Happy College Color Days from the Moss Team!

We had a wonderful week.  I am really enjoying getting to know and grow with this wonderful group of 2nd graders everyday!

Important Things To Know:

• Fall Pictures are on Wednesday, September 3.  All students will be taking a picture.  If you would like to order pictures you can either fill out the form/send in money or you can pay for pictures online/send in receipt.
• Walking School Bus starts on Friday, September 7.  Remember that preregistration is required. Please let me know if your child will be attending.
• Our first RBE PTA Meeting is September 11.  PTA Meetings are at 6:00 in the Media Center.  The PTA is a wonderful supporter of our students and school!  I hope that you are able to attend.
• Our first field trip is on September 14.  We are going to MU Volleyball Elementary Day!  We are so excited!!  The kiddos will be bring a sack lunch from home (everything needs to be able to be thrown away) or buying a sack lunch from the cafeteria (if you pre-ordered).  We will be leaving around 9:30 and returning to school by 1:50.  If your child has black & gold - this would be the perfect day to wear it!
• 2nd Grade Curriculum Chat is on September 18 at 7:45-8:15.  This is an opportunity for you to come and learn about what your child does in 2nd Grade.  The students will be working on a Day in the Life of a Second Grader book to share with you.  We will also have a short chat to present the various parts of our day.  We hope that you are able to come!
• The RBE Chicken BBQ is coming up on October 13.  This is the one big fundraiser for PTA.  The PTA supports the students and the school so many different ways!  They provided funding for 2nd grade to be able to go on the field trip to MU Volleyball Elementary Day, provide materials for our classroom, and are working hard to get more playground equipment for our playground.  There is a flyer coming home in your child's Friday Folder about the BBQ - check it out and see how you can support RBE!

What's Been Happening in Moss World:

Fundations

• We took our first unit test today.  The students did a nice job applying what they learned in unit 1.  We will continue to practice skills learned in this unit throughout the year.
• Next week, we will  start unit 2.  In this unit, students will learn about bonus letters (ff, ll, ss and sometimes zz).  They will also learn about glued sounds which include all, am, an, ang, ing, ong, ung, ank, ink, onk, unk.  Students wil also work on ar, er, ir or, ur.
• Trick words for this unit include shall, pull, full. Both, talk and walk.  

Reading

• We will continue working on two sentence summaries.  This week, we corrected our fiction summaries.  Next week, we will continue working on non-fiction summaries.  The students are learning that there are a lot of facts in non-fiction books and we are discussing that sometimes we have to read non-fiction books twice to help us remember the facts.
• When your student is reading at home, please have them tell you a sentence or two about what they read.  You can practice the skill of summarizing with movies and tv shows as well.  Students can tell you briefly you about the movie or tv show.

Math

• This week, students worked on finding multiple ways to make a number.  They learned the word equivalent.  They also learned two new games this week.  They learned Fishing for 10 and Turn Over 10.  These are both great games to play for their Homework Bingo Board.  They can use playing cards (without the face cards) to play both games. 
• Next week, there is a variety of skills they will be learning.  Students will be learning about quarters and working to skip count quarters.  The students are doing a great job with money, it is awesome that they came to us with such a strong foundation, thanks first grade teachers!  They will also be learning about even and odd numbers.  They will be working on identifying patterns when skip counting by numbers.  This will be a continuation of what we did last week when looking at patterns when skip counting by 2s, 5s and 10s.  We will then work on comparing numbers and identifying which is larger and how we know.
• We will be testing over this unit the week of September 10. 

Writing

• This week, students worked on writing leads for their personal narrative.  We discussed that your lead “hooks your reader.”  This means that it grabs the reader’s attention so they want to read the rest of your story.  They wrote a sound lead and a question lead and then chose their favorite. 
• Next week, we will step away from our personal narrative and work on a fun writing project for Curriculum Chat which is September 18 from 7:45 a.m.-8:15 a.m.  We hope you are all able to come.

Social Studies

• This week in social studies, the students learned what it means to be a citizen.  We talked about what that they are citizens of, and discussed ways they can be a good citizen.  We had  great conversation about why it is important to be a good citizen.
• Next week, they will continue this discussion and come up with specific ways they can be a good citizen in society. 

Science

• This week in science, the students learned more about the scientific method.  They learned that you have to pose a question, make a hypothesis, conduct an experiment then draw conclusions.  Today, we did an experiment with melting candy and warm water.  Ask your student about which candies melted.  This science experiment helped them learn about the scientific method and then was an introduction to states of matter.
• Next week, students will continue to learn about states of matter and how they change for solids, liquids to gases.

