End of 2nd trimester

Happy Friday!

As always, we have been very busy in 2nd grade here at Langston Hughes! Students are working hard and learning many new things. Here's what's going on in our classroom!

In math, we are currently working on a mini-unit on geometry. Students are learning about quadrilaterals, parallelograms, and midpoints. Next week, we will begin our next major unit...subtracting two-digit numbers with and without re-grouping. At the beginning of the unit, students will also be working on counting money. Now would be a GREAT time to play some money games or count some spare change at home.

In science, we are wrapping up our unit on weather. The test on this unit will be next Thursday. Students will be expected to show understanding of the water cycle, the types of precipitation, cloud types, seasons, and tools used for measuring weather. Please keep an eye out for a study guide next Tuesday or Wednesday. We will kick off our next trimester with some Social Studies! Students will be learning more about our past, including information about several presidents. In March, we will begin our tour of the world during which students will explore mapping, landforms, continents, and different cultures. I will be providing information about our Flat Stanley geography project at conferences.

After a couple of weeks of assessing, we have restarted guided reading groups! Many changes were made, and I can't wait to share your child's progress with you. During our language block we continue our study of poetry. We have enjoyed sitting down and reading many types of poems together, and our class has come up with some really great and creative poems of our own! There are some awesome poetry links to the right of this post...check them out! At the conclusion of our poetry unit, we will take some time to look at the authors Tomie DePaulo and Shel Silverstein. Our current read-aloud is Mr. Popper's Penguins.

Special Announcements:

The book fair is next week! I will not be sending home a Scholastic book order this month, so this is your chance to stock up on great book deals! To promote this event, students are invited to wear pajamas on Monday, Hawaiian shirts on Tuesday, and to dress like a favorite book character Wednesday. Don't forget to come to the pancake feed Tuesday night from 5:00-7:00. If you will be unable to attend, your child is welcome to purchase books during the school day.

Thank you to those of you who have already confirmed your conference spot! If you have not yet returned your green form, please do so as soon as you can or send me an e-mail.

I look forward to seeing all you soon! Have a great weekend!