Math: Homelink 4.6 "Addition Number Stories"-the students use one of each diagram: "Start-Change-End" and "Total-Part-Part" to plug in information they know from the story given.  Using "mental math" adding numbers with multiples of ten, they need to make a number model  to show the process then the answer labeled with the unit the problem is about. The bottom  #'s 3-8 are simple mental addition practice.

Marvin Redpost Class President bookbags are coming home to be used for the evening's 20 minutes of reading along with the response sheet. As some students still need to finish their class questions, try to have your child return it  tomorrow.

COWS Mrs. Glynn's math "Challenge of the Week" come home today.

Library books are due tomorrow. 

Reading Logs and Book Talk are due on Friday.

School Photo Retakes happen Friday morning. If you wish this to happen, you need to return the original package. 

Math: Homelink 4.5 "Shopping at the Grocery Store"-For this lesson and sheet , the skill being practiced is estimation. Today we practiced figuring out what number we could use that would be the"close-but easier-to add" number so that the price of two items could be estimated or added mentally. For example, for $.79 we could use $.80. The hint about a price that includes 5 in the ones (ie.) $.65, is that we estimate up using $.70. By the same rule, $.44 would use $.40 in estimating. In this homework, the student needs to decide if the sum of the two items named could be covered by $1.00. The bottom is just practice adding with multiples of 10.

Scholastic Book Orders and payment by check are due by Friday 11/21. Also Friday morning is "Photo Retake Day".

Math: Homelink 4.4 "Temperature"- On the front side, the student needs to write the temperature shown on the thermometer. On the back, he needs to color in the "mercury" or bar to show the temperature indicated. Lastly, #'s 13-18 is practice adding or subtracting  with with multiples of ten.

Math: We had a lesson on thermometers and telling temperatures in both Celsius and Fahrenheit scales but as it is Friday, there is no homework coming home today for it.

Scholastic Book Orders are coming home today. There are four different brochures from which to select. Payment in check form and orders are due back next Friday, November 21st. Thanks so much to parent Rhonda Rickert, Allison's mom, for labeling these and collating these.

Backpacks may have some more notices as well as work from the past two weeks as we sorted to Portfolios today. 

Math: Homelink 4.2 "Parts-and-Total Number Stories". On this sheet they practice another organizing diagram for combining quantities into totals. Like in yesterday's "Start-Change-End" diagram, it is strongly encouraged that the children indicate with a "?" what information is being sought. The other two boxes are filled in with the information known. They get the numbers from the introductory side where four different weight packages are shown. Again , they need to make a number model that shows the operation or process used to solve the problem.

*** Orange half-sheet Confirmations slips came home with those children whose parents who returned their Parent -Conference selections.

Blue half sheet invitations came home with the children who have prepared the Veterans Day "Readers Theater" play. The time is tomorrow in our classroom at 2:20 p.m. 

 Math: No lesson due to Early Release so no homework.

Parent/Teacher Conference sign up sheets (green paper) comes home today. Time slots will be filled on a "first come first serve" basis. Please indicate your first, second , and third choices then return ASAP.

Book bags from It's About Time and Shipping Goods are still out. Please have your child complete the sheet and return it tomorrow, if possible.

Library books are due back tomorrow.

Parents of these students are invited to a performance of a Veterans Day play on Friday November 14th at 2:20 in our classroom: Allison, Hannah, Santiago, Joshua, Nicholas, Charlotte, Zachary. We had a "dress rehearsal" today for our classmates after doing some research on it. Written invitations will come home tomorrow.

Math: Homelink 4.1 "Change Number Stories"-For problems #1-3, the recommended order of the process is to fill in the boxes with all the information they know (information given in the problem). They write a question mark (?) in the box for what they want to find out. Next, writing the number model on the line helps to identify the process. Lastly, the put the answer on the blank line with the unit word. We filled in the boxes for # 1 so that it would help them to remember to put in the "?". For #'s 4-12, they are practicing adding or subtracting with multiples of 10 as this is the most important skill of this unit.

