Welcome to my website!   

  It is April 4th, and we are in the 4th quarter.  

  Our Science book arrived and it is beautiful.  You can still purchase one for 24 dollars. 

 In writing,  we are working, working, working, on capitalization, punctuation, and spelling.  Sentences with a question mark are a difficult concept at this age.  Please work with your child by pointing out those types of sentences in books and magazines.  Read the sentence with emphasis and intonation so that your child will understand how the human voice changes when asking a question. 

We continue to write small moment stories with a beginning, middle, and ending.  What is a small moment you ask?  That's where you take one specific time from a gathering or event, and write about it. 

Example:  The Day I Made a Snowman!!

 This would be a small moment story about making the snowman -- not what happened before or after,  but start to finish building a snowman (with a beginning, middle, and ending).  

 In reading, I am testing the students in comprehension and fluency, as well as activity sheets that relate to the stories that we are reading.  We are working hard in phonics on short and long vowels, blends, and sounding out words.  We have been and continue to work on past, present, and future tenses of verbs, pronouns, singular and plural possessives, the articles A and an, common and proper nouns, and adjectives.  We have started adverbs, and that has proved to be a wild horse that needs to be tamed! 

We are reading comprehension sheets with much more information and higher order questions.   This is a step in preparing them for 3rd grade.

We have started identifying subjects and predicates.  This will be ongoing. 

In math,  we are working on many concepts, all of which you have seen coming home.  Addition and subtraction through 4 digits, and word problems are the foundational skills that have to be mastered!   We are continuing the decimal point in money problems, and the importance of making sure that the decimal point is in line when calculating!  Also, beginning multiplication and division problems are being learned!  Fractions, congruency, symmetry, double and triple venn diagrams, time, temperature, rounding to the nearest ten/hundred, and now thousand, are being reviewed to stay on top of learning!  Hey...our new base ten blocks have arrived and we begin using them after spring break.  

  **  Please read to your child everyday, and let them read to you.  Hearing the words helps with pronunciation, which in turn helps with fluency.  If they have trouble pronouncing a word, let them watch your mouth as you pronounce it.  Praise your child when they read!

 Ask questions about the story.  This helps them to understand what they read (comprehension).   Here are some great questions.

 What is the setting of the story? 

Who are the characters?

What was the problem or conflict in the story?

How was the problem solved?

What lesson was learned in the story?

Have your child recall important events in the story, and tell you what happened from the beginning to the end!

** Buy flashcards for phonics (and math too), and work with your child at home.  Go to a website called starfall.com.  It is a fantastic website for reading.  PBSkids is another great website.

I will list more websites in the near future.  Thank you for supporting what we do in our 2nd grade class!

I am going to save this, and hope that it works!

Sincerely,

Ms. Hatley

p.s.   We NEED diaper wipes and facial tissues.  If you can help, thank you!