*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.