Parent Letter 11/28 to 12/2

Mr. Anderson’s 2^nd Grade Class

Welcome Back!!!                                                                11/28/11

This Week in Class:

Math: The students will be reviewing double-digit addition and starting double-digit subtraction. They will learn how to trade 1 ten for 10 ones to solve problems like 43-27. Some of the math words that they will be learning are:

trade which is another word for regroup.   1 ten can be traded for 10 ones without changing the total value of the number you are subtracting from.

regroup When you subtract 29 from 46, you need to regroup 1 ten as 10 ones.

difference The answer to a subtraction problem. “What is the difference between this number and that number.”

Spelling:  The students will be associating the spelling patterns ai, ay, and a-consonant-e with the long a sound. Children learn that the ai pattern occurs in the middle of a word, while ay often occurs at the end. 

Reading: The target skill this week that I will be working with in whole group and small group read is Summarizing.  Summarizing is when the reader looks at details and picks out the main ideas, or important parts of the story.

Social Studies: For the month of December the students are going to be starting a unit called “Christmas Around the World”.  This is a very exciting unit where students will be “traveling” to different countries around the world to look at how each country celebrates Christmas. For those students that do not take part in the holiday we will be looking at other traditions in the country as well including food that they eat, ways that they dress, ect. We will make crafts, learn songs and poems, and read stories.  We will not be switching classes for Health, Science, and Social Studies because this takes a lot of time.

Writing: This week we will continue our Writer’s Workshop.  Many of the students have published Stellaluna pieces that will be coming home soon.  This week during Writer’s Workshop we will be revisiting the Writing Process. 

Food and Clothing Drive:

Sandstone is having a holiday Food and Clothing Drive starting today. If you have any  non-perishable food or gently used clothing, please bring them in. The food will go to the Billings Food Bank and the clothes go to the Women’s and Family Shelter! The Food and Clothing Drive ends December 9th! 

The Giving Tree

The Giving Tree is up in the office. If you would like to donate a present to someone in need this year, you can take an ornament from the tree and return it with an unwrapped gift! 

The Holiday Music Program

The Holiday Music Program this year is tenitivly scheduled for Dec. 21st at 9am and again at 1:30pm.

Book Orders

Web address: scholastic.com/bookclubs

Class Activation Code: HBFTM

There’s no time to lose! In order to make our deadline and have all our books arrive on time, your order to Scholastic Book Clubs is due by November 30th. 

Use the order form in the flyer your child recently brought home and return it to me with your payment right away! Please pay with a check made out to Scholastic Books!  

Or, make it easy and send me your order online! Go to  www.scholastic.com/bookclubs and log in using your user name and password.

If it’s your first time ordering online, use the Class Activation Code shown above to get started 

SIGN UP at  www.scholastic.com/bookclubs. On the parent page, click the “Register” button in the “First Time Here?” section. Register for your own user name and password. When prompted, enter the one-time Class Activation Code shown above. This code ensures that your order is sent to me. 

SELECT the books you’d like to order—choose from thousands of titles—many more than in our monthly flyers. 

SEND your order to me online by the due date and your child’s books will be delivered directly to my classroom. Ordering online is fast and easy!

Best of all, we earn a FREE book for the classroom library every time a parent places an order online.*

Sincerely, Mr. Josh Anderson

Parent Letter 11/14/11

Hello Families,                                                                11/14/11

Weekly Objectives:

Math:  Two-digit addition with regrouping and graphing including tallies, bar graphs and pie graphs.

Reading: Comprehension Skill- Summarizing

Writing:  Synonyms and Adjectives continued

Spelling:  Words with k and ck endings

Daily Behavior Chart:

Last week I put a Behavior Chart in the back of your child’s STAR folder.  Each day after school I wanted you to be able to see how many numbers your child received that day in class.  My hope is that you will be able to recognize your child’s achievement of getting no numbers in class or this can give you a chance to talk to your child if they are receiving numbers in class. I would appreciate any feedback that you have about this tool and if it is helpful at home.

Picture Retakes 

Friday, November 18^th is picture retakes for our school.  If the form that was sent home was misplaced you can pick one up at the office.

Chili Night and Cake Auction

From 6-8pm on Friday we will be having our annual Chili Night and Cake Auction here at Sandstone.  Your families are invited to come and have a free chili dinner and then stay to bid on a wonderful cake. 

Don’t Forget

Next week we only have 1½ days before break.   I hope that everyone has a great holiday break!

Sincerely, Mr. Josh Anderson

Parent Letter 11/7/11

11/7/11

Dear Parents,                                                                        

I hope that everyone is enjoying the first snow of the season!  It seems that the students are excited and ready for it, I hope that I am ready for it too!  Here are some of the main things that we will be working on this week.

