October 28- November 1

Hi Parents,

Reading

Our book reports are finished and now we are ready to share our hard work. We will spend a few days presenting our book reports and pumpkin characters! Please have your child bring his or her pumpkin to school on Monday so we will be ready to present! Pumpkins will go home on Halloween.

On Friday we will be starting a unit on nonfiction texts. If you go to Barnes and Noble or the library with your child, this would be a great week to to check out a few nonfiction books!  

Writing

We will focus on the season this week with fun and relevant to second grader writing.  We will write a pro and con list of the reasons for eating candy, we will complete and share Frankenstein stories and we will write about what we did for Halloween.  We will also do some fun ABC sorting exercises and word work practice.  This is a fun week, and we will stay busy with lots of exciting writing to keep us focused at school!

Spelling

Our spelling words focus on words with beginning sh-, ch-, and th- sounds. Words will go home on Monday and we will check our learning on Friday.  Remember that we are not trying to memorize our word lists, but practicing the spelling pattern.  If you cut out and sort the home lists and brainstorm other words that fit the pattern together, then your child should do great on their surprise words by applying what they learned.

Math

We’re beginning a new unit on money this week.  We will introduce pennies, nickels and dimes. Counting coins by 1s for pennies, by 5s for nickels and 10s for dimes will be reviewed.  Then we will challenge students to begin counting collections of coins and teach them strategies for money problem solving.  Students will share out strategies for counting with their class. Money games will be played to help reinforce coin recognition and adding up the values.  At the end of the week, we will have a Halloween Math Stations Lab where we’ll be incorporating our Math TEKS with money, patterns, adding, subtracting, counting and reasonableness.  Here is the link to sign up to help with our fun day: http://www.signupgenius.com/go/70A0D4EA8AF229-halloween/341045

Social Studies

We will be finishing up our class candy election activity and continue to discuss the voting and election process this week. We will also discuss the importance of voting and how citizens can participate in their own governance through staying informed of what public officials are doing and by volunteering in government functions. We will take an assessment over all that we have learned at the end of the week.  

Reminders:

• Life journals are due on Friday.
• Library day is Thursday.
• October 30, 2013    Early Release