*** Bookbags: If your child brought home a bookbag for the book What Time is it? on Friday, please have her complete the sheet and return all the parts on Wednesday. Another group is bringing home the nonfiction book Shipping Goods in their bookbags. Again, if it's possible, please have him finish the inside paper and bring it all back on Wednesday.

*** No school tomorrow due to Veterans' Day. Early Release Day on Wednesday.

    In writing, we continued efforts to "edit" and "tweak" the assortment of assignments that are underway. The presence of volunteers Lisa Erickson-Harris, Joshua's mom on Tuesdays and Lisa Van Deinse, Thomas' mom on Thursdays to keep the "creative juices flowing" as well as help out with the nitty-gritty of spelling and other "mechanics" are crucial. Rhonda Rickert, Allison's mom, helps out with handwriting so the stories can be readable. She has been working with several children doing practice on letters and numerals that are often reversed. Three parents are"in the wings" in the unseen role as typists: Nick's mom Kerri Robinson, Molly's mom Julie Davis, and  again, Rhonda Rickert. Recently, the children have been keeping them busy word processing drafts for classroom books. In this season of thankfulness, I wanted to express my gratitude for all their help.

    Reading At the Market helped remind the children of various places where consumers can have their needs for products satisfied. We compared such kinds as "Flea Markets", "Crafts Fairs", "Farmers' Markets", "Supermarkets" and "Malls". Then they designed some of their own choosing.  In preparation for today's visit by several representatives of the New Page Paper Company in Rumford, we read the nonfiction book How Paper is Made. After they explained the various steps from forest to paper, each child went through a simplified, smaller scaled process to make a round "sheet" of paper. These are drying in our room presently. This demonstration addressed the interrelated curriculum areas of science "Life Cycles" of the tree and forest with the social studies aspects of producing a product to meet a need.

    We finished up Unit 3 in Math as well as in Word Study. The children used the "Magic Slates" and "Magic Pencils" in directed steps to practice this week's newest batch of "Trick Words" from the classroom word wall. Children get practice on individualized lists at the "Stamping Center" during Readers' Workshop. New Word Study concepts this week included words with the vowel teams -oi and -oy as well as review of the ideas of base words, the suffixes -s and -es to make words plural, and a rule to help them remember which to use when.

Tuesday Nov. 11: Schools closed for Veterans' Day

Wednesday Nov. 12: Early Release Day

Friday Nov. 21: Photo Retake Day

Friday Nov. 21: Reading Logs/Book Talk Due

Wednesday Nov. 26: Half day of school 

Thursday& Friday Nov. 27-28: Thanksgiving Break

Friday Nov. 28: end of 1st Trimester

Friday Dec. 5: Report cards go home

Tuesday Dec.9: evening conferences available

** Watch for my conference sign-up schedule sheet next week.

Math: No lesson due to presentation to the whole 2nd grade about the paper making process, so no homework.

Word Study: "Family Letter" introducing Unit 4 is coming home.

Reading Log with a due date of Friday November 21st is included.

2nd Grade Science Supply Wish List is enclosed on an orange half sheet.

****A Very Important Letter from the School Superintendent and School Physician is included. 

** Bookbags for the students who just finished reading the non-fiction book It's About Time!  is homework for them.

** Students with the bookbags for the fiction book Froggy Goes to School from yesterday, kindly complete the sheet and return it on Monday.

Math: Unit 3 Assessment today in class so no student homework. There is a Unit 4 "Family Letter" as homework for you.

Bookbags are coming home for the group who just finished Froggy Goes to School.

***Reading Logs and Book Talk are due tomorrow.

Math: Homelink 3.8- "Counting up to Make Change" offers them a chart to complete by determining the change for the items, prices, and amount paid of certain small items. The method introduced today was counting up from the price to the amount paid to figure out the change. They need to add their own examples for the last two rows.

