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