Thursday, Sept. 30th

HW Binder Due back tomorrow! Please make sure all the papers are OUT of the orange folder as well.  I will be collecting all the HW tomorrow morning. 
Today in class we recieved another (and final) insect! Now we have milkweed beg eggs to go along with our mealworms (that have officially starting to become adult beetles today) and caterpillars (who are about to become butterflies any day now!)
We also practice doubles facts in addition and played an addition math game that will help us improve our mental math.
In reading we have been focusing on word chunks and rhymes.  We will be starting our reading groups next week!! This will be a great oppurtunity for all the students to read at their level with peers who are also on their level.  We read on our level in class, but this will be even better because the whole class will be leveled! I can't wait :)

Wednesday, September 29th

The kids all looked SO cute for picture day today!! I love seeing them in their Sunday-best :)
Today in reading we sorted words by their word family and talked about rhyming words.  Next week we will start reading fall poetry. In writing we worked on using details in the our writing.  Lots of students use TONS of detail when telling a story orally but not in writing- we want to change that!
In math we learned addition patterns when adding 0, 1 and doubles (example: 4 + 4, 6 + 6, etc.) We also played a math game.

Reminders: HW binder is due Friday, Pizza sales after school start tomorrow :)

BRING A BOARD GAME OR TWO TO SCHOOL TOMORROW BECAUSE IT IS GAME DAY FOR ALL THE KIDS WHO HAVE BEEN ON GREEN (for all or most of the days) THIS YEAR!!!

Tuesday, Sept. 28th

PICTURE DAY IS TOMORROW!!!!

Monday, Sept. 27th

Mondays go by so fast  for us with the late-start schedule! Today we worked on blends in reading, weekend News in writing, and number grids in math.  We also reviewed coin counting and practiced with story problems.  In science we observed our insects and wrote descriptively in our science journals about what we saw.  Ask your child about what the caterpillars were doing today- I have a feeling we will be hosting butterflies soon!

Reminder: Picture day is Wednesday.  I have only received 2 order forms back from students (these went home last week).  If you have one, please send it in.  Thanks :)

Friday, Sept. 24th

Today in class we read and wrote words with blends (br- gr- cr- sh- ch-, etc.) we also worked A LOT with phonics.  many students are still using "inventive spelling" and are not yet progressing toward learning the correct way to spell words.  I have began to stress the importance of correct spelling on classwork and homework, please reienforce this with your child at home :)
In math we started learning how to use a thermometer and measuring the temperature using a scale of 10 degrees.  We also reviewed the 3 body parts of insects and spent time observing the butterflies and mealworms.

Please look throught the HW binder tonight and let me know if there is anything you need clarification on.  Everything will be due back NEXT Friday :)

THANK YOU to Louis's mom for helping stuff HW binders today and THANK YOU to Clara's mom for binding ALL of our handwriting books last week!

Thursday, Sept. 23

Today in reading we worked on phonics and identified the variety of vowel sounds a single vowel can make.  We used our names and other words to identify these sounds.   We also did read aloud and DEAR reading, as we do every day!
In science we received a jar of caterpillars to go along with our mealworms! They are busy making their cocoons and the kids were very interested in this.  Hopefully, we will have butterflies in no time!

In math we "fed alligators" (as Nick B. put it :) ) when we talked about "greater than" and "less than."  The alligator always eats the bigger number- that is how we remember which way to draw the symbol. Ask your child about this!

Check to make sure your child has the "daily report" today.  I want all the kids to get in the habit of showing you this everyday so you will always know how his/her behavior was that day.

Tomorrow is the first day with the Homework Binder! Keep your eyes peeled for it to come home.

Wednesday, September 22nd

I hope you all recieved the "Daily Report" from your student today! This was our first day using the new form and I was glad to see that almost ALL the kids were able to report that they were on GREEN today! yaye!

Today in reading we talked about brainstorms and ideas.  We wrote a story and drew a picture that matched.  Our objective was to use only ideas from the story to make the picture- all details HAD to be in writing before they could be added to the drawing.  We posted the stories in the hallway ourside our door :)

In math we made number scrolls- some students went all the wasy up to 300- WOW!  Our goal was to go to 100.  We will save the scrolls and add to them throughout the semester.  We also took a math test in the computer lab today to help determine the level of each student.

One last thing:

Ms. Stocks will be hosting a pizza party for the students who went to summer school or completed summer school work.  The party will be held on October 5^th during lunch time.  The pizza will be eaten at lunch time that day, the children will not need to bring a lunch or buy a lunch.

