Welcome to fall!

It's hard to believe that the autumn weather is beginning! It will soon be time for Halloween, pumpkins, and colorful leaves! We continue to have a great year in our classroom and are remaining extremely busy. I am very proud of our class for earning their first marble party...a "PJ'S and Parfaits" celebration...yesterday.

Students will finish their assessment on butterflies and moths tomorrow. I look forward to seeing all of the things they have learned during this first science unit. Believe it or not, some of our Monarch caterpillars are STILL snacking on milkweed! Most have gone into their chrysalises...we hope to see some adult butterflies emerging in a few days!

On Friday, we will begin a health unit of study on the body. For the first few days, we will talk about taking care of our skin, hair, nails, etc. Next week, we will talk about the parts of the eyes and ears, as well as how to take care of them. Next Wednesday, an ophthalmologist will visit our class to talk further about proper eye care. As we get further into October, students will begin to study the body systems, starting with the skeletal system! I will be taking the butterfly items off of our science wall...if you have posters, pictures, books, X-Rays, etc. that would tie in well with this study of the human body, we would love to borrow them for a few weeks!

Reading groups got off to a wonderful start last week! I have had great reports from other teachers who have students from our class in their groups, and have really enjoyed working with my groups as well. Some reading skills that students will be working on with fiction books this year are summarizing, making inferences, making text-t0-text, text-to-world, and text-to-self connections, and many other things! Within non-fiction texts, students should be working on locating and using text features (glossary, index, diagrams, etc.), as well as identifying main ideas and defining new vocabulary words. If you have questions about skills you would like to work on at home, let me know and I will send some resources your way!

During our language block, we will be beginning a new author study later this week on Mem Fox. We are also working on identifying synonyms and antonyms, writing contractions properly, and alphabetizing groups of words. Please look over the DLR (Daily Language Review) pages that are coming home to get an idea of what editing skills we are working on as well. These are the half-sheet pages that have the day of the week at the top of them and include sentence writing skills, compound words, spelling questions, etc.

In math, students are currently studying measurement and shapes. New terms introduced have been centimeter, square corners, right angles, vertical, horizontal, and perimeter. This is a short unit and will be assessed later this week. Next week, we will begin an in-depth study of story problems.

The 2nd graders have shown a lot of enthusiasm for our current study in Writer's Workshop...paragraph writing! They have done a fantastic job staying on topic and using supporting details. Next week, they will choose one of their memories from the memory box to write a paragraph about. Late last week, we sent out the friendly letters for which you provided addresses and stamps. If any of the recipients write back to your children here at school, I will send those letters home for you to enjoy!

Next Wednesday, October 6 will be "Walk to School Day". If you live close enough and the weather permits, please plan to walk to school with your child if possible. Teachers will also be joining groups of students walking to school, and there will be a snack at the end of the walk! Hope to see you all then! We are crossing our fingers for another beautiful fall day.

Enjoy the rest of your week!