Weekly Newsletter for 9/14/18

Dear Room 4 & 7 Families,

Thank you for your continued support and donations towards our classroom. We look forward to meeting you at Back to School night next Tuesday, September 18th. Next Tuesday will be an extra minimum day with dismissal at 1:00 pm

Homework…

Week 1 homework was passed out this week in your child’s Friday folder along with other papers and handouts from the week. Please keep the extra papers at home and return your child’s homework on the following Friday in their Friday folder. The CD attached to Week 1 homework is for you to keep and goes along with the lessons for the Chinese homework this year, which includes the sound files for the reading passages.

Our homework is assigned Monday-Friday, however we give it out early on Friday so your family has extra time to complete the packet and so your child can be ready for the Mandarin dictation test on Friday. The math pages cover content that has already been taught in class and is a review. The Chinese homework is the content that will be taught the following week, so your child will not be familiar with the content on Friday-Sunday because it has not been taught yet. Please hold off on the Chinese homework until the following week and help your child pace their homework packet by working on it regularly every day.

This year we will not be assigning spelling homework in the packet so that your child may focus on the other pages. If you’d like to study spelling at home, you can view a list of words for each week of homework for the year here: https://graceyou.com/spellinghomework/

The link to the quizlet and other resources for Week 1 homework is available here: https://graceyou.com/week-1/

This week in English Language Arts/Writing…

We have been working on learning how to establish a responsible, safe, and supportive learning community this year by listening to stories and discussing our responsibilities as students and how to get along with others. This week we worked on short and long vowels. We finished our selfie project where we wrote about ourselves, what we did this summer, and our goals for this year.

This week in Math…

We have been working on decomposing numbers using math mountains, learning multiple methods for solving addition problems (count on, math picture, doubles, etc.) and equation chains. Second grade has a big emphasis on solving word problems and we will continuously be working on identifying strategies and vocabulary that will help us identify whether we should add or subtract. We are also reviewing our math facts. Please help your child practice their math fact fluency when adding and subtracting between numbers 1-30.

This week in Chinese…

In our Mandarin class, we continue to reinforce the class and school expectations, routines and procedures; classroom expressions; numbers (1 – 20); days of the week (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday). We began to practice our new materials, MeiZhou Chinese, Level 2, and started Lesson 1 on pictographs. We practiced the passage out loud, the sentences in a dialog, lesson 1 week 1 vocabulary (cow, butter, beef, horse, road, toilet, bird, little, bird, bird nest, fish, shark, to fish, name, famous, word, character, to write), and assigned related worksheets as in-class activities. We also implement math bridge and story time on our carpet as well as played games and other kinetic activities.      

Important Dates:

• 9/18/18 – Back to School Night/Minimum Day
• 9/26/18 – Watch Dog Donut Social
• 9/28/18 – Watch Dog Movie Night
• 10/2/18 – PTA Board Meeting

Have a great weekend!

-Ms. You