Hey there, 2A!

Good afternoon 2A! :) 

I hope you're all having a wonderful weekend and enjoying this cooler weather. We have a really exciting week ahead of us and here is what's coming up! 

Book Fair: Tomorrow is the Arete Book Fair at Barnes and Noble! Don't forget to bring your voucher! 

Poetry Recitations: Your child will be assessed on their recitation of Merry Autumn Days next week. Second grade will also be reciting Something Told the Wild Geese at our assembly Tuesday!

Read-a-thon Day: Read-A-Thon Day is taking place next Tuesday. Your child may come to school dressed as their favorite classical literature character, scientists, or historical figure. Please remember to fill out this costume proposal before Tuesday. We will have our classroom celebration from 11:50-1:10. Our school Assembly and afternoon buddy reading will take place from 1:30-2:25. Feel free to stop by in the afternoon for any of these events. We'd love to see you there!

Winter Concert: Our Winter Concert is quickly approaching! It will be at Higley Center for the Performing Arts on November 15^th. Students’ attire for our performances is NOT school uniform. Gentlemen are expected to wear a plain white collard shirt, black pants, black socks and black closed toed shoes. Solid dark colored vests and ties are optional for gentlemen. Ladies are expected to wear a white top, black skirt, black tights and black closed toed shoes. Please have your 2nd graders at Higley Center for the Performing Arts by 5:00pm.
Please visit aretek-2music.blogspot.com or email jweddle@archwayarete.org for questions regarding the concert!

 Here is what we are learning about this week in 2A:
Spalding: Next week we will have 20 words (with review words built in on Tuesday). There will be no Spalding homework assigned on Tuesday evening.
Monday: stream, talks, tiny, words, trust, extra, dress, beside, teach, happen
Wednesday: begun, collect, file, provide, sight, stood, fixed, fix, born

Grammar: Last week we added period, statement, declarative sentence to our Question & Answer Flow. This week we will talk about dividing the complete subject from the complete predicate. Ask your child if they know the difference between an adverb and an adjective!

Writing: Next up in Writing with Ease is a passage from Pilgrim's Progress. We will continue with our weekly procedure of narration, copywork, and dictation.

Math: We will complete our unit on measurement on Monday, and will then be getting into multiplication and division! These two new operations will take quite a bit of practice and may require a lot of encouragement, but rest assured "We can do hard things!" Fact fluency will greatly help your child better understand these concepts! Please continue to practice skip counting with your child by 2's, 3,s 5,s and 10's. 

Science: Our Water Cycle unit will continue through studying condensation and precipitation. We will make a terrarium in class!

Literature: We will read Chapters 3 & 4 from The Boxcar Children. We will also work on writing an essay about courage (one of our core virtues) and making connections (text to text, text to world, and text to self). 

Warmest, 

Mr. High

Here we go!

Dear 2A,

And we're off! Can you believe we're already in our second quarter of second grade? Mrs. Gerhart and I had a blast getting to talk with each of you about your child as well as getting to know you a little more as well. :) 

Literature: Please send your child to school with their copy of The Boxcar Children. We will dive right in on Tuesday and are excited to embark on our next chapter book! We will be introduced to the Alden children and follow them on quite an adventure!

Grammar: We will learn more about synonyms and antonyms. We will also add more to our question and answer flow! Our first addition will be "period, statement, declarative sentence" marked with a capital D! We will also look for the complete subject and the complete predicate in our sentences and separate them.

Writing: We will read an excerpt from the original book 101 Dalmatians written by Dodie Smith. Fun fact: The Disney version was a very simplified retelling of this wonderful story. We will also add question marks and exclamation points to our sentence dictation.

Spalding Words Next Week:
Tuesday: push, point, within, body, field, belongs, cheese, earn, edge, feather
Wednesday: fence, funny, going, honey, letters, orange, pocket, shoes, shoe, stairs

Math: We will continue our journey in learning about different units of measurement and begin to move away from our focus on length, width and height to learn all about weight! We will discuss how to use a scale and measure the weights of various objects in grams, kilograms, ounces, and pounds. Here is this week's Math homework:

Monday: No School
Tuesday: WKBK p. 79 – 80 (Review)
Wednesday: WKBK p. 83 & Practice Test 4.1B
Thursday: 4.2B Practice Test
Friday: WKBK pgs. 85-86

History: We will continue our unit on Ancient India and will be learning about King Asoka and how he helped the spread of Buddhism through India. Ask your child about the story of Kind Asoka this week. We will have our test on Ancient India on Monday, October 29, so we will review and send home a study guide on Friday.

Science: We are moving right along into our next unit ~ The Water Cycle! We will learn about solids, liquids, gases, and evaporation. Be sure to ask me about the experiment we will conduct!

Warmest,

Mr. High

Happy Fall Break! :)

Dear 2A

We did it! I hope you're having a great Monday afternoon and maybe even already enjoying some well-earned R&R for Fall Break. I'm really excited to meet with each of you and getting the opportunity to talk with you about your child! Here are a few quick links you can use to sign up for conferences next week:

• Parent Teacher Conference Sign Up
• Specials Teacher Conference Sign Up

Checklists for Quarter 1: Please keep in mind when you receive your child's checklist for Quarter 1 that the numbers indicate your child's proficiency in each skill as well as my proximity to your child.

"4" would look like: Your child displays confident success in that skill without any further support. I can be working with another student and your child is able to independently show accurate proficiency without further instruction.

"3" would look like: Your child is showing proficiency in this skill, and benefits from occasional support. I am walking throughout the classroom, occasionally stopping by his desk to monitor progress, and when I do so, he or she is successful.