Weekly Objectives

Reading:  Connections

Making a connection to the story is one way that the student shows that he/she comprehends the story. Children make personal connections with the text by using their schema (background knowledge).  There are three main types of connections we make while reading text.

·       Text-to-Self (T-S) refers to connections made between the text and the reader's personal experience. 

·       Text-to-Text (T-T) refers to connections made between a text being read to a text that was previously read.

·       Text-to-World (T-W) refers to connections made between a text being read and something that occurs in the world.

It is important to activate children's schema (background knowledge) before, during, and after reading.

Writing:  Adjectives and Synonyms:

Students thoroughly explore identifying synonyms and adjectives before using them to add variety and interest to their own writing.

Math:      Operations-Addition and Subtraction within 20.

The students will fluently add and subtract within 20 using mental strategies.

Spelling: Words that end with nd, ng, nk, nt, mp

Cold Weather Gear:

Please send your child to school with winter gear (ie: Winter Jacket, Snow Boots, Gloves, Hats, and Snow pants.)  The students will be going out for recess as long as the weather is above zero degrees.  In order to play out in the field or on the Big Toy the students must be wearing snow pants and snow boots otherwise their recess is confined to the blacktop.

Classroom Behavior:

After conferences some parents have expressed that they would like to know how their child is doing each day in class.  Therefore if your child has to “owe a number” during the day I will let you know with our Weekly Behavior Chart.  The students and I will fill out these charts each day and put them in the back sleeve of their STAR folders.  Please check and send them back each day.

                                                                      Sincerely, Mr. Josh Anderson

Parent Letter 10-17-11

Dear Parents,
 Welcome back to our short week of school. Please remember that the students have early release on Wednesday, October 19th and will be getting out of school at noon.

Objectives for this week: 
Writing: Planning for writing. (Bubble Maps)
Spelling: Review Long and Short Vowels and Consonant Clusters
Math: Adding and Subtracting 10 and 100 to a number.
Reading: Reading Assessments

Spelling 
There will not be any spelling words coming home this week because it is a short week. We will however be doing spelling review in class. The students spelling tests from last week will be coming home today because I was gone on Friday.

Parent/ Teacher Conferences 
Parent/ Teacher Conferences are Wednesday November 2nd and Thursdays, November 3rd. Please make sure that you have turned in your purple paper that tells me the time most convenient for you otherwise I will schedule you for an opening.

Book Club Orders 
We had a great response to the Book Club orders this month. I will be sending another one home in November. Remember that Book Club Orders take a few weeks to get to the school.

 Sincerely, Josh Anderson

The second graders had the opportunity to go on a field trip to Pictograph State Park. The field trip was split into four stations that they rotated to throughout the day. Our first station was the American Indian games where the students played Stick and Hoop and Run and Scream. They really enjoyed themselves whether it was seeing who could scream the loudest while running or who got the hoop on the stick the most. I especially enjoyed watching the students run and scream as far as they could with one breath.

Next we ate lunch. The students worked on their journals while they enjoyed lunch and then explored the area by climbing trees and spotting wildlife! 2 deer, a rabbit, a frog, but thankfully no snakes. From there we headed into the Visitors Center. The students learned about ancient artifacts found in the area, and then go to draw their own Spirit Bearer on the sidewalk outside.

Then the moment they had all been waiting for! It was our classes turn to see the caves. There were 3 caves that we got to see. The Pictograph Cave is the only cave in the park that has pictographs. Prior to the field trip the students made predictions of what the pictographs looked like and what they meant. I may have been more excited then the students to see them! We then headed to the Middle Cave and along the way we talked about the concretion on the rims. Concretions are spherical formed sedimentary rocks which we talked about in science. Finally we made it to the last cave, Ghost Cave. One theory how Ghost Cave got it's name is the echo you can hear when standing near the cave. We had a lot of fun yelling, making echoes and listening to them.

We packed up our backpacks, had a snack and visited the tepee and waited for the bus...and waited for the bus...and waited for the bus. Yes, the bus was a little late but we made it back on time.

I hope the students had many stories and fun facts to tell you when they got home! If you haven't been to the Pictograph State Park it is a great family trip and fun to see a bit of local history. I am sure your child would love to be your tour guide. Thank you to all the volunteers that were able to come along and enjoy the adventure with our class! You were all so much help and I hope that you can enjoy more field trips with us soon!