I hope that you have a wonderful Labor Day weekend!  As a reminder, we do not have school on Monday.  Make sure that you are checking out Twitter for pictures or you can look at the feed on the right sidebar of our classroom blog!

We have had a great first full week of school.  We have continued to establish classroom routines and students are really doing a great job with learning our second grade expectations!

Reminders

• Upcoming Events: In your back to school folder there was a copy of the Activities Calendar for the school year.  You can access this calendar by clicking here.  I have also updated the Upcoming Events on the right side of the blog.  Please mark your calendar with these dates.
• If you have not already seen that 2nd Grade Curriculum Chat is September 18 at 7:45-8:15 am.  Please add this to your calendar!  This is an opportunity for you to hear about what we will be doing in 2nd grade this year.  You will also have an opportunity to talk with your child about what a typical day looks like in 2nd grade!
• Walking School Bus: If you would like your child to participate in Walking School Bus this fall, a form went home in your back to school folder that needs to be filled out and returned.  You can also click here to print a copy.  For your child to participate in Walking School Bus this form MUST be returned!
• Volleyball Field Trip on September 14: Your child brought home a field trip form on Tuesday (on yellow paper).  We will departing for Hearnes Center at 9:40 and will be returning to school around 2:00.  If you have not already sent in the bottom portion of this form, please do so by September 7.  You can click here to view the Volleyball Field Trip form.

Coming Home Today

• Library Books
• Today was our first library checkout day...Mrs. McKinzie & Mrs. Wood said we did an amazing job!  We will have library checkout every Friday.  So please talk with your kiddo about what books they checked out and help them remember to bring their books back next week.  If your child finishes a book, they can always return the book to our library cart earlier than Friday.
• Picture Day Reminder
• Picture Day is Wednesday, September 5.  You can  pre-pay for pictures online - please send in the receipt so we know that you are getting pictures.  Or you can fill out the form and send in money.
• Pizza Party
• At the end of first & second trimester, we have a tradition to have a class pizza party.  We are asking for a one time donation of $5.00 to help with the cost of pizza.  Be sure to check out the salmon sheet for more information! 
• RBE Sportswear
• If you would like to order RBE Sportswear the first order is due on August 31 and the second date is October 19.  You can order online or fill out the order form and return it to school.  You can click here for the RBE Sportswear order form.
• Transportation Paperwork
• There is a student conduct & safety information coming.  Please review these expectations with your child, fill out the form and return to school.  Even if your child typically does not ride the bus, they will be attending field trips with us, so please go ahead and return the form.
• Orientation & Unit 1 Fundations 
• Fundations is a process to teach reading and spelling with phonics.  Coming home with your child is an introduction letter to Fundations and a few activities that you can do at home.  It says "Homework Guide" on one of these sheets.  As a reminder, we do not have assigned homework that has to be turned in on a certain day, but these activities can be used for spelling practice for your child's Homework Bingo sheet.   

What's Going on Moss World!

• Math
• This week, we started Unit 1 of our Everday Math program.  This unit is an introduction of a variety of skills.  We introduced math resources that are in our classroom, counting coins and patterns when skip counting.  
• Next week, we will be learning about number grids (100's chart), number models (addition and subtraction problems with the answer), and different combinations of 10.
• Reading
• This week, we focused on story elements (the pieces or parts that make up a story).  These pieces are the characters, setting (in second grade we do the when and where), problem, and solution.  We are continuing to work on our reading stamina - having your child read at home nightly will help your child with this also!
• Next week, we are going to be writing two sentence summaries in both fiction and nonfiction books.  We will be making sure that our summaries are written in our own words.  This is a skill that beginning of the year second graders struggle with.  You can support this skill at home by talking with your child about his/her book.
• Writing: 
• This week, we started our small moment/personal narrative writing unit.  We had a class discussion about what needs to be included in our writing, and then we did our first try at a small moment story.
• Next week, we will be focusing on how to start off our story.  We will learn about different types of leads, and how the lead hooks the reader.
• Social Studies & Science
• In science, we have talked about what a scientist does, and learned about the scientific method.  We learned that a hypothesis is an educated guess or prediction of what will happen.  Today we did a fun experiment called Dancing Raisins...ask your child what their hypothesis was and what really happened!
• In social studies, we have learned about what the Pledge of Allegiance means.  We have talked about allegiance, republic, indivisible and liberty/justice.  You should ask your kiddo what they have learned!
• We started our Science & Social Studies notebooks yesterday.  These are a place for us to keep all of our learning throughout the year.  Next week, we will be adding to these when we talk about what makes a good citizen.
• Beginning of the Year Assessment
• We have been working hard on establishing classroom routines.  Next week, we will be starting to take beginning of the year assessments.  These assessments allow us to know how to guide our instruction.  

