October Newsletter

Dear Parents and Students,

It is amazing how quickly time flies past us. We have completed all our preliminary testing and over the next month students will be placed into reading groups for direct-leveled reading instruction. The students are doing great and the classroom is now functioning smoothly.

Parent teacher conferences will be held next week. Please come on time, as it is a very tight schedule.

Please remember to continue to save box tops. We have had a few turned in and would love to see many more throughout the year.

I just wanted to personally say thank you to all of you wonderful parents who have helped in the classroom. Over the last month I have been able to create math games, file folder games, high frequency cards, a word wall, our alien book club wall and many more fun items in the classroom thanks to you. I have found many more resources to help enrich the students learning, and will continue to need additional help cutting lamination, and correcting. Thank you again, your efforts are very appreciated.

Reading: Over the next month we will begin our leveled reading groups. Students will be placed in reading groups according to their needs throughout the second grade. We will have a few reading aids come into the classroom to assist with reading groups during this time. In addition to reading groups the students will be learning new vocabulary, author’s purpose, informational and narrative writing. We will continue to practice our 200 high frequency words, and reading fluently at a rate of 85 words per min.

Math: We have been learning different addition and subtraction strategies. The students can now tell time fluently to the half hour and will continue to review telling time to the ¼ hour. Our goal for the next month is to write numerals using expanded form, identify odd and even numbers, complete simple 2-digit- 1 digit addition and subtraction, recognize growing patterns, introduce parallelograms, rhombus, and trapezoids, and estimate length using a nonstandard unit of measurement.

Science: We are currently learning the different classifications of animals. On October 21st Red Butte gardens is coming to our classroom. The students will be learning about the plant cycle and how plants and animals interact. They will also be classifying fruits and vegetables. We will have a grow lab in the classroom, where the student will plant a seed and watch it grow. This is a wonderful opportunity for our students!

Writing: Each month we try to complete one published writing project. Over the month of September the students wrote about butterflies. With each paper the students go through the writing process of prewriting, drafting, revising, editing and finally publishing. For the month of October we will be writing a scary story.

Book Shares: It is time for book shares, please help your child select one book that they can read and then present to the classroom at the end of the month. I will send home the requirements within the next week. Book Shares will be due October 27th.


Thank you again for all the hard work you have put into helping our class.

Mrs. Woodland