Quick month!

I can't believe that tomorrow will be the last Monday in January 2015!  Wow, time really does fly!

Thanks for your continued support of me and your child.  We are well stocked for the time being, on tissues, paper towels, and note cards.  When we need something more, I'll put out a cry of help again.  Please keep in mind that I'm out of town on church business this up coming Friday and NEXT Monday.

Next week we will be sharing our Robot projects. Please be sure to send in the Robot on the day of your child's presentation.  I know the kids are excited about them.  Listed here is the date of your child's turn:

Tuesday, February 3rd:

       Fitzgerald        Amirah          Janiya

       Lailah              Demetrius     Carter

       Makayla          Ryan             Daniel

Wednesday, February 4th:

       Alaina           Angel            Maya

       Reagan        Craig            Aiden

       Matthew       Marley         

Thursday,  February 5th:

        Bryson         Olivia           Zion

        Zachary        Hannah       Caleb

        Kayla            Tyler

Please send in their written descriptions and robots on these dates, (not before)! You are welcome to come and watch your child and his/her group share their projects. Unless I know otherwise, we'll draw names on the day of to see who gets to go first, second, etc...  I look forward to seeing how creative you and the kids get with the robots!  

Supplies Needed!

Hi parents, you often ask if we need anything for the classroom. Well, I now can say "Yes, we do!"

Boxes of Kleenex

Paper Towels

Notecards (lots of them ;) )

If you can pick some of these up and send them in, the kids and I would really appreciate it!

Thanks!

Spelling for January and robot share dates

Spelling-  I'm going to move this week's spelling assessment to Tuesday the 20th! I will be out all day this Friday. Also, since the words are practiced for longer, I will change the due date for spellingcity.com till Tuesday and add 2 games as well! Next week's words will show on spellingcity Tuesday the 20th and the assessment day will be Thursday the 29th. I will be out that Friday (30th) and Monday (2nd) as well for a personal reason. Mrs Lovelace has agreed to sub those 2 days. 

Robots and writing will be presented to the class in the media center from 12:00-1:00, by the students, on the dates as listed: 

Tuesday, February 3rd:

       Fitzgerald        Amirah          Janiya

       Lailah              Demetrius     Carter

       Makayla          Ryan             Daniel

Wednesday, February 4th:

       Alaina           Angel            Maya

       Reagan        Craig            Aiden

       Matthew       Marley         

Thursday,  February 5th:

        Bryson         Olivia           Zion

        Zachary        Hannah       Caleb

        Kayla            Tyler

Please send in their wriiten descriptions and robots on these dates, (not before)! You are welcome to come and watch your child and his/her group share their projects. I look forward to seeing how creative you and the kids get with the robots!  

Have a great evening!

G

      

Needs for the classroom

I spent some time at school yesterday and came to the realization that we are in need of Kleenex! We have 3 small boxes left from our original stash! I purchased a pack of boxes at Walgreens, but they'll be sneezed up quickly, based on previous experience with this group ;). We're good at least until next week. Next time you are at the store, please think of us and help us restock our tissues. 

I hope the kids have gotten rid of their colds and coughs over the break. It's really hard to learn if thinking hurts and you feel yucky. 

I made a few changes to the room. New look, new energy! I hope the kids are raring to go, I am!

Computers re-arranged. 

 Table 3 and class library moved! 

Oh yeah! One of the moms and girls left their sweaters at the Winter Party! Let me know if you are missing a grey Ann Taylor  sweater. Which girl did not bring her blue sweat shirt (that I made) home? 

Spelling homework

Couldn't get into my class today but I have the first 4 weeks of spelling ready and already typed into www.spellingcity.com! I love this site! 

Spelling homework is switching to only online for this next semester. We'll still do spelling work in centers but I'm taking a break from WTW spelling homework for a while. We will be focusing on compound words, homophones, prefixes and suffixes. Ha! I even put in bonus points for Class DoJo! I hope the kids start using this site! 

Heads up for 1st school week of 2015

WE are gearing up for the 2nd semester of learning in 2nd Grade! Who would have thought that the 1st semester would go so quickly? Not me!

I wanted to give you a few reminders before sending the kids to school next week!... (I can hear some of you now, "Miss G, with you its never a few!" LOL, you may be right!)


1.  Thursday, January 15th is Awards night. I hope you can make it!

***2. Our math standards introduce money this quarter. I prefer to teach money using the real deal... if you could help out by sending in 50 pennies, 10 nickels, 10 dimes, and 4 quarters that would make the learning for your child much more concrete. Please send in the coins by Tuesday, January 13th. (Ways to reinforce this skill at home : you could start allowing them to shop with a portion of your shopping list and real cash that would really make them think about how quickly money is used and what it means when we are not wise with our funds. For example give them 10 dollars and ask them to buy the milk and cereal for the week. Is that even enough? I don't buy gallons of milk, so I am not really sure. Have them earn money to purchase a prize/goal. Teach them the value of saving and pride of working for something specific.)

3. RAZ-Kids- I am debating renewing my old raz-kids account. A drawback is that I pay for other sites, like spelling city.com and not many of the students access it. While it would benefit all of the children at every reading level, it does cost money and I'm not sure it will be cost effective. I will decide in a few weeks and let you know. This would be in addition to AR and homework.

4. Our writing genre has changed... our focus the next 9 weeks will be persuasive writing, winning someone over to our way of thinking with reasonable points or arguments. A high school friend of mine recently had a debat in his literature class. After the debate he told his mom that the other team had really good arguments and he should have been on their team. She asked him why, and he replied that they were so convincing that he changed his mind! LOL! Gotta love kids! But that is really the point of persuasive writing. 

5.  Report Cards will be coming home early January. They are yours to keep, please sign and return the sheet in the yellow folder stating that you've received them. Also, if you could write out your address on an envelope and put a stamp on it, that would help us eliminate a step in May.

6. Homework will be changing slightly. This first week back, I really want the kids to focus on reading AR books and editing writing that I or others have written. For the most part, our kids have a good voice in their writing, but they really do not like rereading their own work for mistakes. We will do one more addition fast facts quiz the 1st  Friday, and then begin doing subtraction and addition the next week. Spelling will begin again the 2nd week of January.

To re-cap: I have purchased "banks" for the kid's to store their coins. Please send the coins in as soon as possible! The coins needed are: 

4 quarters

10 dimes

10 nickels 

50 pennies

OK, so those of you who knew it would be a long one were right! I hope that you had a worderful break that the kids are ready to work!

Thanks for the Christmas gifts. I can't wait to see the kids! 

Love G

2nd Grade Family Robot Project

Last week I sent home the 2nd Grade Family Projects that are due at the end of January. The requirements are as follows: 1. build a robot with the following 3-dimensional shapes (rectangular prism; cube; cylinder; sphere; pryamid) and 2-dimensional shapes (circle; square; rectangle; triangle; trapezoid; rhombus; and parallelogram). 

2. Label each shape on the robot! 

3. Write a sentence for each shape describing how it was used on the robot. 

The students will be asked to read their sentences for the class on a pre-assigned day. The schedule for project deliveries will be sent home January 27th with the homework packet. 

Below are some examples of robots from last year's group.