Reminder- The students are to wear their uniforms to school.  They may bring their Halloween costumes.  They will be changing into their costumes after Mass and gym.

First grade has math homework tonight.

*We will not have a spelling list this week.

*Thursday the students may bring their costumes to change into after Mass.

*We will have our Halloween party on Thursday morning at 10:00.

*Our class won the Mind Marathon pizza party.  We will be having pizza on Thursday at 11:00.

*Thursday is an early dismissal - 11:30.

Second Grade Math

We have been spending a lot of time lately on ungrouping in subtraction.  This is the same system most of us learned in second grade except they called it regrouping or borrowing.  Student progress has been great, and though sometimes we forget a step, we are getting better.  You may notice that sometimes papers have two scores on them.  I believe that seatwork is a learning process, and I want the kids to correct their answers to find out where their mistakes are.  I like to have them make corrections in the room so I can give them immediate help.  I record their new scores with corrections made.  

In math facts, we have about 6 kids that are two levels away from starting multiplication. That's awesome.  We test facts every Thursday so if your child can not find their facts sheet, you can email me for a new one. I give the students 4 minutes, but they generally finish before then.  

Second Grade Phonics

Our focus right now is suffixes - es, ed, est, en, s, less, ment, ing, er, ish, able, ful, and ness.  Learning base words and adding suffixes is actually a good way to learn to spell correctly.   First we write our base word, and then we add our suffix. This is especially helpful in knowing if the suffix is s or es. We are also learning how to divide words into syllables.  These longer words can sometimes be intimidating for less confident readers, but when we isolate words into smaller parts,it helps to be able to able to decode them as well as spell them. 

Art Update - Grades 1 and 2 are doing an excellent job in STREAM working on the mosaic birdbaths. One is almost complete. In class we are working on our designs for other birdbaths. The kids have great ideas. The challenge for them is to transfer their idea and drawing into a tile design. They are doing a great job! I'm really proud of them.

Tomorrow is going to be a Spirit Dress Down Day.  The students may wear anything that has Res on it or our school colors - green and white.


Also - Today we read the story Scary Party by Sue Hendra.  Then we divided ourselves into the parts of the book and acted out the story.  Here's a cute picture!

After that we listened to some fun Halloween music!  I found out their favorites are The Monster Mash, Purple People Eater, and Ghostbusters.  :)

First grade has math homework tonight.

Tomorrow is the Diocesan Mass at the Resch Center.
Everyone needs to either bring a bag lunch or you indicated that  your child would have a lunch (turkey and cheese sandwich) from the hot lunch program.

The list of students that I have that is taking the lunch from the hot lunch program is Cullan, Ella, Katey, Landon, Misha, Madison, Gabriel, Monika, and Clara.

If your child is bringing a lunch, there are a few guidelines - All lunches must be in a consumable bag (brown bag lunch).  Everything that is in their lunch must be consumable - plastic silverware, baggies, etc.  We will not be bringing the lunches back with us to school...so no lunch boxes, tupperware, silverware, etc.  Also - no soda is allowed.  I'll put all of the lunches together in a bag and pass them out at lunch time.

Weekly Spelling Lists

First Grade - Phonetic List - Short o Words
box
fox
top
job
not
hop
trot
spot
chop
frog

First Grade - High Frequency List - Words 51-60
out
them
then
she
many
some
so
these
would
other

Second Grade - Phonetic List - Short u Words
just
hunt
club
drum
jump
dust
bump
until
ugly
sunny

Second Grade - High-Frequency List - Words 241-250
paper
hard
near
sentence
better
best
across
during
today
however



*Writer's Workshop -
Today I sent home a sheet of paper called an interest inventory.  Please fill this out at home and return it to school.  I will glue these sheets into the back of the writer's workshop notebooks.  This can help the students out when they can't think of what to write about.  :)

Reminder - Tomorrow is a Packer Dress Down Day and the Mind Marathon!

First Grade Math - This week we finished unit 2 and we are now moving on to unit 3.  We are working on finding the missing partner in the equation.  We are doing this by using math mountains, circle drawings, and writing out the equations both horizontally and vertically.

First Grade Phonics - This week we finished unit 3 and we are now moving on to unit 4.  Unit 3 focused on digraphs.  We even made some cute digraph spiders.  :)  Starting today we will be learning about bonus letters.  Bonus letters are the letter f, l, and s.  When word is one syllable, has a short vowel, and it ends with f, l, or s, usually you double the final letter.  (Ex. mass, cuff, ball)

Reading - We are now into our second week of Daily 5 and reading groups.  It is going great!  Right now we currently have four different reading groups.  I meet with each group at least every other day. When the students are not with me, they are in their Daily 5 centers - Read to Self, Read to Someone, Work on Writing, Word Work, and Listening.  They may also work on Odyssey at this time.  The Word Work focus changes every two weeks.  Currently we have Halloween Word Work.  We learned some Halloween poems.  The students are putting the poems in order on note cards or they are filling in the missing words in a cloze activity.  Next week Word Work will also include making a Halloween book.  During the Halloween season, I've also added Halloween sticker stories to Work on Writing.  The students may choose up to 5 Halloween stickers and use them with an illustration.  Then they write a story about their picture.  This has been a popular center.

Writing - We have been writing in our journals.  Next week we will also be doing a pumpkin story and art project.  The following week we will be starting writer's workshop.

Handwriting - We are plugging away in our books.  Each time we have handwriting the first graders work on one letter and the second graders work on two.  The focus is always to have the students form the letters the correct way and put the letters in the correct spaces.

