Weekly Update

2G Families,
Tomorrow students will be going home with two important handouts.  One will be a parent homework sheet requesting your input prior to parent teacher conferences next month.  Please complete the form and return it to school by Monday, 10/29.  The other paper provides information on how to access Edline, a site that District 204 schools are using for school and class organization.  Please keep the log in infomation in a safe place, as the class blog will eventually be moving to this new site.  In the meantime, there is a link from the Edline site to 2G's blog. 

Reading:

          Enormous Turnip

Your child is reading The Enormous Turnip by Alexei Tolstoy. In this Russian folktale, a man plants a turnip that grows so large he can’t pull it out of the ground. He calls on other people and animals to pull up the turnip.

Please encourage your child to read The Enormous Turnip over the weekend and return the book on Monday. Vocabulary Power preceeds the story.

Focus Skill: Sequence

Vocabulary Power:

enormous-very large

granddaughter-a daughter of one’s son or daughter grew-became larger

planted-put in the ground to grow

strong-powerful

turnip-a kind of root vegetable

School-Home Connection: You might enjoy reading these folktales with your child: Peter and the Wolf retold by Michele Lemieux; The Baker’s Dozen by Heather Forest; The Little Red Hen by Byron Barton.

May Watts LMC Reading Incentive Program:

The 2nd Grade Team is asking each student to read for 300 minutes per month (10-15 minutes each night).
Once your child has recorded his/her reading minutes, I am able to see the progress report. Please encourage your child to record his/her reading minutes each night.

Writing Unit of Study: Paragraphs

In this Unit of Study, students will learn how to develop a paragraph using proper form. They will learn that a paragraph has a topic sentence (main idea), supporting ideas (reasons and details), and a summary (ending sentence). Students will have opportunities to write numerous paragraphs throughout this unit. 

Science:

We are continuing our Unit of Study about The Water Cycle. The essential questions of this unit include:

1. What are the stages of the water cycle?
2. What is evaporation?
3. What is condensation?
4. What is precipitation?
5. What is accumulation?
6. How do these stages work together in the water cycle?

Math:

I would like to thank you for your patience as the 2^nd Grade Team works through the new Common Core State Standards for Math. I hope you had a chance to read the letter that was sent home last week explaining the changes to the math curriculum. 

Beginning with Unit 3 (at the end of this week) you will receive a Family Resource Guide at the outset of each unit. This guide will outline what your child should learn along with the skills that are taught in the unit.