Mrs. Dombrowski's Second Grade Classroom Blog: Salutations!

Salutations 2B Families!

In Chapter 9 of Charlotte's Web Charlotte told Wilbur, "Slowly, slowly! Never hurry and never worry!" What a great mantra to live by. We tried to adopt this as we were entering and exiting the classroom door this week.

Thank you to all of the families who have donated Wish List items. I appreciate it so very much. It might not seem like a big deal but it makes a BIG difference in the life of a teacher. I thank you from the bottom of my heart. There are still a few things on our list if you are able to donate...please see the sidebar :-).

Happy Birthday Francesca and John Paul 8/22

Your children did a great job on their MAP Testing yesterday! It was their first time taking a computer assessment like this one and we are so proud of how hard they worked. They have memorized how to fill in the missing words when I say, "I will do my BEST...I will WORK HARD...I won't GIVE UP!" It's a beautiful thing to hear! They have also been working diligently on our classroom pledge each morning.

MAP Testing

Grandparent's Day ~ RSVP here: http://www.signupgenius.com/go/30e084da5a929aa8-grandparents

As a grandparent of an Archway Arete student, we hope you can join us for our first annual Grandparents Day Event! Coffee and refreshments will be served in our new library with the headmaster at 8am. An assembly begins at 8:30am where you can enjoy a song and poem recitation by our students. Virtue awards will also be presented. After the assembly you will have the chance to sign up for our special "Heritage Society" and have a tour of our campus. We hope you can join us for this special event!

Reserved parking in the front of the building will begin at 8am and please sign in at the front office desk before proceeding to the library or assembly. Overflow parking will be available at "The Falls" event center just East of our campus on Baseline Road.

DIBELS testing will begin next week. DIBELS is done three times to a year to measure your child's growth in reading. This is when we will assess nonsense word fluency (looking for phonemic awareness), oral reading fluency (reading out loud ~ 60 seconds timed), and retell (comprehension). I am looking forward to this one on one time with each of your children to listen to them read out loud to me. I should be able to identify areas for growth. I will communicate results with you when we are finished. It will take a little over a week to complete.

Curriculum Next Week 8/29-9/2:

Language Arts:
Poetry: The students will recite Bed in Summer in front of the class this week! As you can tell from the audio clip, they are doing great! I can't wait to hear the recitations again this week! On Monday, in your child's red folder, you will receive our next recitation: Something Told by the Wild Geese by Rachel Field. Please start to work on memorizing stanza 1 with your child this week!

Literature: We will continue to read Charlotte's Web chapters 10-12 this week. We will talk about what character traits make a good friend, and identify friendships in our lives that have virtuous character traits! We will create a "class web" by throwing a ball of yarn to a classmate while telling them why they are such a great friend!

Spalding: Please continue to practice phonograms and handwriting at home with your child (3-5 minutes of phonogram practice each evening is a great goal). Handwriting is looking great! Thank you for your diligent support with it!

Spelling words for next week...

Monday: move, delay, pound, behind, around, burn, camp, bear, bare, clear
Tuesday: clean, spell, poor, finish, hurt, maybe, across, tonight, tenth, sir
Wednesday: these, those, club, seen, see, felt, full, fail, setting, set

Writing/Grammar: Mrs. Smith has been doing a great job teaching Writing & Grammar! Next week we will work on central ideas of a narrative passage, commands, and questions. We will also review the rules of punctuation and capitalization.
Mrs. Smith also wanted to share the Grammar Jingles with you that we have been using in class. Here they are:

Sentence Jingle: https://youtu.be/RglRL1w_Umw
Noun Jingle: https://youtu.be/cSJizZdGG0k
Verb Jingle: https://youtu.be/bPGuiUmuY9g

Math: This week students will review addition and subtraction of one digit numbers using mental math strategies. We will also explore word problems, and work on mental math where renaming occurs. Please help your child "visualize" math by asking them their math facts in the car and encouraging them not to use their fingers. Talk about "breaking apart" the number, for example; eight can be broken down in to 5 and 3, or 6 and 2. In the problem 4 + 8 we will talk to the students about breaking down 8 into something that can help the 4 make 10, so now our new problem is 10+2.

Rocket Math is going well! Please continue to practice flashcards at home to build fact fluency.

Rocket Math

History: We are traveling to South America is history this week! We are going to learn about Simon Bolivar, and why he is was so important to the people of South America. We will learn about life in the central Andes and discuss how it is different from lifestyles in other places. The students will locate and describe the four countries that make up the southern cone.
Don't forget about the Island Project (due September 7th). Here are the directions and rubric: (See the blog post from last week for example pictures)

Rubric

Science: Next week we will conclude our unit on the Seasons of the Year. Be sure to ask your young scientist about "The Reasons for the Seasons" and see if they can tell you about the tilt of planet earth. We will explore more closely the affect each season has on the weather, humans, plants, and animals.