August 24-28

We had a great first full week! The students earned five class points, so they were able to eat lunch in the classroom on Friday. This was a fun special treat they were working for through out the week. Also, on Friday, Mrs. Mortensen checked each class to see who had turned in the letter that she had assigned for homework. Second grade was the only grade will 100% of letters turned in! Mrs. Mortensen was so excited; she took all the second grade classes out for a game of Dodgeball! Great job second graders! I sent home our first homework packet on Friday. This needs to be completed and turned in this Thursday. If you have any questions, feel free to email me, send a note, or just have your child ask me at school and I will be glad to help! Our class is slowly getting into our routine. We have been working on getting our work done quickly but neatly. Look for SEP times; they will be coming home this week. Your students are doing great! Here's an overview of our week.

Language Arts: We will continue to learn about Nouns and begin learning about Proper Nouns.

Writing: We will learn about the Writing Process: Prewrite, Write, Revise, Edit, and Publish.

Reading: Tuesday and Wednesday I will have a sub in the morning. I will be pulling students to test their reading level. I will discuss this at our SEP conferences.

Math: The students have been doing great understanding tens and ones with place value. Please review Time at home. Make sure students are looking at the short hand first for the hour then the long hand for the minutes.

This week's math focus:
- Count by twos, fives, and tens.
- Identify numbers that are multiples of 2, 5, or 10.
- Classify numbers as even or odd.
- Read and show on-the-hour and half-hour times on an analog and digital clock.
- Solve problems that involve elapsed time.

August 17-21

We had a great first week! I enjoyed getting to know your kids, and I'm excited to see all we can accomplish this year! I was surprised and glad to see how all the kids were interacting with each other on Friday. We had only been together for a day and all the students already felt comfortable with each other! I work hard on creating a great classroom environment, and already this class is getting along great and making sure to include everyone! Parents- if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask. My email is kholyoak@cces.washk12.org- I check my email frequently and will respond within a day or two! Here is our overview for next week.

Writing: We will be writing about the first week of school. I will keep these and show you at our SEP conferences on either Aug. 31st or Sept. 2nd, whenever I meet with you. We will also be putting a book together of our school friends by finding out each classmate's likes and dislikes.

Math: Our school district uses the program Growing with Mathematics. We will be starting that on Monday. First we are focusing on reviewing number and time concepts.
This week's math focus:
* Count, read, and write to 100
* Write numerals to 99 and connect them to the quantities they represent
* Represent two-digit numbers as groups of ten and "leftover" ones
* Understand whole numbers
* Compare two numbers (up to 99) and say which is greater

Communication: We will be interviewing each other.

Spelling: This week we are taking the Spelling Inventory to assess their level for spelling sorts. Save the Date- Wednesday, September 9th for Literacy Night. This is when parents will learn how to do the spelling sorts for homework.

Language Arts: We will begin learning about nouns.