What a WEEK!

WHOA NELLY!  We have had a BUSY one! 

Please keep an eye out for pictures that I'll be sending from the Field Trip!  The kids had a great time!  I hope you all can have a chance to visit New Market on your own - the shop owners really did a great job presenting to the kids.  All for free! 

David Price (town council member, owner of 12 West Main gallery, the individual who helped me organize this field trip)  has been trying to get the sign in New Market to change from advertising antiques, to advertising it's rich history.  Channel NBC 25 was in New Market the day we were there - some of us made the news! 

New Market Video Clip

Each of the second grade classes are going to be making books of our trips to New Market and Frederick.  Two students from each class will be selected to join the second grade teachers to the New Market Town Hall Meeting on Wednesday, December 9th to present these books to the city of New Market and have their picture taken for the Gazette/Frederick News Post.  The drawings will be held as follows:

1. Entry forms will be sent home next week.
2. Second grade teachers will collect the entry forms from their students.
3. Students will be selected lottery-style to determine who will be presenting the books.

Coming up next week....

We will be continuing our study of geometry in math - especially working on answering math BCRs.  Students have done a really nice job so far - I've seen great improvements already!

We will be continuing our study of short stories as well!  Last week we began focusing on the story elements (character, setting, problem, solution).  This week we'll be focusing more on the author's message - with a more specific focus on fables.  If you have any collections of short stories, fables, fairy tales, folktales, tall tales, myths, etc. that you would like to share we'd love to see them!  Please make sure your name is in the book so we can return them!

Spelling this coming week will be with short i/r-controlled i sounds.  Short i sounds can be found in words with the "in" prefix - such as independent, infer, interest.  R-controlled i, e, and u sounds are very similar - if not identical. Some examples include: dirt, skirt, first, thirsty.

Students will be taking the Comprehension Strategy Assessment (CSA) this week as well.  This will be on Thursday morning.    The CSA is a computer-based test, the students took it last year, and will take it every year in elementary school.  This test is to see their strengths and weaknesses in reading comprehension - testing their ability to identify the main idea of a story, various story elements, and find meanings of words based upon context clues.  These are all skills that the students have been working on since Kindergarten - I predict everyone will do fabulously :)  The scores take a few weeks to be processed, and will be provided to you as soon as possible!

Where The Wild Things Are - is showing tomorrow at the Westview Cinemas at 1:30.  Let's plan to meet in the lobby around 1:15.  See you then!

In my never-ending habit of collecting odd things for the classroom...I was wondering if you could also keep your eye out for The Kids Post in the Washington Post?  I have started to collect them myself - I really like it - and it's usually a bit of a step up from the Mini-Pages too!  It's always nice to have multiple copies of things, so if any of you are willing to donate those to the classroom, that would be greatly appreciated as well!

Also, we are starting to run a little low on glue sticks and pencils - any contribution would be much appreciated!

Report Cards came home today!  In BIG, SHINY, NEW envelopes!  Please sign the envelope in the bottom of the box for the first marking period and return it as soon as possible.  The report card is yours to keep.  Please do not seal the envelope, as we will be using this envelope througout the school year.  Thank you!

Finally, I hope you and your families have a great weekend! Thank you so much for all your help and support!