Week of October 20th- October 31st

 Hello Families-

Once again as a second grade team we want to thank you all for your support with our spirit Friday (aka Mustache Day),  our all school food drive, and our wonderful Fall parties.  Your support is truly amazing and appreciated!  We wish everyone safe travels and hope that you find time to relax and recharge with your families.

Over break be on the look out for a sign up genius from your teacher in regards to Fall Parent Conferences.  These will be held the week of November 10th.  

This week we will focus on ....

Math: In second grade math, we will begin working on Unit 4. The coming week's lessons will discuss change to more than one digit, parts and total, number stories and temperature.  Typically your child will have homework Monday through Thursday.  We will be working on higher level thinking activities on Fridays, and will not assign homework over the weekend.  For 3rd grade math students, they are finishing their work in Unit 3 focusing on perimeter, area, diameter, circumference and number models that help with these concepts. Then will start Unit 4 which focuses on multiplication and division.  *Please continue to time your child 2 minutes and 15 seconds with their math facts. 

FAST (phonics):  We will continue working on concept 9 ("Changing Rule") the week we return. We will discuss how vowel tag does not always work so we need to change the vowels sound.  For example, if you try to use vowel tag for "hotel" you would have "hot-" "-el." So the vowel "lets go of the tag and you have "ho-" "-tel." We will be studying list 9 of our spelling words. 
 
Reading: 
In Class: We will be working on merging thinking with new learning.  Our goal is to help the students listen to the voice in their head that signals new learning, understand the term "background knowledge," and react to new information they come across during reading.

For Homework: Your child will be asked to focus on the key pieces of doing a fiction retell.

Wordly Wise: We will introduce and begin to work from Lesson 5 this week.  The words we are focusing on this week are: absorb, anchor, brush, bud, center, core, factory, hive, sapling, trunk.  Check out the wordlywise3000 website for addition support.
  
Writing: We will start instructing on explanatory writing.  Using similar formatting as we did for planning narrative pieces, we will have students explain why we should be thankful for veterans.  

Social Studies: We will be moving into "How do communities change?" This addresses how a community changes as the needs of each community grow and change.

FOSS:  FOSS science is in full swing.  Your child will get to experience FOSS in their classrooms on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 2:45pm-3:25pm.

Upcoming dates to know:
10/20-11/2 Fall Break
11/2 Day Light Savings Ends
11/5 Picture re-takes
11/7 Report cards go home
11/10-11/14 Parent teacher conferences
11/19 PTCO general meeting
11/21 PTCO Snowflake Dance
11/26-11/28 Thanksgiving Break