Week of January 7th

Happy New Year! I trust you had a wonderful Winter Break. I sure did. My husband and I celebrated our third wedding anniversary, our niece Kyla's 2nd birthday, we welcomed twin nephews into the family, and found out that we are having another GIRL!! These are just a few of the amazing things that happened over the past two weeks. This break was a reminder of just how blessed we are! Thank you so very much for the cards, generous gifts and sweet words. I am so thankful for each of your families.

I have had a great time hearing stories from the kiddos about all of the exciting things that your families experienced. Last week, we jumped right in. The kids did an amazing job of getting back into the swing of things. This is one of my favorite times of year. The students come back refreshed and are excited to get going on this last "leg" before third grade! This is also a great time because things slow down a bit in terms of our schedule. The program is done. Poetry in the Park is done. Fall Festival is done. The International Festival is done. WOW! We sure accomplished a TON in the first half of the year. Thank you for all of your hard work and support.

To those of you who participated in the International Festival, it was amazing! What a special time of learning and fellowship it was for not only the students, but the adults as well!

Here are some of the things we will be working on this week:

In Reading Workshop, we will be starting a new unit on friendship. We will be studying friendship in stories and how there are good times and bad times. We will learn how to get to know the characters in our stories. This is an excellent unit for so many reasons and definitely one of my favorites!

In Spelling/Word Work, our words this week are changing a singular word to a plural word by dropping the y and adding ies. Remember the goal of spelling is for the students to learn the rule behind the words not just the words. We ultimately want them to apply the spelling skills to their written work! Your child will also be given five individualized high frequency words. On the assessment, I will give them 5 of the given spelling words and then 5 words that they did not study but that follow the same rule. Thank you for working with them every day at home!

In Writing Workshop, we are working on revision. The students worked with their partners today. They took turns reading their stories, giving compliments to one another and asking questions to help one another add details to their stories.

In Math, we will be talking about Paper-and-Pencil Addition Strategies as well as the Partial-Sums Addition Algorithm. Please make sure to have your child explain to you what they are learning as well as reading the directions. These strategies may seem different from how you add, so please given them the opportunity to share and complete the problems using these strategies.

BOX TOPS
We are currently in 2nd place for the box top competition. We have two weeks to bring in as many box tops as possible. Recruit your neighbors and family members :). I joke, however, the collection of box tops provide great things for our school.

Have a fantastic week! Library checkout is on Thursday this week due to Picture Lady tomorrow afternoon.