Word Study: A sheet of 9 cards of trick words from the classroom "Word Wall" are coming home to practice for mastery in their writing. Please keep these along with those from the past.

** Library tomorrow and Reading Logs/ Book Talk are coming up on Friday.

***I am so overwhelmed with gratitude that I can't wait until Friday to thank Hannah's mom, Lisa Palmer D'Orso, who initially agreed to come in this afternoon to help our class plant 44 daffodil bulbs purchased by KEPTA on one side of the courtyard mound. Then, once here, she volunteered to take the children out in two separate groups to plant while I continued a social studies lesson from yesterday inside. Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!!

Math: Home Link 3.7 "Change at a Garage Sale" asks the children to set up a pretending situation using a few small, real items from home. They give each item a price less than $1.00 . Next they pretend to make change for a customer who is paying with $1.00. This will give them fun practice making change by counting up from the price to the $1.00 paid.

COWS some children brought home new math "Challenges of the Week".

*** A reminder, there is a Food Drive going on throughout the District to gather non-perishables in cans or boxes. They can be dropped off in the lobby by the gym. 

Portfolio additions happened this afternoon so that is the reason your child's backpack was loaded with class papers today.

Math: Homelink 3.6 "Frames-and Arrows Problems" now have two rules with paths as shown by the dotted arrow and the solid arrow.

    Writing took children in several directions with the introduction of a creative writing activity for which each chose an animal as a main character and gave it a name. Then they created imaginary stories following the circular pattern of If You Take a Mouse to School, plugging in their chosen animals. By next week, parent volunteers typists will start to see these edited drafts coming to them to be typed into finished works which the children will illustrate before I put them into a class book form.  Of course, other writing projects are still being finished up. Several children were also ready to begin a final written response to our Core Literature book. Putting themselves into a situation similar to Rosa, they decided what they would save up money for if they had lost their house, explaining how they would earn the money and why they made the choice.

    After the second reading of A Chair for My Mother paired up with a classroom buddy, there were several types of response activities to complete. Beyond three questions that focused on evidence that the book was set in an urban community and the motivation of the neighbors to help out, they compared Rosa's community to ours using a Venn diagram after we discussed this. Observing that the beginning of the book was not actually the beginning of Rosa's story, they did a timeline by cutting and pasting the events in Rosa's family's "story" in order. Lastly, they thought about any T-S (Text-to Self) or T-W (Text-to-World) connections that they had as their own schema with the book. For Readers' Workshop time, new contracts with several new centers were introduced. Reading groups are beginning new books- both fiction and nonfiction. In Word Study, we began constructing words that include the glued "closed syllable exceptions". These 5 combinations -old,-ild,-ind,-olt, and -ost- don't follow the closed syllable logic of making short vowel sounds. Instead they make long vowel sounds.

  The clue rhymes: Never Eat Shredded Wheat or Never Eat Soggy Waffles got a lot of giggles and inspired other silly creations like Kailee's "Never Eat Slimy Worms" while introducing the directions on the "Compass Rose" as well as basic map skills. We learned about using symbols on maps  in the Key or Legend via a United Streaming Video then practiced these skills in the first pages of a maps packet. In science, we generated a list of words to describe motion that I modeled. Then we took our new"Motion" Science Notebooks and pencils to the front of the building to be "Motion Detectives". One group observed and recorded motion that happened out front of the school with Second grade aide, Mrs. Anastas while the other half watched and recorded motion in the school lobby and in the gym with me. then the groups switched places. As you can see , we have started a new Science Unit.

     Hannah ended the day with a surprise treat of cupcakes. Thanks to her and her mom! On that note, I am heading home to greet little visitors at my door with treats. Your children may remind you to turn your clocks back tomorrow night as we read and illustrated a poem about "Daylight Savings Time" today.