October 1st Family Letter

October 1, 2010

Dear Families,

Our Healthy Snack Sale was a big success. Thank you so much for your help sending in snacks. The NH SPCA in Stratham will really appreciate the money we raised to help the pets at the shelter. A guest from from NH-SPCA visited us soon.
In math we are working on addition facts. An addition fact is any one digit number added to another one digit number. For example 2+9 is a fact but 2+10 is a math problem. Second graders are encouraged to know all facts by memory or have an efficient way to find the answer for facts. We have worked with + 0, +1, Next week we’ll work with doubles facts (ex. 8+8), turn around facts (3+4 = 4+3) and +9 using the hundreds chart. Many seconds grader use the count on strategy. We played various games including beat the calculator. These jobs are rotated. One person calls the fact, ant the other two try to get the correct answer first – one uses a calculator and the other uses his or her brain. So far the brains are winning.
Last week sent home a hard cover math reference book. It was for you to look though and see the types of things we work on in math throughout the year. Your child also needed it for last week’s homework. Please send the math reference back to school, if you have not already done so, as we need it for other things here at school this year.
In reading we are starting Individual Directed Reading Assessments. (DRA’s) This will help us be able to fine tune your child reading program.
In writing second graders have been working at creating plans and writing stories from their plans. They are becoming much more fluent writers.
In Technology, second graders recorded their pet stories using photo story. I have our class blog accessible from our web page and we will have
class blogging as a job starting next week.
Have a great weekend!

~Mrs. O. and Ms. Ambrose