Religion - This week we finished chapter 3 in our book.  The first three chapters all dealt with creation.  We have been making these beautiful creation books.  We are almost done.  Each week we also read a Promise Paper.  The Promise Papers go through the weekly Gospel and then there are activities that focus on the Gospel message.  On Fridays Ms. McAllister has been coming into our classroom to share a Religion lesson with us.  She has been teaching the students about the Bible and Pope Francis.

Science - In science we are learning about weather.  This week we had a lesson where we had two different water temperatures - hot and cold.  We put thermometers in each bowl and read the thermometers.  The students loved watching the mercury go up and down quickly as they switched which bowl the thermometer was in.

Mass - We were scheduled to have the Mass on October 22,  Due to the Diocesan Mass on October 21, we are not going to have Mass at Res on the 22nd.  Our next Mass will now be on December 17.

Art - We continue work on our STREAM mosaic bird baths. Kids are doing great so far on this project. We also read a book called, ART. This is a story about a boy named ART who loves ART, and uses all different types of lines to create his ART. At the end of the story his mom hangs his ART on the refrig because she loves ART. We practiced a variety of these lines on large paper and will be using this paper for the background of another project at a later time. We will be looking at master art work to see how artists use lines in their ART.


Gym - We are working on racquet skills with high bounce foam balls.  Occasionally, they will be also working on upper body strength with scooters.

First grade has math homework tonight.

Thank you to Katie Skurka, Julie Van Pay, and Kristin Warden.   They have volunteered to be our room parents.  :)

Room Parents -

This year something happened and room parents were never assigned.  The room parents help out with planning parties, organizing class auction items, things like that.  Halloween is coming up and the kids would like to have a little celebration.  :)  If anyone is interested in taking this on, please let me know.

Thank you!

Weekly Spelling Lists

First Grade Phonetic List - Short i Words
sit
his
in
tip
wig
if
him
did
pin
zip

First Grade High-Frequency List - Words 41-50
which
their
said
if
do
will
each
about
how
up

Second Grade Phonetic List - Short o Words
stop
pond
spot
cot
fog
nod
block
body
doll
popcorn

Second Grade High-Frequency List - Words 231-240
night
picture
being
study
second
soon
story
since
white
ever

First Grade Math Facts -

Today the students will be coming home with math facts to practice at home.
Each Thursday we will have a little quiz on the facts they are practicing at home.  The students will have three minutes to complete their facts.  If they score 80% or higher, they'll move on to the next set of facts.

First grade has math homework tonight.

Pajama Day!

Don't forget - Pajama Day tomorrow.

Weekly Spelling Lists

First Grade - Phonetic List - Short e Words
let
pen
met
bed
yes
leg
fed
vest
mend
mess

First Grade - High-Frequency List - Words 31-40
but
what
all
were
when
we
there
can
an
your

Second Grade - Phonetic List - Short i Words
hit
fill
will
wind
miss
milk
win
fish
little
kitten

Second Grade - High-Frequency List - Words 221-230
need
far
hand
high
year
mother
light
country
father
let


***PBIS***

PBIS - We call it Positive Behavior In School.  :)

At Res when the students get caught doing something good they can earn a Faith Shield.  We have two types of rewards that the students may earn with their Faith Shields.  The students may put them in the whole school bucket or the class bucket.

If they put them in the whole school bucket, they are brought up at Mass on Thursday.  On Monday all of the school's Faith Shields go into one bucket.  Then the students have a chance to win something if their name is picked.  They can win things like sitting in the principal's chair for the day, extra recess time, a pizza party for you and a friend, an ice cream party for you and a friend, etc.

If they put them in the class bucket, they go towards a reward that the class has agreed on.  The reward our class wanted (and Mrs. Franz approved) was a movie and pajama day.  To earn our class reward, the students need to collect 400 Faith Shields.  Well, last week we had a PBIS assembly.  Each of the students earned 16 Faith Shields.  Most of them went into our class bucket.  We have already reached the 400 mark!  So...

The students will have a pajama day this week Wednesday.  They may wear their pajamas to school. They asked if they could also bring a stuffed animal if they wanted to and I told them they could. We just finished reading the book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory today so that is the movie that we will watch on Wednesday.

Mass Schedule

This year first and second grade will be leading mass on -
October 22
December 17
February 18
May 5  (May Crowning - 2nd grade)


First Communion

Second Grade Parents -
Just a heads up - First Communion classes will begin in April.  To sign your child up for First Communion, you need to visit the Resurrection Parish website.

A few updates -

Reading - Daily 5 is going great!  The students are building their stamina!  Almost everyone has done running records - we are just about ready to start groups.  We will most likely start with groups next week mid-week.

First grade math - We have been learning different strategies for adding.  Today we started subtraction.  We are learning how to make circle drawings to figure out subtraction stories.

First grade phonics - We are learning about digraphs.  The digraphs we use are sh, ch, wh, th, and ck.  Today we also played a word family game similar to Uno.  They had a blast!

Spelling - Tomorrow we have our first test!

Science - We are working on our weather Einstein kit.  This week we spent a lot of time working with thermometers.  Since September ended we also made a graph of the cloud cover, precipitation, and wind that we had recorded for the month.  I heard back from Mr. Steve Beylon from channel 2.  He will be visiting with our classroom on Monday, November 9th.

Religion - This week we learned about different items, places, etc. that are in our church.  We then spent two Religion periods in our church going on a tour.



***Second grade has phonics homework tonight***

ART

This week we discussed a painting by Carmen Garza called Birthday BBQ. She is a Mexican American artist that loves to depict scenes of family life and family celebrations. This painting has lots of detail telling the story of an extended family enjoying a backyard BBQ birthday party. Some characters are grilling, swinging at the pinata, caring for children, serving food, visiting with relatives, and sitting by the bonfire. We focused our discussion on how art can tell a story. After the discussion, students illustrated their own story of something fun they did as a family this past summer.