Have a great night!

Tuesday, Sept. 21st

BACK TO SCHOOL NIGHT IS TONIGHT AT 7pm!! See you there :)

Today in class we read non- fiction texts (of course!), practiced using a calculator in math, observed our meal worms, and wrote about our predictions for what the meal worms MIGHT become after the metamorphis :)  There were some FUN ideas- ask your child what they think the mealworm will change into.

Monday, Sept. 20th

WOW!!! What a difference between 28 and 19!! We got so much done today :)

In reading we focused MORE on non fiction texts and also talked about vowels.  Ask your child tonight if they can come up with a word that DOESNT have a vowel in it :)  In writing we talked about ideas and wrote our weekend news (an update about our weekend).  We also found a number of ways to make a certain sum.  For example, to make the number 10 you could do 5+5 or 11-1.  We continued to add money as well (we can never get enough practice with this!)
Our mealworms were very busy today- ask you child about how the mealworms changed from the morning to the afternoon- We noticed a big difference!

Don't forget that back to school night is tomorrow at 7pm for our class (6pm if you have a kindergartener). We will start in the gym and then do two 20min. sessions in the classroom (one from 7:20 and one at 7:40) Hope to see you at either time!

Friday! Sept. 17th

Happy Friday! We made it!!  Today we used number grids in math and worked to find patterns within number grids.  We practiced counting by 3's, 5's, 10's, and 2's.  We noticed that if you add 10 to a number, the ones digit doesn't change (example: 44 + 10= 54).  

In reading we worked on phonics and read non fiction books.  We learned about the body parts of insects and what life might be like in an ant colony.  Did you know that most ants that live in ant nests are female? The boys in class didn't like the idea of living with all girls- haha. I guess they are glad they aren't ants :)

We did have 1 hour at the end of the day to spend with our NEW teachers.  Everyone was excited for this and we made it a very positive and exciting change.  No tears!  Starting Monday morning all students will line up with their NEW class on the blacktop.  There will be a new sign for Mrs. Raneri's class right next to my line.

Hope you all have a great weekend :)

Thursday, Sept. 16th

Today we read non-fiction books and talked about why informational books have bold words and glossaries.  We also reviewed diagrams and were able to find enough non-fiction insect books for the whole class to read during DEAR (drop everything and read) time :)  The books about Bees were especially popular :)  In writing we practiced more sentence structure and wrote in our journal.   In math we did some mixed review today but focused mostly on counting money.  Counting 100 dollar bills was especially challenging for some students.

No homework, no papers! I do have a small stack to send to you tomorrow so keep your eyes peeled for those. Have a good night!

Wednesday, Sept. 15th

Big News! A new second grade teacher has officially been hired :)  The kids who are moving to the new class will be doing so on Monday.  We will be doing a little something special Friday afternoon to celebrate the move and get everyone feeling comfortable :)
In other news, we learned about cicada bugs today and talked about the difference between insects and non-insects.  We practiced writing with capital letters in the correct spaces, and did some just-for-fun writing. :)  In math, we have been working with money; today we played a game using coins.  Keep practicing coin counting at home :)  We are getting better at it everyday!

Have a good night!

Tuesday, September 14th

No Homework OR papers for parents today :)  All the student work that the kids did in class today (and yesterday and the rest of the week!) will be coming home to you on Friday.  One thing that we are struggling with are: using capital letters ONLY when needed.  Many students use a capital letter randomly within their writing.  If you see this at home, please reinforce this.  Another skill we are working on is counting coins.  I can tell that some students have had practice with this and some students are just beginning to identify different coins.  If you have spare change in your pocket, try tossing it out and asking your child to "help" by counting it for you :)
We got a new student today! All the kids were very welcoming and he fit right in :)  For those of you wondering about the new classroom, we are hoping to opening it up next week. Stay tuned!

Hope you have a good night!

Monday, September 13th

The kids did a wonderful job today- I can't believe how fast they are learning our classroom routines and catching on to my daily activites.  They really are progressive quickly!
I sent home a couple of papers from the office today- the Poupard Newsletter and tri-fold.  Usually I like to save papers up until Friday, but there was information in those that I thought may be time sensitive so I sent it along.  No homework tonight but there were 3 students who didn't finish their handwriting so I sent it home.  Check with your students to make sure that they do not have handwriting still to do tonight.  I am really trying to stress the importance of finishing work in class and using time wisely.  Sending unfinished work home as homework usually helps to encourage kids to get it done in class during the time allotted.

