Enrichment Updates

Art

Second grade artists graduated to the big painting studio where they learned how to independently set up their palette, choose brushes and delve into the exploration of color mixing with liquid tempera paint. At this age creating new colors is rewarding, exciting and often more meaningful to students than actually putting paint onto paper. The building studio is where friends gather to build imaginary cities...and knock them down. Students are often overheard sharing ideas and suggestions with each other as they learn that there are more than two teachers in the room. We circle-up at the end of class where students share their discoveries, observations, questions and offer solutions to problems. You will notice very few pieces of work coming home as students are saving work to display later at the Spring Arts Festival. We wish we had half the energy of these busy art makers.

Thanks for sharing your artist with us.

Jen Rankey and Mary Ann O’Sullivan

P.S.  Don’t forget the subscribe the the Art Department Blog (tesartdepartment.wordpress.com) and follow us on Twitter (@tesarttab1) to keep up with all the wonderful things happening!

Music

This month, our 2nd graders have been working hard on their production Willy Wonka! We had our unfortunate snow/ice storm on the day of our performance. However, luckily, we have rescheduled the performance for Friday, January 29 at 2:30pm. Thank you so much to the parents and students! In the coming month, we will be learning about opera and differences between opera and musicals. Our 2nd graders will also begin reviewing about composing and writing music.

Faith Studies

1 Samuel and 2 Samuel are the saga of King Saul and King to be David.  We will follow David to the Kingship and celebrate his time as king in the month of February.  The big question of how a leader stays faithful to God will be our focus for the month.

Spanish

Second graders have followed short chapters of "Caperucita Roja" (Little Red Riding Hood) with some variations in the story. Students are making connections between the vocabulary worked on last trimester when we were playing the game "El Lobo" (The Wolf).

The chapters are shown in Spanish only, allowing the kids to develop their listening skills.

Through this game, children began using phrases about clothes a actions.

We have talked also about weather and the clothes we wear in winter time.

Children have been practicing names of some animals. They are learning a song about wild animals "Animales Salvajes", repeating words as they see the pictures.

Click here to access a video to use with your children at home to continue practicing some animals!

Play Clarification

While we know you have received emails, we wanted to send out one final, friendly reminder that the production of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory will be THIS FRIDAY, January 29th at 2:30 in the Dickson Dining Hall. Our dress rehearsal will be held that morning at 9:30, where other grade levels will be in attendance. We look forward to ending our week on such a high note!

As planned for last Friday, should you intend on leaving with your child following the play, please be sure that your child still shakes hands/hugs us goodbye so that we can be sure everyone is taken care of. Thank you for your partnership in this!

{short} Weekly Update 1/20/16 - 1/22/16

What a gift the long weekend was! After being back in the routine of school for two weeks, we can't complain about having an extra day.

Before we cover the happenings of the week, I want to extend a very big THANK YOU for the birthday love you all shared on Friday. I am so thankful for the many hugs, cards and surprises that came on Friday and am truly overwhelmed by how special ya'll made me feel. I wish there was a bigger word than "thanks" -- because that is what I feel!

Our biggest news this week revolves around our upcoming production of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, which will be THIS FRIDAY, January 22nd. We will perform that morning for other Trinity Wildcats and our show for you will begin promptly at 2:30. We hope you'll make able to attend and celebrate the hard work of our second graders! Please remember that should you and your child leave following the play, your child must still shake hands/hug one of us beforehand. Don't want to lose any Oompa Loompas!

A brief classroom update, although we have no doubt news of Storypath has made it's way into your homes. We've partnered with Mrs. Bolding and Mr. Smith's class for the research portion of our work only, and have been enjoying seeing these partnerships research, record, and use their new note-taking skills each day. Students are focusing on finding information about their animal's body, habitat, diet, defenses, life cycle, in addition to fun facts that they can't help but discover. Ultimately, this research will transform into a published research book with your student as the expert and author! Students have already begun to show great excitement over their assigned animals and we hope your children have been coming home with fun facts to share. Storypath has been a wonderful way to combine our work from Reader's and Writer's, where the focus has been non-fiction, and we're excited to see the previous mini lessons being applied. It is the Trinity way for subjects and learning to overlap, and we are certainly seeing that in a large way during our study of the Coral Reef.

Math continues to focus on data collection, organization and representation. We've conducted surveys within our class to learn about our various favorite things, and will be stepping outside our classroom soon to collect data from other classes. Students are beginning to learn how to represent information using bar graphs and line plots and how to then analyze the representation in order to make claims about the collected data.

Additional Dates/Announcements for the Upcoming Weeks:

• Interim Reports go out on Friday, January 22nd.
• We will be adding Wellness to our schedule beginning the last week of January. This will be run by Caroline Black, the school's counselor, and we are so thrilled to add this to our days. Wellness will be held once a month (give or take) and Caroline will address topics such as staying healthy, how to treat others, and how to confront difficulty. Should you have any additional questions, please don't hesitate to reach out to us or Caroline.

