Hopefully, you received my THANK YOU letter for your wonderful gift at the
Christmas party. I put it in your child's Friday folder. I will enjoy eating
with my family at Gringos over the holidays. I loved the bright red Christmas
tray with all the candy goodies to enjoy while watching movies with my family!
Thank you so very much for sharing your wonderful child with me. Have a
safe, relaxing and wonderful holiday!
JANUARY fun in...
READING:
This month we will be reading books to learn about inferring. Inferring is
combining clues with your schema to make educated guesses and draw
conclusions. In other words, it is reading between the lines. We will also
review schema, visualizing, and questioning as we read.
Your child is bringing home a leveled reader every Tuesday and the book is
to be read with a parent to practice fluency. You can also have your child
practice retelling the story for comprehension. Some of my higher readers will
need to actually write the retell. The leveled readers will need to
be returned every day as we use them in class for our reading groups.
LANGUAGE:
We are learning how to manage our writing workshop. This month we will work
on authors as mentors. We will review learning how to reread our writing and
revise and edit it.
We are also working on identifying NOUNS in sentences, which includes proper
nouns, possessive nouns and plural nouns. We are now adding awesome adjectives
to our writings. Be looking for Mountain Language in Friday folders. This is
a great developer of skills. Please encourage your child to write with
complete sentences, remembering to use correct capitalization, punctuation,
and spacing of words.
SPELLING:
The list will come home each Monday with spelling homework to be done in a
yellow spelling journal. A spelling tic tac toe worksheet will accompany the
journal with things you may pick and choose to do for homework over the next
3 nights. You will need to let your child pick 3 things to do in a row for
tic tac toe. Sign off that your child did the homework. Return it by
Thursday. Thursday will be our testing day. The test will not be a list of
called words. I will call out 5 sentences with the words for that week in the
sentences. The students will write them correctly, remembering to put correct
capitalization and punctuation and spell the words right. I will sometimes be
giving a handwriting grade on this test. IF there is a CHALLENGE word for
that week, it can ONLY HELP their grade, not hurt it. They get one point
added to the grade if they get the word correct. Please help your child study
his/her spelling words each week.
MATH:
Timed tests will be explained at Parent Night. I will be handing out a blank
copy of each test at that time. You will need to make copies of the tests to
practice at home on whatever test & time your child is on. PLEASE help your
child practice the math facts, especially on Monday and Wednesday nights.
This 3rd 9 weeks we will begin taking a grade once a week on each timed facts
test. This will begin on the 4th Thursday of the 9 weeks. The first grade
will be given on the RED test (facts 0 to 5 + & -). They will get 7 minutes
on this test. The following week, will be a grade on the PURPLE
test. Then, on a grade on the BROWN test. The second to the last week of the
9 weeks will be a grade on the ORANGE test. The GREEN test grade will be
taken on the last week of the 3rd 9 weeks. All of these test grades will be
taken with 7 minutes.
We began the year working on strategies for problem solving. Now we are
working to use those strategies to solve problems. We are learning strategies
to help us with the basic addition and subtraction math facts to 18. We just
finished all kinds of graphing and probability. We learned how to add or
subtract 2 digit numbers with or without regrouping to/from the tens place.
Before the holidays, we took our 2nd Math benchmark. I sent a letter home
with your child's score and what he/she needed to work on.
After the holidays, we will begin working on place value up to 999 and
comparing and ordering greater numbers.
SOCIAL STUDIES / SCIENCE: We alternate studying half the 9 weeks on Social St.
and the other half on Science.
We will finish up this 9 weeks with Social Studies, studying about different
kinds of landforms and water.
When the 3rd 9 weeks begins, we will study WEATHER in Science for 4 & 1/2
weeks, then we will begin Social Studies again, studying about FAMOUS PEOPLE.
HANDWRITING: Second grade is an exciting time when we are now learning
cursive. Bad habits are hard to break. Please do not try to teach your child
cursive. We seem to have more success when we learn it together correctly.
We have begun Cursive. We are learning the lower case letters first. We just
completed the skateboard ramp letters and will begin the wave runner letters
after the holidays.
Thank you for a wonderful beginning of school. My arms are open wide for as
many hugs that are needed at the beginning of school and all year long. I try
to make our classroom environment as warm and welcoming as I can. As a class,
we are learning to follow the "Golden Rule" and take care of one another,
remembering to consider others' feelings. Your child is also being encouraged
to take responsibility for his/her behavior.
I am enjoying getting to know your child. I look forward to this year being
a huge success.
Thank you,
Karen Kirkpatrick
