Classroom Summary for June 2 - 6

Tweet! The view from outside our classroom window.

Here's what we did this week...

In Fundations we completed our unit on the two vowel pairs that make the /ô/ sound: au and aw. We practiced reading and spelling various words using the two spelling options. Here are some of the words we practiced spelling:

lawn          auto          claw          astronaut           launch           Paul            

Next week we will begin our final unit. Our focus will be on the last syllable type: -le. We are looking forward to completing our Fundations learning for the year!

In Miss Varrell's reading group we continued to work in our unit on wondering. We worked with the phrase "I think ______________ because ...." to help us use the text as evidence for our thinking. We read The Ghost-Eye Tree by Bill Martin, Jr. and John Archambault and Galimoto by Karen Lynn Williams. In both stories we practiced using our visualizing, connecting, inferring and wondering skills to help us gather information from the stories that were not explicitly written by the authors. We really enjoyed The Ghost-Eye Tree because we thought Bill Martin did a fantastic job writing the dialog between an older sister and her little brother. It sounded like he had listened in on some of our conversations with siblings!

Miss Varrell also conferred with children to talk with them about their reading logs and independent book choices. She will continue to listen and talk with children next week too.

In writing this week we created a writing sample for our third grade teachers to highlight our best writing. We had a choice of writing a narrative, informative or persuasive paragraph. Miss Varrell will save these paragraphs and make sure they get to the third grade teachers next year. We also used some of our writing time to work on creative projects. Some of us were writing poems, some were writing stories, some were making posters and games and some were editing, revising and proofreading paragraphs. We all hope to publish at least one piece of writing before the end of school.

In math we began working in the Step Up to Third Grade mini unit in our enVision math program. Believe it or not we have been working on multiplication, division and writing stories that include multiplication and division! Miss Varrell is so impressed and proud of our learning! Ask us to draw a simple multiplication or division problem and then write a story about it! At the end of the week we took our final Symphony math assessment in the computer lab. This assessment is not used for report cards but helps teachers to spot-check which students may need extra help in the upcoming school year and allows administrators to collect data for communication with the department of education.

Weekend Challenge Activity: Write a letter to your kindergarten or first grade teacher telling her what you learned this year in second grade! Bring it to school on Monday and we'll send your letter to your teacher.

F.Y.I. 

• Thank you, thank you, thank you to Ms. Govoni, Mrs. Nicholas and all the parent and teen volunteers who made Field Day another success. The weather was spectacular, albeit after a cool, overcast start, and the children had a wonderful time. We are so lucky to have such kind, caring and generous families at Pine Glen. Thank you again for all who donated their time and services to this wonderful annual event.
• At the risk of creating a *spoiler alert*, you should know that at the end of the year, I usually try to give each student a CD of the photos I have taken throughout the year as a memento of second grade. If you would prefer to have the pictures on a flash drive in place of a CD, please feel free to send one in to school with your child's name on it by Wednesday June 18 and I will put the photos on that instead and send it home with your child on the last day of school. :)
• Congratulations to all the graduates of 2014! Best of luck to my former second graders. :) Make your family and me proud!

• Melanie A.
• Joshua C.
• Joe C.
• Monica C.
• Marina C.
• Melissa D.
• Stephanie D.
• Ian F.
• Jonathan G.
• Nazifa H.
• Taylor M.
• Ellie M.
• Bobby M.
• Alex R.
• Derek R.
• Devin R.
• Keri Ann S.
• Asa T.
• Student Teacher Ms. Lucero, now a master teacher of 10 years!