Math to begin learning about arrays and groups or sets of numbers, and the Unit 11 and end of year assessment.  The end of year assessment will help you know which skills your child can practice over the summer.

2 writing skills we worked on were understanding what a book recommendation is and how to provide support for our opinions.

1 thing Mary wants you to know is that we are reading and writing about biographies on famous people.

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Week of 5/22/15

Hi Families!
It's been so nice this week and we love getting outside for recess!  Yesterday we enjoyed getting out and letting our butterflies go.  It was beautiful to see!

A few important things:
* Our field trip to the Museum of Science is on June 8th, a Monday.  More info to come on that.
* Often at this time during the year, we spend a lot of time checking our behavior and making sure we're still on track.  Please check in with your child about expected behavior and keeping it together as long as possible! Thanks for your help with this!
* We will be having an end of year celebration on Monday, June 15th first thing in the morning.  More details to come!

3, 2, 1 things we've learned this week…

3 math skills we worked on were creating arrays as the first step for multiplication, subtracting money using dollar signs, and working on our addition and subtraction problem solving skills by focusing on the numbers and choosing which strategy would work best.

2 skills we practiced in writing were checking to be sure we have capitals in the correct spot and correct letter formation of our opinion letters.

1 technology project we've been working on is a wordle.  Don't know what a wordle is?  You'll have to wait till our end of year celebration. ;)


Have a wonderful Memorial Day weekend!

What did we learn this week?

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Week of May 4

It has been beautiful out!  Are you all enjoying the weather?  I hope so…we have!  We've stayed out a little longer at recess to enjoy these temperatures and blue skies!  We have had a busy week in room 250!  Can you believe there's only 32 more days of school!

Important Information:

• Please remember to put sunscreen on your child before leaving the house in the morning.
• Don't forget to send in sneakers on Tuesdays and Wednesdays for physical education.
• If you child is wearing sandals, please be sure they are sandals that have straps and not flip flops.

3, 2, 1 things you should know about our week…

3 skills we've been working on with our opinion writing are: making our letters about books more interesting by retelling part of the story, keeping our audience in mind by talking to the reader and not giving away the ending, and we started looking at a checklist that will help us be sure we have all the different parts/ideas of an opinion letter.  **Ask you child which character or book they are writing about and what their opinion is.  

2 take aways from our CAP presentation on Monday were to be sure to say "NO!" if a stranger tries to talk to you or makes you a little nervous.  We also talked about sticking up for ourselves and sticking up for our friends.

1 thing Judah wants you to know about this week is we learned different ways to split numbers when adding in math.

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Week ending 4/10/15

We've had quite a busy week!  We've started new units, such as Folktales, and are working on finishing up other units, such as China and math Unit 9.
Important information:

• Monday is Red Sox day…wear Red Sox gear or red, white, and/or blue to cheer on our team!
• Vacation is April 19-26.  Please let me know if your child will be out before or after.  Thanks.
• May 7th, a Thursday, is an Early Release day.

3, 2, 1 things you should know about our week…

3 learning ideas we worked on in social studies are: China's Forbidden City was built with many features to protect the Emperor and keep others out.  China has rural and urban areas, as many cities do, and we watched a video describing two children's days and how they differ based on where they live.  We learned about Yikang's day and compared it to our day, our routines, and activities.  Ask your child about one of these ideas.  We will be finishing our China lessons next week and then complete an alphabet book on China after vacation.  

2 math skills we have been practicing are comparing lengths of objects and understanding what capacity means.  We will finish Unit 9 this week and next week will begin Unit 10 on place value, money, and making change problem solving.  

1 thing Advik wants you to know about fables is that fables are stories that are not true and there are animal characters.

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Week ending 4/2/15

Hello Families!
Instead of a regular blog post this week since it's a short week…I wanted to call attention to a two activities we participated in.  In the post below you'll see what happened at the Chinese Cultural Center.  Below are some pictures from todays in school program called Life Cycles from the Museum of Science.
Ask your child their favorite part and what they've learned!
Enjoy!