"2" would look something like: Your child is able to complete that task, but is in need of additional support. I am sitting right behind him or her, looking over their shoulder, whispering reminders, and with that support they are able to be successful.

"1" would look like: Your child needs my full attention and continual support in order for him or her to be successful in that skill. I am sitting right beside them, holding their hand, pointing with my finger to help track those words as they read, etc.

NA: Means that the skill has not been covered or assessed yet.

Please reach out to me with any questions you may have about the checklists! We can also talk about them at conferences too.

Homework Survey: Thank you to all who participated! I have seen the results and want to thank you for providing feedback. Please let me know if you are having homework concerns and how I can best support you in this effort at home :-)!

Poetry: A copy of our new poem Merry Autumn Days was sent home this week in your child's folder. Thanks for practicing at home! 

Typing Master: Students have been working hard at Typing Master! Please reinforce keeping all fingers on the "home row" when your children are working on their computer or laptop at home. The "home row" is:  a s d f      j k l ;

Spalding words next week: 

Monday: once, one, own, before, know, no, were, where, there, here (10 words)
Tuesday: dead, leave, early, close, close, flower, flour, nothing, ground (9 words)
Wednesday: lead (the way), led (the way), lead (pencil), such, morning, however, mind, shall, alone, order, third (11 words)

Literature: We will begin reading The Boxcar Children the week of October 24th. Please send a copy of this to school as soon as you can!

Writing: We will read an exceprt from Nurse Matilda and practice writing commas in a series.

Grammar: We will continue to classify sentences. We will also spend time reviewing parts of a complete sentence as well as our capitalization and punctuation rules.

Math: We will start our unit on Measurement!

Science: There will be no new Science information introduced due to our half days and parent/teacher conferences. We will continue to closely observe our caterpillars as they form their chrysalis and our Lima Beans that are still taped up in our window!

History: Due to half days and conferences we will take a break from History next week. Ask me all about my learning of Ancient India!

I hope you all have a wonderful Fall Break! See you soon. :)

Warmest, 

Mr. High

It's the Last Week of Our First Quarter!

Dear 2A,

Can you believe this is our last week of school before Fall Break? This quarter has flown by and I still cannot believe we are nearly halfway through our first semester! Here is what our last week before Fall Break looks like:

Literature: We finished reading Charlotte's Web! It was an emotional and beautiful ending for our friends Wilbur and Charlotte. Next up is The Boxcar Children. We won't be starting this novel until the end of October so don't worry yet about needing to bring it to school. We will be using our Literature time next week to prepare for our self-evaluations at conference time!

Poetry: We did not get through all of the poem recitations for Something Told the Wild Geese this week so those will continue with those into next week. Our new poem is: Merry Autumn Days by Charles Dickens. Please check your child's homework folder on Monday for a copy of this new poem.

Spalding Words: 
Monday: right, write, wrote, date, road, rode, ride, March, march, next
Tuesday: indeed, four, herself, power, wish, because, cause, world, country, meet (see), meat (eat)
Wednesday: another, tripped, trip, list, people, ever, held, church
*Review Phonograms for Homework

Grammar: We will review all parts of speech and practice labeling our nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. 

Writing: We will practice commas in a series when listing. We will also read Pippi Longstocking!

Math: Renaming in Subtraction has really posed a challenge for us this last week! We will continue to embrace the struggle next week and review this concept of three digit subtraction. 

Here are the rhymes/chants we are learning in class: 

No Renaming:
Numbers the same? Zero is their name! 
More on the top? No need to stop! 

Renaming the tens:
More on the floor (in the ones column)? Go Next Door (to the tens column), Get Ten More! Cross it out, count one down, bring the tens (10 ones) over, it's big enough now SUBTRACT!

Renaming the hundreds:
More on the floor (in the tens column)? Go Next Door (to the hundreds column), Get 1 HUNDRED more! Cross it out, count one down, bring the hundred (10 tens) over, it's big enough now SUBTRACT!

Please let me know if you or your child needs more help and support in this area. Notes on their homework is perfect! Please keep in mind that subtraction with renaming is likely the most challenging concept we will cover in second grade and rest assured we will continue to work on renaming throughout the year :-).

We've wrestled with addition and subtraction with renaming for the past few weeks and after Fall Break we are going to move forward with a new unit! With that being said, we have our cumulative test on Friday, so keep an eye out for a study guide in your child's Take-Home folder on Thursday. We will get into our new unit on Length after we come back from Fall Break!

History: We are continuing our study of Ancient India. We will finish learning about Hinduism with a fun lesson about the Festival of Lights on Monday! Later in the week, we will begin learning about another religion that began in Ancient India: Buddhism! We will be listening to a jakata tale, a story told by Buddha that taught a lesson. You can read more jataka tales at home here: http://mocomi.com/fun/stories/jataka-tales/

Science: We will take some time to review the cycles we've learned about so far. Your child will take a test on Thursday. A review/study guide will come home with them on Tuesday evening. See if your child can describe the stages of life for a chicken, frog, butterfly, and plant.

Thank you so much for all you've done to celebrate Mrs. Gerhart's birthday with us on Thursday! Here is a note she shared with me to share on our class blog: 



Dear 2A Families, 

Thank you very much for the wonderful and generous gifts! What a joy to be able to celebrate with a classroom full of children again and what a special privilege that it is your children.

Have an amazing weekend and again, many thanks!

Mrs. G



Have a great week!

Warmest, 

Mr. High