**~The Pitzer Post~**

January 16-20, 2017

In this weekly post, you will find information about the academic content and special events happening in the upcoming week.

Literacy (Reading & Writing)

Click the link to view our upcoming theme skills!
Theme 8 (week two)
Phonics Words: blink, drink, junk, thank, trunk, round, stay, blanket, monkey
Sight Words: happy, place, lot, stay, when
Vocab Words: operate, field, effect
Grammar Skill: Review Action and Linking Verbs

Math

Next week we will continue our chapter on metric measurement. This current chapter does a lot with subtraction and I noticed that we are having some trouble in that area. One way to help your child at home is practicing math facts. Fact fluency is a vital skill for students to have especially as we move into harder concepts. There are so many options and ways to practice facts:

Check out this great website: http://www.mathfactspro.com/mathfactfluencygame.html#/home
Students can practice basic facts and it allows you to pick the operation, how many problems and then reports how long it takes you to answer. There of course is a paid version but the free version is just as great! J You can also use flashcards and or the Flash to Pass App. If you are having trouble with when to practice you can try a little bit each night or designate certain nights of the week for practice; whatever works the best for your family.

By the end of second grade students are expected to have mastered addition and subtractions facts 1-20! I know third grade teachers highly appreciate as much fact fluency as possible!

Science

This week students experimented with magnets of all different shapes and sizes. They then determined what was magnetic and what was non magnetic. Can your child explain some examples from class?

Second Step

This week we explored strong feelings like frustration, excitement, and anger. These strong feelings often take over which makes it had for the thinking part of our brain to operate.

Can you child explain this:

Next week, we will focus on managing embarrassment and remembering when we feel strong feelings to stop, name our feeling, and calm down.

Fun-tivities

On Friday, January 27, 2017, second grade will be celebrating Chocolate Day! We are currently reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl. There are so many chocolately adventures that await. Who is excited?!

On Wednesday, February 1st we will be celebrating Global School Play Day 2017! Check out the flyer below for more information: Global Day of Play 2017

Upcoming Events

Monday, January 16, 2017

No School! MLK Day

Tuesday, January 17, 2017

Lunch: Hot Dog
“operate” note card comes home, due Tuesday
STAR Reading Benchmarking Begins

Wednesday, January 18, 2017

Lunch: Chicken Fajitas
“field” and “effect” note card comes home, due Wednesday
FIRST CURSIVE HW: Watch Cursive Intro Video on Blog and leave a comment!

Thursday, January 19, 2017

Lunch: Homemade Chili
Phonics Words Practice Paper comes home, due Friday

Friday, January 20, 2017

Lunch: Bosco Sticks
Theme 8 Progress Test

Celebrating Our Greatness!

Super Improvers were EVERYWHERE!!!
Diving in to biography writing with Google Docs
Navigating the controls of Google Docs and working hard to stay focused. CTRL Z is our friend!
Receiving messages from our teacher when she had a sub and wasn’t even in our room! She was able to use a program called Go Guardian that allows her to check our Chromebook screens to give us advice or remind us to get back on track.
Learning how to measure in centimeters and meters
Our teacher is participating in the #30daystlaphooks challenge (Teach Like a Pirate Hooks, or ways to get students excited and pumped about learning). Her hooks this week were:
- Mozart and Interior Design Hook: using music and lighting to spark interest in grammar lessons
- Mystery Bag Hook: a bag with a ? on it appeared in our room before math and we predicted what we thought would be in it
- Student Directed Hook: we reflected on math workshop and then our ideas were used to create a chart of what workshop should look like. We had voice and choice in a lesson!
- Kinesthetic Hook: We got up and moved around the room making sure 12 sentences had correct end punctuation
- Teaser Hook: Mrs. Pitzer started the day with no paper chain and by lunch time she had a long paper chain attached to her wrist. We spent all day trying to figure it out.
Participating in the “Who can make the longest paper chain with only 1 piece of paper” Competition!
- 1st place was 260 cm
- 2nd place was 242 cm
- 3rd place was 191 cm
Realizing that creating a paper chain takes teamwork, critical thinking, problem sovling, and effort!