Week of September 22 - 25, 2014

Good Afternoon Parents,

We are finishing up our first IB Unit of Inquiry, “How We Express Ourselves,” in the next two weeks. In this unit, we have learned a lot about different art techniques, important Texas and U.S. symbols and monuments, different cultures, celebrations, and traditions all around the world. For our final project for this unit of inquiry, your children will be asked to write and illustrate their own personal narrative book. Their finished books will be modeled after Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst.

Field Trip FormsNext Monday, in your child’s homework folder, you will find a field trip form for our first field trip to the Houston Zoo on October 16^th. Please return the form and money to me no later than Thursday, October 2^nd.

Chaperons for the Houston Zoo field trip
Thank you so much for volunteering your time to go with us on this field trip. Please plan on being with our class from 9:00 am to the end of the day. If you haven’t done so already, please make sure that you are cleared with VIPS or else you will not be able to come. If you have any questions and/or would like to check on your status, please contact the main office as soon as possible.

Houston ISD will only pay for 5 parent volunteers to come along with us. Below, you will find the order in which I received the forms. The 6^th parent will have to pay if you wish to still come along with us on this field trip. If any of you have a membership pass to the Zoo and wouldn’t mind using it to let the 6^thparent come along, we would greatly appreciate that. Please email me if you wouldn’t mind using your zoo membership on that day.
1. Dina Taaffe
2. Wendy Badgwell
3. Pippa Evans
4. Francesca Tatulli
5. Maria Jeremic
6. Shehanaz Janardhanan

Lastly, I will not be in my classroom on the following days: October 6^th, 7^th, and October 9^th (IB Planning). Ms. Shiela Wilson, a retired Roberts’Kindergarten teacher will be my substitute on those days. All curriculum will be taught as normal. Should you need to contact me please feel free to email me.

Here are a few pictures from the last few weeks...

Rachel and her mom during her week to be our Star of The Week.

Working on our "Greetings from Texas" sign.

Asher, our Star of the Week with his Dad.

We used the lemons from the garden after our Science lesson yesterday to make some lemonade today.

 Happy birthday, Ethan!

 

Upcoming Events:
Tuesday, 9/30  Progress Reports Go Home
Thursday, 10/2  PTO Meeting, 8:10 a.m.; Fall Picture Day
Houston Zoo (field trip) form and money are due
Friday, 10/3  Fall Holiday - NO SCHOOL
Friday, 10/10  Altered School Day - Dismissal 12:30; International Festival 3:00-6:00

 

For the next two weeks, in the following subjects we will be working on…
Language Arts- Consonant digraphs, imperative and exclamatory sentences, r-controlled vowels, nouns
Reading- Facts and details, cause and effect
Math- Subtraction and addition facts, fact families, number stories using fact families, identifying patterns to solve subtraction facts, odd and even numbers, repeated addition, name-collection boxes frames and arrows, what’s my rule table
Science- Scientific process, investigations, making inferences
Social Studies- Celebrations, what homes look like all over the world

 
Have a wonderful weekend!

-Cathy Reyes

Curriculum Night

Good Afternoon Parents,
Thank you so much for attending curriculum night on Tuesday. I hope that it was beneficial to you and that I was able to answer some of your questions. If you have any other questions about second grade or about your child please do not hesitate to contact me.

A few pictures from the last two weeks...

Silent Gallery Walk

Lunch with the teacher (personal best board reward)

 

For the next two weeks, in the following subjects we will be working on…

Language Arts- Consonant blends, predicates, inflected endings, sentences

Reading- Character and setting, main idea

Math- Identifying the ones place and patterns in numbers, compare numbers using <,>, =; reading a thermometer, counting using base-10 blocks, solve number stories, practice addition and subtraction facts using fact triangles.

Science- Scientific process, investigations, how our senses support our investigations

Social Studies- Local landmarks, laws, investigations into the state flower, symbols, landmarks, and celebrations

 

Upcoming Events:
Tuesday, 9/16  Roberts Night at JerryBuilt, 5:00-8:00pm
Friday, 9/19  Scholastic Book Orders due!
I will place an order on Friday morning. Your children books should be here in a week.

 

 

 

Have a wonderful weekend!

Parent Volunteers Needed

Good Afternoon Parents,

Thank you all so much for all of our classroom supplies and gift cards to be used for the classroom. So far we have been able to purchase 15 new Patricia Polocco books and many school supplies with your generous gifts. I also want to thank you for all of your support so far and for those of you who have signed up to be a parent volunteer in our classroom this year. I definitely cannot do it without all of your help!

If you have not had the opportunity to sign up online to volunteer for our classroom, please consider doing so.

Here are the most important volunteer positions that we still need to fill (in order of importance):

1. Room Parent  - coordinates parent involvement in classroom and school-wide activities.
2. Field Trip Chaperones - we still need 5 parent volunteers
3. Tuesday Folder Helper – stuff the folders for our classroom every Tuesday (30 minutes max!)
4. Room Parent assistants - we need at least 1 or 2 parent volunteers

There are many other volunteer positions still open on the link as well: http://www.signupgenius.com/go/4090449a9ae29a02-2ndgrade5

Please do take a moment to go online and volunteer for a position. Our class would greatly appreciate it!!

Again, thank you for your constant support and I look forward to seeing you all next Tuesday, September 9^th at Curriculum Night!

Have a wonderful weekend!

 -Cathy Reyes