An Award!

Thank you to Ann from The Caffeinated Classroom for this wonderful award!  To see all the great blogs that I'm giving this award to check out my other blog here!  Be sure to check out Ann's blog; it's terrific!

Happy Summer!!

Hello, Friends!!  I hope that you are enjoying a wonderful summer!  I wanted to take the chance to let all of my students know how proud I am of them.  I miss them already!  We had an awesome first and/or second grade year together.  It is amazing to reflect on how much everyone learned and the fun we had!  Thank you for a special time together.

Lots of NEWS!!!

Open House was wonderful!  It was fun to see your kids interacting with you! It's always such a special time to celebrate their work.

FIELD DAY is next Wednesday.  The P.E. Department is still looking for volunteers to help.

You are INVITED to share our last Oral Language Speech with us.  The date is Friday, May 25th, at 11:15.   So many students have done a wonderful job speaking this year.  It will be fun to share with you.  An added note: Feel free to take your child home with you after our event.  The office has let me know that if any child is signed out before 11:50 it will be considered a half day absence.  If we are finished early, you are welcome to stay with us until that time!

Please see the other important dates to the right.

We started SHARK WEEK.  Ask your child what we did today:)  We will be learning about sharks all this week.

Congratulations to these AWESOME kids who completed a "Screen Free Week" last week. 

Leaders are Readers Day

Mr. Hernbrott, manager at Rinkside was our first reader.  He brought along Rinkside's mascot!! He read us a book called Dino's Little Egg and talked with us about his job at the ice rink.  He is general manager there and a coach.  He coaches one of our students for hockey.

Our next reader was Mrs. Drinka, librarian and program director at Warren Newport Library.  She read  a fascinating picture book, Blackout, to us.  The book was a Caldecott Honor Book this year and we all had many text-to-self connections with the story.  Ask your child what it was about!

Our third reader was Tanya Uddin, the college sister of a student in our classroom.  She read a favorite book, Where's My Teddy?, to us.  She talked to us about how important it is to work hard. She told us if we set a goal then we can work to achieve it!

Our last reader of the day was Mr. Skelton, father of a student in our classroom.  He shared a wonderful story about adventure, The Little Gray Mouse Goes Sailing.  He talked about traveling with his job and visiting other countries.  We were very interested!

Thanks to all our wonderful readers!!  We so appreciate that they took the time to come visit us!  It was a great day.

Our tadpoles are here!!

Our tadpoles are here!  We have one toad tadpole and six frog tadpoles. We did lose one toad tadpole, but the others are going strong.  We have been learning lots about frogs and their habitat, a pond.  Be sure to ask your child what he/she has learned so far.

Other Updates:

April is National Poetry Month and we are reading and writing poems.

We are looking forward to Leaders are Readers Day on Friday!  We have four special readers coming in to share their jobs and books with us.

We finished reading My Father's Dragon.  We loved the book and making the lapbooks.  We are reading the sequel to the story, Elmer and the Dragon.

We finished our unit on subtraction and will be learning about fractions next.

Our Oral Language Speeches are next week on Friday!

Our Open House is May 3rd!  Be sure to plan time to come and celebrate a wonderful year.  The Westside Film Festival is that night also.  Come and see all the West School movies your child has seen at ROAR assemblies this year.

Full Speed Ahead!!!

We had a busy time in March getting ready for our student-led conferences!  The time spent was well worth it.  It was wonderful to see the students share their work with you and reflect on their time at school.  I enjoyed seeing all of you.
April is going to be an exciting month for us!  Today we started our Frog Unit.  We set up the tank to get ready for our tadpoles on Thursday.  The kids are super excited about it and so am I!
We also started a new novel unit today.  We are reading My Father's Dragon and making lapbooks as we go.  We started the lapbook today.  It will help us to think about and remember the important parts of the book.  We are excited to be able to pilot this unit as all 2nd graders may do it next year!
In math we are continuing our work on subtraction.  Please continue to study the facts with your child. Soon we will be working on three digit subtraction and knowing the facts quickly helps the students to be more efficient and accurate.
Full Speed Ahead!!