September 2012 - Second Grade

Welcome everyone to 2012/2013 Blog! 

So far it has been an exciting beginning to our school year.  We are all getting to know each other and develop our routines.  It was a pleasure to see all of you at Back to School Night.  As you heard, there are so many facets to second grade.  As we proceed through we are all learning what is expected of us, we are bonding with new classmates, becoming aware of the routine, meeting new teachers, and having fun while learning!

Each morning the children come in and "pop" their balloon for attendance on the Smart Board.  We continue with our morning meeting on the SB while doing calendar, fact families, feelings, weather, specials for the day, and perhaps a questions on the graph once in a while. Whoever is calendar for that week gets to run the meeting and SB, and let me tell you - they are fabulous at it!!

Part of my job is getting to know your child as an individual.  As we proceed through the year I will be assessing your child in all academic areas.  We have been reviewing math and reading concepts from first grade and will continue to do this as I introduce each subject and skill.  Second grade is a full year of social and academic growth.  As we go through the months you will see how your child becomes more responsible in and out of the classroom by their actions, their workload, and how they become a better citizen all around. 

Our two second grades are a group of 18 students.  Mrs. Cannizzo and I work together several times during the week, which the children love.  They not only get to see their friends in the other class but get to form new relationships they never had a chance to.

In spelling and phonics we have been reviewing consonants and consonant blends.  It would be appreciated if you reviewed this at home, too, through their reading.  As we work on our units in spelling, vocabulary is introduced through these lessons.  As we are exposed to a broader vocabulary our decoding skills will be sharpened too. 

We finished our first of many books - Flat Stanley By Jeff Brown.  The children loved hearing of his flat adventure.  We "picked" the book apart by writing a post-it note for each chapter.  They would reread the chapter at home and come to school with a comment, question, thought, prediction, or a word they did not quite understand.  We would go through each note altogether and talk about it.  This gave us the chance to get to know the characters indepth and hear each others thoughts.  I have many other books in the Flat Stanley series in our class library that the children are more than welcome to take home to read through their book baggy.

Math has gotten off to a fun beginning!  We have worked on number sense, ordinal numbers, and odd/even.  This coming week will include skip counting, more than/less than, and patterning.  We have been working on the Smart Board with some awesome lessons. 

Science has been very interesting so far - I am sure the children have told you about our germ unit.  This past week we worked on an experiement with potatoes.  Each table had four slices that we either blew on, rubbed on the table, touched with our hands, or just placed in a bag without touching.  We then placed these bags into a dark closet and will take them out on Monday.  We will then use the iPad Microscope to see any germs that have appeared on the individual slices.  This is fun while learning!!

We have begun touring the world through the iPad app National Geographic.  We have had a virtual tour of the Earth in satelite and plainview.  We could see how the earth looks comparing how much water there is to land.  We zoomed in on our continent, country, state, town, and then street.  Mrs. Burg came in to help us make a PowerPoint lesson with this information called "Where We Live."  You should see the work come home this week.  The children are very savy on the laptops too!!

As you can see we have had a busy month!  There is more to come so stay tuned to our Blog. 

 If you need to reach me you can email at dpedde@whschool.org or call 908-754-1882 Ext. 174. 

Below are some reminders for October and Novemer:
Oct. 1 - School Pictures - 1:40 in the Oakwood Room
Oct. 8 - News report due this week - paper to come home on Monday
Oct. 13 - Fall Fair - Don't forget to contribute to our second grade movie basket!
Oct. 15 - No school - Conference for teachers
Oct. 18 - UN Day lunch - details to follow
Oct. 25 - Book report due - fiction book
Oct. 31 - Halloween Party and Parade - 1:30 to help change into costumes- 2:00 parade in Laidlaw gym.

Nov. 5 - News report due week of
Nov. 13 - no school - faculty inservice
Nov. 21 - 23  Thanksgiving break

**Please check the schedules that were sent home for when your child has been assigned for teacher of the day and scientist of the day.

I hope you enjoy the pictures and sharing part of our day!  Please let me know your thoughts about our Blog!!

Mrs. Pedde  :)