Oct. 25th News

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Mrs. Healey’s Classroom News (10/25/15)

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What We’ve Been Up To:

Happy Halloween Week! Just a reminder that the Owls will be celebrating Halloween with "Holey" Pumpkin Day this Friday, October 30th. Please send your child in with one, small carving pumpkin by Thursday, Oct. 29th. Please have the top cut (around the stem) and the guts scraped loose (but still intact!). After a day of pumpkin fun, we'll be culminating with our pumpkin lantern lighting. If you'd like to join us on Friday at 1:30 for this special celebration, we'd love to have you!

*Word Study: We continue to move forward with our spelling word sorts. These second graders have been doing a fantastic job following the many routines and procedures of our word study program. Thank you for your efforts at home! To continue the momentum, spelling sorts will be sent home this week, however, there will be no math homework for the holiday week. In addition to the activities associated with our word sorts, our word study time is also spent on grammar concepts. While studying adjectives, students had a great time creating jack-o-lanterns representing different adjectives!! Take a look at their clever creations!

 

*Reading: We jumped right into our second unit of study this week: Becoming Experts! Students learned that to become "experts" on a topic they have to read lots and lots of nonfiction books. We reviewed nonfiction text features (table of contents, glossary, bold words, captions, photographs, diagrams) and shopped for new books. We learned that "just-right" nonfiction books are a little different than "just-right" fiction books, as we can obtain a lot of information from diagrams and photographs in nonfiction texts.

     Our focus for the week included: 

• Nonfiction Readers Grow Knowledge!
• Pay attention to key details
• Put the parts of the text together in your mind
• Ask questions
• Think, what is this book (and this part) teaching me?

 

* Reading Buddies: Thank you for sending in flashlights last week to support our flashlight read! It was SO fun turning off the lights, reading Halloween stories by flashlight! Our fifth grade reading buddies will join us the morning of "Holey" Pumpkin Day to help us with our pumpkin math. We're very lucky to be working with them this year!

 

 

Have a great, last week of October! This year is truly flying by!

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Coming Up:

- Thursday, Oct. 29th: Pumpkins Due
- Friday, Oct.30th: "Holey Pumpkin Day"; join us for our lantern lighting celebration from 1:30-2:00 if you're free!
- Thursday, Nov. 5th: Early Release (first day of conferences; reminder slips will be sent home this week)
- Friday, Nov. 6th: No School, Teacher In-Service Day