Classroom Update

Good Morning Families,
 What an amazing start to our school year. Thank you so much to everyone who was able to come to open house. Our classroom had 21 families that were able to join us. Your support is felt here at school. We are well into the swing of things here at school. Here is an update, I will try to keep it as brief as possible.

Reading
Second grade students are staying with me for reading. We are working on short vowel sounds and "copy consonants." These are the consonant letters that do not make their own unique sound, they copy from other letters. They are c, q and x. During reader's workshop, we are working on understanding characters and being able to assign character traits to a characters in stories. It is really important that students justify their reasoning with text evidence. One way we do this is by using this sentence stem: (Character's Name) is (character trait) because (something the character said, did or thought).
Third Grade students are walking to reading with either Miss Childs or Miss Gustafson. They are continuing their word work by learning how the English language was built, and how it has changed over time. During reader's workshop they are working on understanding non-fiction texts, and how to create new learning based on these texts.

Writing 
During writer's workshop we are learning all of the strategies writer's use to collect story ideas, and we are collecting our ideas in our writer's notebooks. This week students will choose one story to take through the writing process and publish.

Math
Remember parent math night is on October 17th at 6pm in the Shorewood Library!

Second Grade is working on adding two digit numbers that do and do not regroup. "Regrouping," is what used to be referred to as "carrying the ten" when your ones add up to more than 9. Students are working on building the problems, and then recording what happened with the base ten blocks on the problem itself.
Third grade is working on adding and subtracting 2 different number using mental math strategies. One of these strategies is adding the tens in your head and then adding the ones. Our next few lessons will be on rounding and front end estimation.

Social Studies
We have started learning about past presidents, and why presidents are important for our country. We are doing this in preparation of the upcoming election. We are using the Time For Kids to guide us through these lessons.

Technology Update
Students have started using our computer based math curriculum 2 times a week in class. This is a new program called ST Math. I have been very happy with this program. Next week I will be sending home a letter that has the access information for home. your child is welcome to play this at home.

I hope you had a wonderful weekend. Stay tuned for our classroom donor's choose project and a match code that will DOUBLE your donation!

Warmly,
 Mrs. Walle