Getting Into the Swing of Things!

     This past Thursday we welcomed our parents into our school for curriculum night!  It was great to see so many faces. We hope you enjoyed getting a peek at what life in second grade is like! As I mentioned that night, if you are interested in having your email address shared with the other families in the class, you can either leave a comment on this blog post or send me an email to let me know. I will send out an updated address list later this week. Also, the book order you received at curriculum night is due this Friday. There will be a new book order sent home every other month.
     This week we really started getting into the swing of things! We have most of our routines and procedures down and are now working on mastering them. We are well into our Everyday Math curriculum and started our nightly math Home Links on Wednesday night. Information on practicing Xtra Math at home was in the folder you received on curriculum night.  Yesterday we had our first lesson on answering math open response questions. Everyone did a great job as we worked through two problems together. We learned to read the entire problem first, highlight the question being asked, underline the key words, choose the appropriate strategy for solving the problem, actually solve the problem, record our answer, explain our thinking, and check our work. Next Friday students will work on a similar problem more independently. We also began our addition fact quizzes this week and will be working on practicing our addition facts in class.
     We are nearly done with our reading assessments and will be starting our guided reading groups shortly. The students are working on mastering our Daily 5 literacy routines. Right now we are working to build our stamina as we read to self, work on writing, and read to someone. We will be adding in listen to reading later this week. The final part of Daily 5 is word work and that will begin the first week in October.  This past week we focused on learning the expectations for all written work in second grade. You received a copy of these expectations and a copy of our personal word wall in your folder from curriculum night. The reading log that we discussed Thursday night will go home for the first time on Monday! Be sure to keep this in a safe place and return it to school on Friday.
    I hope that everyone has a wonderful week! I will be contacting those who expressed interest in volunteering later this week!