Ms. Russell
Second Grade Newsletter
Chaparral School

October 5, 2009
Dear Room 6 Families,
ART: This week we have our first Art Masters lesson.
Art Masters is artfully taught by Helen Donfrio, who is an artist herself. We are most fortunate to have her as a part of our teaching staff and look forward to her lesson on the artist Georgia O’Keefe. On Thursday, there will be a lecture on O’Keefe for all second graders in the multipurpose room. On Friday, Mrs. Donfrio will come into our classroom for hands-on art.

COMPUTER LAB: Dance Mat Typing. Students need to learn proper key board skills to become effective computer users. Last week, the students were introduced to a program called Dance Mat Typing. You can find this program on the Room 6 web site under Helpful Links: KIDS. Although typing skills is not on the three progress reports, I do check the data base for each child’s progress in their typing skills throughout the year. We will occasionally train with Dance Mat Typing in computer lab, but it is also very important for your child to practice at home, as well. Start with Level 1: HOME ROW. Wait for this program to load; sometimes it is very slow. The audio will give the instructions (you will note a British accent since this is a BBC program). While your child is typing, please encourage him/her to look at the screen at all times; not the fingers. I can guarantee you that you will see rapid progress with regular practice. For those of you who have read Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, this is the beginning of typing’s 10, 000 hours.

This week, in computer lab, I will be teaching the children how to go on-line to access Everyday Math materials. Your child will come home with their own identification card and password to use on-line with the family computer for these enrichment activities.

LANGUAGE ARTS: We will continue to work on our skills while reading Julius. In spelling, please review the words with your child each Wednesday night. This is an excellent spelling program because it teaches spelling patterns. These skills need to be reviewed each week because many of them are not obvious to the students and need to be learned. I am noticing that the three more challenging words are being spelled incorrectly by a number of students. The students are putting these challenging words in their personal school dictionaries. Please review these words with extra care.

POEM: Continents of the World

MATHEMATICS: Just as we have four strategies for proofreading, we will be learning a problem solving strategy for writing a number sentence to solve a word problem. The four steps to the plan are: (1) Understand the question, (2) Plan a strategy for solving the problem, (3) Solve the problem by implementing the plan, and (4) Look Back to evaluate the problem: does it make sense?

SOCIAL STUDIES: One of the features in our social studies program is learning how to use primary sources. The children will learn that the study of history involves more than events, facts, and dates. It is also the words, ideas, and experiences of the people who lived through these events. Primary sources are an excellent way to bring these experiences to life. A compilation called Primary Source Collection provides a wide range of documents, letters, journal entries, first-person accounts, myths, poems, advertisements, photos, and artifacts to use in teaching history. Included is vocabulary building and reading analysis skills such as drawing conclusions and making inferences. I am very excited about this learning tool and how it is emphasized in our Harcourt Brace social studies program. We will be starting with a passage from a journal of Christopher Columbus.

GRANDPA DOUG OUR E-PAL: Over the past few years, my father (Grandpa Doug to the kids) has been an e-pal for Room 6. Today he will be introducing himself to this year’s class. Last year, just before his 90th birthday, he came by the classroom to say hello and play hopscotch with his e-pals. We can only hope that he will be able to visit again this year, but in the meantime, we will enjoy corresponding with him each week. I do not know who loves it more, my dad or the kids. I guess you could call it a big win-win (for me, too).

SCIENCE: As we continue our unit on Forces and Motion,
Mrs. Holt has volunteered to lead an in-class project this Monday afternoon, building a marble roller coaster to demonstrate friction and motion.
Learning by doing!
In science, we are also initiating a BIG project with
Mrs. Kaljumagi (our Chaparral Master Gardner), utilizing the new Chaparral garden as a hands-on lab for second grade science standards. Stay tuned! Please become part of our Chaparral Garden Community and volunteer for our garden club and garden workday. Read the attached information which describes how a school garden links to the standards, as well as the information on days and times for garden activities.

MOTOR SKILLS: Mileage Club starts today! I am including the guidelines for Mileage Club for your information.