Ms. Russell
Second Grade Newsletter
Chaparral School

November 2, 2009
Dear Room 6 Families,

  I am completing the assessments and beginning to write your child’s progress report. One of my benchmarks is tallying up the number of hours your child has read outside the classroom. As you may remember, Chaparral’s R.I.S.E. reading program is the way we can document the books, magazines, etc. your son/daughter is reading at home. My progress report rubric is the following: 0-1 R.I.S.E. sheets = N, 2 R.I.S.E. sheets= P,

3 R.I.S.E. sheets = S, 4 or more R.I.S.E. sheets = E. Please make it a point to initial these reading sheets and get them back to school as soon as they are complete. The cut off mark for this progress report is this Friday. Any R.I.S.E. sheet that comes in after Friday will count toward next tri-mester’s progress report.
  Speaking of parent conferences, our tireless Ms. Flock has spoken to or left messages with all of you to schedule your time. Please let her know what will work for you, if you have not yet responded. For those of you who have scheduled a conference, you will be getting a reminder notice of the date and time.
  SCIENCE: Great lessons on simple machines. We have a class of engineers!
  MUSIC: Today we hear the Children’s Choir from Nancy, France.
  LANGUAGE ARTS: We continue our story Ranger Dockett and its attendant standards. For our daily oral reading, I am reading the Mrs. Piggle Wiggle stories to the children. They are delighting in the various “cures” for such things as bullying, answering back, messiness, not wanting to go to bed, and being a show off.
  POEM: The Chaparral Pledge of Personal Behavior.
  MATHEMATICS: Today you will be getting the Family Letter, describing our new Everyday Mathematics Unit 2. I would like to give you an overview of the 13 Lessons in this unit. They are (in order), Addition Number Stories, Review “Easy” Addition Facts, Doubles Facts, Turn-Around Facts and the + 9 Shortcut, Addition Strategies That Use Doubles Facts, Subtraction From Addition, Fact Families, EXPLORATIONS: Exploring Weights, Scales, Equal Groups, Name Collections, Frames-and-Arrows Routines, “What’s My Rule?” Routines, Counting Strategies for Subtraction, and Shortcuts for “Harder” Subtraction Facts.
MEMORIZING MATH FACTS: TODAY I WILL START TESTING THE STUDENTS ON THEIR MATH FACTS. REMEMBER, THERE IS A PRIZE FOR EACH STUDENT WHO HAS ACCOMPLISHED THIS REQUIRED TASK BY TODAY. GOOD LUCK!
  REMEMBER: Wednesday, November 11, is Veteran’s Day. No school on that day. I am reminding you early because it falls in the middle of next week.
  OTHER: We now have wonderful vegetable recipes from our Room #6 families. These recipes will celebrate both a healthy life style and our new Chaparral garden. Do I have a volunteer out there who could type the recipes for us?