2H Class Blog!: Mar. 20th News

********************************************************************************************************************

Mrs. Healey’s Classroom News (3/20/16)

********************************************************************************************************************

Happy First Day of Spring!

The beanstalks have begun their journey up to the Giant's castle!

*St. Patrick's Day: On Tuesday, our little Owls were in for quite a surprise when they arrived at school!

It seemed as though some small creature (a leprechaun perhaps) visited our classroom and sprinkled the tables (and floor!) with gold glitter and delicious, golden sweets! At morning meeting we worked hard to divide the treats equally among all of our friends. In honor of this holiday, we enjoyed thinking about luck and what we had in our lives that we feel lucky for. This led into our St. Patty's craft where each pot of gold showed who was worth MORE than gold :)

Hope everyone's St. Patrick's Day was filled with lots of luck & love!!

*Fairy Tales: Our reading work continues within our fairy tale unit. This week we participated in another design challenge in which the Owls needed to help Cinderella get to the ball (the Fairy Godmother needed a night off!). Working by themselves, with a partner, or in a group, students used various materials to create a wind-powered coach for Cinderella. These engineers are really getting the hang of designing, creating, testing, and modifying---and they have a ball doing it!

*Rocket Math: We have added an exciting new math fact component to our Everyday Math routine: ROCKET MATH! Rocket Math is a daily, paper and pencil, supplemental, math facts practice curriculum. Each student has an individual goal of how many problems they need to correctly complete in one minute. Each level reviews only two new facts and their inverses. After learning the routines and procdures, each Owl will be given their very first, level A, timed assessment! Some will pass the level on the first try, while others will need continued practice. Any day your child does not meet their goal, he or she will have that day's practice sheet to bring home. In addition to their nightly homework, please have them review their fact sheet.

We plan to begin this math fact work on Monday and will aim to integrate the program three times per week. Learning all the facts is a lot of work, but future success in math is dependent upon knowing the facts so well that the answers come automatically without much thinking. Thank you very much for you support of this critical learning goal. If you have any questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to contact me.

For some fun web-based fact practice sites, visit:

Math Fact Cafe

Fact Monster

Math Fact Shoot-Out

*Iditaread: I hope the long weekend provided time for our Owl mushers to gain some serious mileage on the race to Nome. Early in the week, we celebrated another musher making his way to Nome. I suspect that tomorrow, we will see many more racers cross the finish line! Keep up the great work, readers!