Week of February 1, 2010

This is parent-child-teacher conference week; your conference is scheduled for 2/____
We’ll review the fall goals, celebrate growth and set new goals. Parents, this is also time for you to share insights or questions.

Many thanks to Olivia’s mom, who organized, cooked & chopped for our delicious & healthy breakfast on Friday, and for all who assisted her and/or sent in food & supplies!! Let’s all continue our Wellness theme of getting a good night’s sleep & eating a healthy breakfast every day!

The students did a fine job on their book reports, becoming more skilled in their oral communication! This month’s book report is due any time this month—just let me know when you are ready. Choose a book related to Black History Month or President’s Month. It can be fiction or nonfiction, about Africa, African-Americans, George Washington and the Colonial Period, or Abraham Lincoln & the Civil War period. Ask me if you’d like to borrow a book from my own collection or if you’d like help students finding a book of interest to you. If you read a biography, your project can be coming “in character”, ie, presenting your book report as if you were that person coming to our classroom. Tell us about your life, and what you did that was so great that a book was written about you! It’s probably not too late to decide to be an orator at the “Night at the Museum” (Longfellow’s cool Black History program) on Friday evening, February 26; you would do a practice presentation in our room as your Feb. book report. (If interested, see me for the “commitment” form.)

I’m quite sure you heard an enthusiastic account of your young paleontologist’s adventure last Thursday… digging up suchomimus’ bones, and learning to test hypotheses about the location & function of each bone! This week’s story is about a popular question: “Why Did the Dinosaurs Disappear?” This scientific review continues our learning about how studying fossils gives clues to the past. We will read the various theories, and do some hard scientific and cause-effect thinking! I encourage everyone to read this story at home, discuss the different theories, and form your own opinion. The vocabulary words are more familiar than recent weeks: starve, climate, eruption, moisture, discovery. The spelling pattern is the “bossy R” sound & spelling, with the /er/ and /or/ sounds. Ask your child… to tell you the 3 different spellings for the /er/ sound.

Our writing this week will involve blending what we have learned on our field trip with our fossil reading to describe how to get fossils out of hard rock. It is a challenge for 2nd graders to really think through all the steps to explain “how to”. Try it at home orally; in class, we will start with “How to make a peanut butter & jelly sandwich!
Cursive writing is progressing nicely; we are having fun finding words using the cursive letters we now know.

Math: We focus on 2-dimentional work this week, learning these important geometry vocabulary words: point, endpoint, straightedge, line segment, parallel, square corner (ie right angle).


Social Studies: Throughout this month, in preparation for and during our book reports, we will read together & discuss history & culture related to Africa, African Americans, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.

Science: We are investigating the properties that affect the buoyancy of objects; this week we are looking at size as a factor.

Homework
Daily: read aloud for 20 minutes and fill in your February Book It calendar; There will be Home Links most every night, due the next day; practice your spelling & vocabulary
Due tomorrow: January Book-It calendar (opt)
Due Wednesday: Spelling workbook pages86-89 (&/or challenge sentences)
For Friday: be ready for reading, vocabulary & spelling tests
Due next Monday: Capture 5 recording sheet of your moves in the game you play with an older member of your family. On Monday, not before, please….bring in cylinders, spheres, rectangular prisms, cones, pyramids and/or cubes for our Shape Museum. Anything you’ll want to take home after a week needs to have your name on it.

On Friday, 2/12 we will have a little Valentine’s Day party from 2:15 – 2:45, to celebrate friendship. If you want, bring a Valentine for each of your classmates; Monday’s news will include all the names. Please let me know if you can coordinate or assist at our party.

Coming home today: Pink February Book It Calendar, home link 5.3, spelling tests