Parent Letter 10-3-11

10-3-11 Dear Parents, Welcome back to another school week! Weekly Objectives Spelling: Review of Units 1-5. Short vowel words , Long vowel words spelled with a silent e, and challenge words (words that don’t follow the rules). Writing: Finishing pictograph stories Complete Stories Working on STAR writing. (Capitals, punctuation, spelling, spaces, does it make sense.) Math: Review Skip Counting within 1000 (Count by 5, 10, 100) Fluent Addition Facts (numbers to 10 +1, +2, +3) Math Journals: Problem Solving Reading: Predicting: Students will tell what they think will happen next in a story and give reasons. Field Trip Volunteers: I want to take this time to thank the parents that were able to volunteer their time to help the class on the field trip. We had a great time exploring the pictograph caves, playing American Indian games, and visiting the Visitors Center! Snacks: Please remember to send in snacks for the month of October. We have 24 students so please send something that can be divided up (crackers, cookies, ect.) or make sure you have 24 individually wrapped items (granola bars, rice-crispy, ect.) Sincerely, Josh Anderson

Under Construction

I am having a little trouble with my Google Account. I am trying my best to work through the bugs. Please be patient with me. Don't lose hope in the blog, I think that it will be a great tool to connect home and school! I hope everyone is doing great!

Parent Letter Week of 8/29-9/1

Dear Parents,

Welcome back for the second week of school. I hope that your child is adjusting well to the school days and that the first week has been enjoyable to them. We are still going through our new routines for the school year because there are many things that are different this year.

Homework
Your child will be bringing homework almost every night each week. This homework needs to come back the next morning. It is important for you to get your child in the habit of sitting down each night to get their homework done. The homework that is sent home will be something that each student should be able to do on his or her own. It is a review of something that we did that day. From night to night your child’s homework will change from subject to subject. Homework is something that your child should be doing independently or with support. It is ok to help or guide them but please do not do it for them.

Spelling
Each week the students will bring home a spelling list. We will be practicing the spelling words at school, please also practice the words at home. Every Friday the class will have a spelling test. The scores from the test will be a part of the students spelling grade. Attached to the spelling list will be a spelling game that the students can play at home as a way to practice.

Specialists
Monday: Music 9:00-10:15
Wednesday: P.E. 1:45-2:15 (Your child must wear tennis shoes to participate!)
Friday: 8:45-9:15 Library (Make sure your child brings back his or her book!)

Contact Information
Phone Numbers
Before or After School: Classroom: 281-6899
During the school day: Office: 281-6220

Blog
The blog is now up and running. If you haven’t checked it out this year please do. All notes that come home will also go up on the blog. This is also a great place to see what we have been doing this week in the classroom.
The website is http://mranderson20102011.blogspot.com *I know that it isn’t 2010-2011. I am keeping the same link as last year! Another way to find the blog is to go to Sandstone’s homepage, click the STAFF hyperlink, click on the Mr. Anderson hyperlink.

Thanks,
Mr. A

Starting Centers

The 2nd graders have begun learning the new procedures for our Centers. Centers are a time for students to independently work in the classroom. This gives me time to meet with small reading groups. The pictures above show the students working at the Building Center, Reading Center, Math Center, and Computer Center.

Exploring Base-Ten

The students are reviewing how to make numbers with Base-Ten Blocks. The pictures below show the students playing the game Race for a Flat. The students rolled 2 dice, found the sum, and put that amount of cubes on their mat. After ten cubes they trade in for a 10 rod, after ten 10 rods, they trade in for a 100 flat!

First Day of 2nd Grade

Going Green

Parents,
This year I am not going to buy, or have parents buy, disposable water bottles. If you would like to send in a reusable water bottle with your child to use that would be great. I will send them home every Friday to be washed.
Thank you, Mr. A

Welcome Letter to Parents 8/24/11

Welcome to 2nd Grade!


Dear Parents:

My name is Mr. Josh Anderson, and I will be your child’s second-grade teacher this year. I will spend a great deal of time with your child in the upcoming school year. Because of this, I’d like to take this opportunity to tell you a few things about myself--both personally and professionally.

I was born and raised in a small town in Montana. I still love to fish rivers and go backpacking in the summers and head to the mountain to go snowboarding in the winter. I graduated with a degree in Elementary Education and a minor in Psychology from MSU-Billings. I student taught in the Billings Public School District at the fourth-grade level and taught for 3 years at the first-grade level. I now have the opportunity to teach second-grade making this my fourth year at Sandstone Elementary School!

As a parent, you are the most important person in your child’s life, and we need to work together for your child’s benefit. I need your support for the homework assignments, academic goals and classroom discipline plan I have set for the students. I will keep you informed about your child’s progress. With school and home working together, I know your child can have a successful year.

I look forward to meeting you personally at Open House on September 13th. If you have any questions or comments before then please contact me at andersonjs@billingsschool.org or call me before 8:15 or after 2:30 at 281-6899

Sincerely,

Mr. Josh Anderson

Education is not the filling of a bucket, but the lighting of a fire.
- W.B. Yeats