Tonight at the dinner table try asking your student to name at leat 3 instances when they should use CAPITAL letters in writing.  We are working hard on this (and also identifying the places where we should NOT be using capital letters! This seems to be an issue with a lot of kids).

Have a great night!

Friday, September 10th

Happy Friday! Hope you all had a great 1st week back!  The kids and I spent our day reading non-fiction texts, writing about the flag raising this morning, making and reading calendars in math class, and learning about the butterfly life cycle in science!  I sent home a packet of paperwork with all the students today- the top page was my newsletter and the rest were papers from the office.  Please take the time to look through each one so that you don't miss out on any important information.
Most importantly, I hope that you saw the yellow paper stapled to the back of the packet from Ms. Stocks.  This letter listed the name of your child's New 2nd grade placement.  Thankfully, we have been given permission to open up a 3rd Second Grade classroom in order to reduce class sizes (we have 28 kids right now- yikes!)  I hate to see some of my precious students go to another class, but I am confident that this will be in the best interest of our students learning.  I will keep you posted as to when we will actually make the switch (and once we have officially hired a new teacher!) Please let me know if you have any questions!
Have a great weekend!

Thursday, Sept. 9th

Another great day! We got a lot done today and also had time to squeeze in a few things just for fun :)  The kids were really interested in Non-Fiction texts in reading and they LOVED talking about insects!! They especially wanted to know what kinds of bugs eat other bugs (I think they could have spent all day on this! haha)  Although our main objective was to identify types of insects living around us- which they did a great job on.
No Homework or papers to fill out tonight.  I do have several things that will be coming home to you tomorrow so keep an eye out for those things.

Wear Red, White & Blue tomorrow for our Sept. 11 rememberance flag raising. 
Also, if you have your summer bridge book completed or if yo uwent to summer school somewhere other than Poupard, please send me a note so I can add your child's name to the pizza party list. Thanks!

Wednesday, September 8th

Wow! What a fabulous day! We got lots of learning done today and the kids were so EXCITED about everything we did!  Today we wrote in our writer's notebook, made number lines counting by 1's, 2'2, 3's, 5's and 10's, and did some reading.  We also practiced more classroom routines and went over the rules again. Starting tomorrow we will begin our fisrt reading unit: Non-Fiction Text.  We will also be starting our first Science Unit: Insects!
There is no homework tonight and no papers or forms to fill out (unless you have something that you are still working on from yesterday or from the office).  Please remember to send a healthy snack to school with your student if you can.  The students were SO hungry for lunch so it was nice that we were able to have a quick snack to hold them over :) I am debating whether or not to start a snack calendar and have whole-class snacks each day in order to put the burden off of you of having to pack a snack every single day.  We can talk more about this a back-to-school night.  Tell me what is easiest for you!
We have gym class tomorrow so remember to wear/send sneakers!! Thanks!
Have a great night :)

**If you are reading the blog right now, please send me a quick email telling me that you have checked/seen the blog.  I am trying to get a feel for how many parents are viewing this.  Thanks! Katharine.Stewart@gpschools.org

Tuesday, Sept. 7th

Happy first day of school!!  Today you will find 3 pieces of information in your child's backpack.  One is a red polka-dot paper from me that has information about our class and 2nd grade in general.  Another is a parent questionaire with an ice cream scoop on the front; this is a form for you to complete and return to me (don't worry about trying to get it all done today! Just send it back to me by the end of the week or Monday of next week.)  The third paper is one from the lunch room regarding money accounts.  If you are missing one or more of these papers, let me know and I will send an extra home with your child tomorrow :)

The kids did a great job today! It was so nice to be able to finally see their smiling faces.  The day went by SO fast and before I knew it, it was time to go!  We did, however, have time to make a small "Back to School" book, read a story, and go over some rules. We are going to spend the first few days going over all the class rules and school rules to ensure that all the students know what they are expected to do. Tomorrow will be a FULL day of school so please be sure to send lunch or lunch money tomorrow. 

Have a great afternoon :)

Welcome!

Hi! I am so glad that you have taken the opportunity to visit our classroom blog  I will post on this blog almost everyday in order to give you info about homework, upcoming events, and current learning activities we are doing in class.  Please make sure to bookmark this page and visit it often!