January 7, 2011

Jan. 6, 2011

Dear Parents and Families,

We have had a busy first week back at school in everything from writing short stories to launching our Solids, Liquids and Gases unit to even dealing with sneaky stuffed animals. It’s great to be back in the classroom as we begin this stretch of what is usually the most productive time of the school year.

In reading, as we approach the 80th day of school, we are beginning our winter assessments of students’ reading levels. We’ve also revamped the At-Home Reading Log, and congratulations to Grant Mitchell for being the first to read 300 minutes and get a chance to reach into our classroom treasure chest!

We finished up our read-aloud book, Toys Go Out. We have been talking about a couple of interesting themes. First, Stingray, the grumpy know-it-all had been jealous about not having been picked by the little girl to go to the seaside. Still, her friends, the other animals, treat her with kindness and understanding, and they even save her life, and on the last page of the book, we see Stingray dancing joyfully on the Little Girl’s bed, fully-happy and joyful at last, transformed by the love of her friends. Another theme we looked at was, “Does it count as lying if you make something up to make a sad friend happier?” When Lumphy the Buffalo loses his tail jumping off the bed, and Plastic the ball tries to comfort him, we read…

“Oh, I need it very badly!”
“’What for?” Plastic wants to know.
Lumphy sniffs back his tears. He tries to think of an answer.
“You look tough without it,” says Plastic kindly, rolling around to examine Lumphy’s bottom.
“Really?”
“None of the tough buffaloes have tails,” lies Plastic. I read it in an animal book.”
“They don’t?”
“It’s the tough-buffalo fashion.”
Lumphy thinks for a minute. “Who needs a tail anyway?” he sniffs.
“I don’t.” says Plastic.
“I don’t either then,” Lumphy says bravely.

The culmination of this book led nicely into our Short-Story unit. As you know, we all brought stuffed animals into the classroom and began writing stories about them as we studied story structure including setting , characters, problem, and solution.

We found that just like Lumphy, Plastic, and Stingray, our stuffed animals are a clever and sneaky crew. They did things like hide in the plants and the bookcases every time we left the classroom. So, it hasn’t been hard to think up stories for them.

We studied another important writing organizer -- the topic sentence. We all took a look at the big plant in our classroom and we made a list of words to describe it. We suddenly realized that if Mr. Terko came into the classroom and saw “pointy, tall, fat, huge, green and thirsty” written on the board, he might think we had seen a monster! So, we started our piece off with, “In our classroom, we have a huge plant.” We figured that would keep Mr. Terko from being scared.

In Second Grade Math, we are continuing our study of math facts, learning four important strategies for tackling them – including learning the doubles (8+8 and
4 + 4)), the neighbors (8+7 and 4 +5), the tens facts (10 +8= 18 and 10 + 9 = 19), and learning the halves (if 9+9=18 is easy for you, then keep that in mind when you see 18-9=?)

In 2nd Grade Fundations , we just finished our unit on the suffixes –s, -es, -d, -ed, and –ing.

We began our unit on Solids, Liquids and Gases (“Excuse me, Mr. Bolger, is a
burp made of gas? What about when you – you know -- fart?” ) We’ll be doing multi-age workshops between now and the next seven weeks with students rotating among the classrooms Thursdays and Fridays to do experiments and learn the terminology like matter, properties, and state, atoms and molecules.

Calling all Singers: The Horizon Teachers along with para educators, Mr. Terko, Ms. Trasdiatti-Holmberg, and a couple of musician-parents, will be performing two songs in the upcoming Williston Variety Show (WCS auditorium on March 11??). We would love to have two or three more parents to join with us. We haven’t picked the song yet, but over the past several years, we’ve sung “Jumbalaya”, Sunshine (Jonathan Edwards), Aimie (Pure Praire League), It Don’t Come Easy, and Running Down a Dream (Tom Petty) We generally just have two or three rehearsals on Friday mornings before school, and then we do it. ). If you like to sing and these songs appeal to you, please email us.

Please help our classroom plants! We bought some nice hanging plants at the beginning of the year, and they are beginning to suffer now that they have outgrown their pots and dry-aired winter is fully upon us. I would love it if someone could drop by, check in on them, and give us some advice on how to help them stay alive and flourish in here.

And finally, thank you all, parents and kids, for the holiday gifts you gave me –The handwritten cards, baked goodies, the several gift cards, the cool gifts and the smiles and hugs at the door were all equally appreciated. I feel very luck to be working with you and your children. I learn from you, and from them each day, and I can’t wait to get to work in the morning. What a job.

Have a great weekend. See you on Monday.

David