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!