Twitter

We have been posting a lot of pictures on Twitter.  Be sure to follow us @MossRBE.  We have quite a few parents following us already.  We also have our Twitter feed on the blog.  

We have enjoyed this first full week of school with your child and we are excited for the rest of the school year! 

Happy Friday!

Happy Friday!

Wow!  What a fabulous first week of 2nd grade!  Each week, I will post a blog update with information about what we did that week and what we will be doing the following week. 

This week, we focused on building our Team Moss community.  The students are enjoying learning about each other through Me Bags.  If your student hasn't brought in their Me Bag yet, please do so next week so we can learn about them.  We have also been going over classroom expectations.  We have created a classroom matrix as well as a matrix for flexible seating.  This will be help the students to be safe, respectful learners.

Our Learning for Next Week

Math
Today, we took our pretest for Unit 1.  As a class, we discussed the purpose of the pretest.  The pretest is for the teachers to see what the students already know and help guide instruction.  The pretests also allow us to see the growth the students make during the unit.  We will start unit 1 on Monday.  In your student's Friday folder, there is a parent letter about unit 1.  This unit is an introduction of many different concepts that we will cover more in depth throughout the year.  This unit also has some review from first grade as well. 

Writing
This week, the students had a chance to do some free writing about anything they wanted to in their free write notebooks.  This gets them in the swing of writing again.  Next week, they will get to write a fun story about what they think their teachers did over summer vacation.  Our first writing unit is personal narratives (small moment stories). We will be introducing this unit next week and discussing what are components of a personal narrative. 

Reading
This week, students were able to pick out books for independent reading.  They had opportunities to read these books and start to build up their independent reading stamina.  The students are also learning how to write short summaries of books as well.  On one of our classroom's doors is a "Look What We're Reading" and the students have a post it with the title of a book they are currently reading.  When they are finish reading the book, they will write 2 sentences about the book.  The students will then meet with a teacher to discuss the book and get to trade out their book. 

Next week, we are going to focus on story elements.  The students will learn about characters, setting, problem and solution and then identify them in different book.  This will help with their 2 sentences about the book they are reading because we will discuss the importance of including these in their summary. 

We do not have nightly homework, but please encourage your child to read at home.  We will be sending home a BINGO board for at home activities, which will include reading, if your child would like to complete the activities.

Social Studies
We will flip flop science and social studies throughout the year.  We will start with social studies.  Next week, we will continue working on building our classroom community.  Then, the students will learn about a meaning of the different parts of the Pledge of Allegiance.  They will then illustrate the Pledge of Allegiance to create a quilt.

Friday Folders
Our first Friday folder went home today.  They are light blue.  Inside the Friday folder is our weekly Friday Folder Checklist.  Please review this checklist and sign the bottom of the checklist.  Every other week (and sometimes weekly), there will be comments.  Please read over the comments.  On the back, there are also important upcoming events. 

In the Friday Folder this week, you will also find a Health Form that needs to be filled out and sent back to school.  These need to be updated each year.  It is important we have up to date health information about your child.  There is also a picture order form.  Our picture day is September 9.  You can either fill out the form and return to school, or you can order online.  If you order online, please send in a copy of the receipt with your child. 

Sticker Charts
As part of our PBIS system at Rock Bridge, our students get stickers for being safe, respectful, learners.  The stickers go on their sticker charts and then once they fill them up, they earn a reward.  The students have been earning a lot of stickers this week and many have already filled up sticker charts.  When they fill them up, the reward they choose will be written on the back.  This helps them to remember their reward the next day. 

Snack
Just a reminder, that we have individual snacks in 2nd grade.  Please help your student remember to pack a snack each day if they want one. 

Earbuds
The students will start using the computers in media next week, as well as in the classroom.  If your student doesn't have earbuds/headphones, please help them to get a pair so they have them at school.

Pictures from the Week
Check out Twitter @MossRBE to see fabulous pictures from the week. 

Have a fabulous weekend!

Mrs. Ross