Costumes for Wonka!

Below you can find the suggested costumes for the Wonka play at the end of the month. Megan has shared this information with you, however we wanted to post it here as well. No doubt we'll have a pretty cute cast!

Wyatt (Augustus) -- blue shirt or jacket
Matthew (Candy Man) -- purple shirt or jacket (a hat will be supplied)
Daphne (Charlie) -- colored shirt or pants
David (Charlie) -- colored shirt or pants
Max (Charlie) -- colored shirt or pants
Brielle (Ginny) -- colorful clothing
Eduardo (Grandpa Joe) -- brown and grey colored shirt/pants/jacket
Lacy (Grandpa Joe) -- brown and grey colored shirt/pants/jacket
Sophia (Mabel) -- colorful clothing
Charlie (Mike) -- orange and/or yellow clothing
Grey (Mrs. Beauregarde) -- purple outfit
Marcia (Mrs. Gloop) -- blue colored clothing
Tanner (Mrs. Salt) -- pink and/or red clothing
Webb (Narrator) -- multicolored clothing
Ella (Narrator) -- purple clothing
Grey (Narrator) -- purple clothing
Grady (Narrator) -- colorful clothing
Hadley (Narrator) -- blue clothing
Jack (Narrator) -- colorful clothing
Katie (Newspaper Reporter) -- blue colored clothing (a hat will be supplied)
Claire (Veruca) -- pink and/or red clothing
Julian (Wonka) -- purple clothing (a hat will be supplied)
Olive (Wonka) -- purple clothing (a hat will be supplied)
Destiny (Jaimie) -- colorful clothing

This information has also been sent home in your child's communication folder, should you need/want a hard copy. We've heard whispers about costumes in our class already and can't wait to see the creativity of your children!

Welcome Back and Weekly Update 1/4/16 - 1/8/15

Welcome back and Happy New Year!!! We hope 2015 wrapped up well for all of you and that 2016 has started off beautifully -- the colder weather sure makes it feel like January. We had the most wonderful day back with your children on Monday -- smiles burst through our door and stories immediately began to unravel. I don't think we realized how much we'd missed this class until the day had started!

In Trinity fashion, we are off and running and beginning new units across the board.

Math: Unit 3 Math Assessments will be coming home this week, so be on the lookout for these and we ask that you please take the time to review the assessment with your children, sign and return them. In addition to the assessment, Unit 3 work pages will be sent home. As a reminder, we do not finish every page during the unit study, so feel free to use these pages for extra review should you please. Unit 4 of Investigations will begin this week with a focus on collecting, organizing, and understanding data. There will be times within this unit that your children will be asked to conduct some form of a simple survey at home and we thank you in advance for your cooperation in this! Mad Minutes will continue and fact fluency is as important as ever -- please continue to practice addition combinations at home.

Reader's and Writer's: The two are blending! With Storypath, as well, as we begin looking closer at non-fiction texts and work our way towards writing a report on an animal from the Coral Reef. This report will be done with a partner from the Bolding/Smith classroom, and we are excited to have all of Second Grade together for this project. We have introduced important non-fiction text features (bold or italicized words, photographs, captions, labels, illustrations, etc.). Should you find yourself reading non-fiction at home, asking your children questions regarding the purpose of these features is a great way to reemphasize what we are learning in the classroom.

Word Study: While we typically divide into three groups for Word Study, we are starting this year with a larger class sort focusing on putting verbs into past tense.

A few reminders and updates for the weeks ahead:

• We have sent home several pieces of student work for you to keep in order for us to "start fresh" in the new year. Social Studies/Storypath materials were sent home earlier this week and those should remain at home.
• Please remember to sign your child's agenda every night. It is their responsibility to log reading, and we know it takes a bit to slide back into routine, so thank you for helping us get back on track with this routine.
• No School: MLK Day, Monday, January 18th. The following day, Tuesday, January 19th, will be a Professional Day for faculty/staff. 
• The Second Grade Musical will take place on Friday, January 22nd at 2:30. We know our Wildcats have been practicing hard and we can't wait for their performance! Prior to the performance, we will have additional, joint music classes with the Bolding/Smith class once a week in order to prepare as a grade level. 

Last, but CERTAINLY not least (in fact, most important!), we'd like to welcome the newest member of our class -- Grey! Grey has joined the community with ease and we are proud of how welcoming her classmates have been this week. We are thrilled to have the Tugwell family as a part of the larger Trinity family and look forward to you all meeting soon.

Bundle up and stay warm! If we haven't seen you since returning to school, we hope to see you soon!