April 11, 2014 Update...

Dear Parents,

Thank you for visiting today!  We had a great week and are moving full steam ahead through the end of this school year! Several times a week, we are having Math Magician contests to see who can answer the 20 math facts in the shortest amount of time.  It's been a close race between Mark, Sawyer, David and Gawain this week. As of right now, our winner for addition and subtraction is Mark. Our multiplication winner is Gawain.  I need some girls to represent room 216 as well!  Come on girls, step it up!  The best way to practice math facts with your child is to get some good
old-fashioned flash cards and start with the 2's until they are memorized, then add in the 3's, then 4's, etc. until slowly but surely, all the facts are mastered.  This skill will be essential as we move into more challenging work next year.  See below to see what else we've been working on this week...

Phonics/Grammar: We learned the ar, air, and are spelling patterns as well as the aw and au patterns.  We focused on capitalization rules, such as capitalizing names, months, and places.

Reading:  We read a nonfiction book called Animal Look Alikes, which helped us review nonfiction text features. We also learned how to identify the main idea of a multi-paragraph text by looking at the title, headings, first and last sentences of paragraphs, and details within a book or article.  We then read our own nonfiction books and worked with a partner to write the main idea.  We also read several chapters out of Horns and Wrinkles and matched cause and effect events from the story.  We looked closely at the vocabulary in the book and used context clues to determine the meaning.  We worked in small groups reading our chapter books as well. Small groups were also pulled to work on fluency.

Math:  We learned three strategies for subtracting three digit numbers with regrouping; using an open number line, decomposing using partial sums, and using a magic square.  We also worked on skip counting forwards and backwards. This skill will be essential when beginning our unit on multiplication and division.  This is another great skill to work on at home!

Writing: We finished up our informational writing on Jimmy Carter.  We made a book that contained a table of contents, headings, details, and a glossary.  Come check out our work in the hallway!

Social Studies:  We completed our unit on Jimmy Carter, learning all about his contributions to the equal rights movement, peace, and the environment. 

Class News and Announcements...

We've had two people make the OSCARS  HALL of FAME BOOK; Sophia Newlin and Sawyer Kale!  Congratulations on all your hard work and extra effort to master these tasks!!!  I'm hoping to see more names added before the end of the year!

Congratulations to Mark Coaxum for being chosen as our CELEBRITY this week!  Way to go!

Congratulations to Sophia Newlin, whose writing sample won 1st place in second grade for the Writing Fair. She went on to the county level round and came in an impressive 6th place in the entire county!!!  Way to represent our school, Sophia!  Keep up the incredible writing!

Our egg hunt will be this coming Friday, April 18th at 11:45. All are welcome to join us on the nature trail.  Please refer to Mrs. Newlin's email for other ways you can help out.