Chinese Cultural Center

Hello families!  I tried to email some pictures but it didn't seem to send to anyone so I thought I'd post online for everyone to see!  We had a wonderful time and the students were so well behaved and interested in everything!
Enjoy!

Week ending 3/20/15

Today is the first day of Spring!  I'm so excited!  I look forward to more sunny days and more time outside to play for recess!  I hope you're looking forward to warmer weather and brighter days too.  Thanks so much to everyone who could make it this morning.  The students really enjoyed it and I look forward to using Soundscapes more often in our writing activities.

• On Monday, the 30th, we are heading to the Chinese Cultural Center.  Your child will need a brown/plastic bag lunch that can be thrown away when done.  They will not be bringing lunch boxes so keep that in mind when send lunch.  Also, we are leaving once we are all ready so please be sure they are on time that day.  Thanks in advance!
• If you have any tissues or cleaning wipes you'd like to donate, please do! 
• It was great meeting with you all at conferences the last two weeks.  I always find it beneficial to be touching base with families regarding their child's progress.  There are no more official conferences for the year but of course, if anything comes up, don't hesitate to touch base with me.  

3, 2, 1 important pieces of information you need to know about this week…

3 skills we focused on in reading workshop were: deciding if a question was meaningful or not, writing THICK (more thoughtful and meaningful) questions versus those that are easy to find to the answer, and we began focusing on making inferences.  Today we did "What's in my teacher's bag?"  Students had to decide what each item I pulled out of my bag, inferred about me.  What was the item?  What do you usually do with it or why do people have it?  Then we thought, "What does that say about Ms. DeKing?"  They did really well and inferencing is hard!

2 activities we did out of the ordinary were "flying" to China and getting our passports stamped and Arts Integration Morning.  We all enjoyed both of them!

1 thing Zoe wants you to know is we practiced measuring arm spans using a measuring tape.

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Week of 3/9/15

 We have been very busy in room 250!  We have been starting new units, finishing up others, and preparing for conferences!
Here's some important information for you:

• Thankfully, the weather seems to be making a good change for us.  All students are heading out recess these days so keep that in mind when sending in jackets, boots, etc in the morning.  
• We have our first field trip at the end of the month, Monday, the 30th.  I am still looking for 1 CORI'd chaperone if you're able to join us, please let me know.
• If you happen to have any boxes of tissues around that you could donate…we'd love them!  

3, 2, 1 things you need to know...

3 important skills we've worked on this in reading workshop are: thinking about the text as we read to determine what we've learned and what we still wonder about, understanding that writing questions before, during, and after read is very important to our comprehension of the story as it makes us think in and beyond the text, and sometimes our questions are not always answered (and that's OK!).  

2 math skills we're working on this week are mental math facts and patterns and using unifex cubes to check our work helps us become more independent.

1 thing Daniel D. wants you to know is…constant difference helps you figure out subtraction problems.

P.S.  There's no "What did we learn this week?" post…we ran out of time!  We'll have it back up next week!  :)

Week of 3/6/15

Hi Families,
We've had another full week of school.  I can't believe it!  Hopefully the weather has turned and Spring will arrive on schedule!

Important information…

• Don't forget to keep the warm clothes in school just in case we need them.  
• Don't forget to sign up for conferences.  The link is in the post below.  This is a time for your child to attend with you for us to meet together and they share their work and reflections with you.  

3 things to share with you from this week: 

3 skills we worked on were: determining our the ages of those in our family and starting to recognize constant difference (more work next week on that), providing evidence from the book for why we are like a particular character, and understanding how the sun, moon, and Earth all work together.  

2 things we did for Read Across America this week were…kicking the whole week off for the whole school at our assembly Tuesday morning and taking 10 minutes each day to Drop Everything And Read.  2 of our classmates announced it for the whole school on Wednesday!

1 exciting presentation was Mr. Joe and Ms. Vida today!  Please see the "What did we learn this week?" page to see all their favorite parts!

Enjoy the weekend!

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