September 10, 2009 Update...

Hello Parents and Students,

We have had a fabulous week in Second Grade. I am so proud of how well the children did on learning the Georgia Regions. We will begin our unit on Georgia's Resources and Rivers tomorrow. Be on the lookout next week for important resources to help your child at home. Check out what else has been going on in our room below...

Phonics: We have been learning about the long and short o spelling patterns. We also took a post assessment on the spelling patterns we have learned so far. Remember, your child is expected to apply these patterns when writing. This demonstrates that your child has mastered the skill. Giving your child opportunities at home for writing can help in this area.

Writing: We will continue with our Personal Narrative writing. At the end of the nine weeks, my expectations are for each child to be able to write at least an eight sentence descriptive narrative with correct capitalization, punctuation, grammar, and paragraph format. We are working on this every week, with me modeling the process.

Reading: We read the nonfiction book The Remarkable, Adaptable Turtle and discussed finding the main idea. We also worked on finding synonyms for words in the book and created a list. We worked in guided reading groups on making connections to ideas from our stories. We also practiced our phonics skills and writing on our contracts that we used with our independent books.

Math: We learned that graphing is one way to display information. We focused on comparing categories in a particular graph as well as identifying the graph key and using skip counting when appropriate. We also reviewed the math facts that we have covered so far (+2, +3, +4). We will have our data and graphing test on Friday and then begin addition strategies next week.

Social Studies: We completed our unit on Georgia Regions today and we will begin discussing the various resources in Georgia as well as the rivers in Georgia. The children will learn why the rivers were so important to early life in Georgia. This will lead into learning about the life and contributions of Sequoya.

Class News:

Friday, September 11th is Bingo Night here at Ford. If you are a PTA member, your card will be free. There will be food available for purchase as well. As I'm sure you are all aware, the flu has hit Georgia. Please be extra cautious as we try and get through this season. I am taking extra precautions here at school to keep your child well, such as washing hands with soap several times a day as well as cleaning desks and chairs daily.

This is just a friendly reminder to carefully go through your child's work that comes home on Fridays. Please be aware of your child's strengths and weaknesses and let me know if you need help coming up with ideas for helping your child at home. I can't stress enough the importance of providing reading and writing opportunities at home.

Extra Credit Opportunity:

Okay, kids, here is another opportunity to earn a special reward. Complete the project as stated here, and you'll find out what the surprise is! First, choose one of the seven Georgia rivers to research. Divide a large poster board into four squares. Write the name of the chosen river in the center. In the first box, tell me the location (starting and ending point) of this river. In the second box, tell me one animal that inhabits this river and describe it. In the third box, tell me one plant that inhabits this river and describe it. In the fourth box, tell me one interesting fact about the river. GRAPHICS must be included in each of the four boxes that are pulled from the internet. I want to see that you are using technology at home. This project is due no later than Friday, September 18th. Have fun and I can't wait to see your posters!