Tumble Books

Looking for a fun way to keep your child exposed to books ? We have discovered "Tumble Books", on a great website through the Boise Public Library. My students learned how to access this fun website and experience the read-a-loud books on line. Here's how to access Tumble Books and open a whole library of books right at home.  From picture books to chapter books they are all leveled with A.R. reading levels and all! It's like having a libary of books at your figertips!!! The link to the Boise Public Library has been added to my blog.  Click on the link, next click on Tumble Books, Click on Read Alouds. This is a great way for students to get exposure to good modeled read alouds. The text is highlighted so students can follow along as they listen. As a general rule students should listen to books 1-2 levels higher than their independent reading level.

October Newsletter

Happy fall everyone, I can’t believe that it is already October.  Let me first remind you that later this month is our one and only, parent teacher conference for the year.  You will be receiving a conference form to request times that might best fit into your schedule. I will try to accommodate you the best I can.  Please fill this form out and return it A.S.A.P. Conferences will be later this month October 27^th and October 28^th. 

October will bring our first classroom party.   The afternoon will be full of fun learning.  Our Math lesson will be all about estimation, place value, and counting by 10’s. If you have any giant pumpkins or sunflower heads that you can donate for that day please contact Mrs. Hedberg. Following our Pumpkin Math activity we will have time for games and trick or treats.  Mrs. Telford will be heading up our first fall party and will contact parents that signed up to help at the beginning of the year.  Watch for more information later this month.

Math:   We are very fortunate to have the ability and staffing to extend learning for our accelerated math learners as well as provide intensive intervention for learners based on need.  These times have been built into the weekly schedule and have begun this week... I will send notice if your child is participating in any extended math learning. This month we will be covering Place Value, and money.

Reading:  We have two more weeks of our “Sharing Stories” theme.  We have been building lots of comprehension strategies and skills such as making connections, making predictions, clarifying and monitoring text. Ask your child who RT is and what tools he teaches the students to use during literature circle time?  Our next theme will be “Kindness” a perfect connection to the character virtues we study each month. Life’s most urgent question is what are you doing for others? “Love and Kindness are never wasted”.

Character: This month is our Virtue of Friendliness. Mrs. Davis our school counselor presents a lesson monthly in each second grade class. We have read many stories during our reading theme that also lend themselves to teaching the virtues.  We read from Aesop’s Fables as part of our integrated reading unit and discussed many morals of the stories.  Ask your child what his or her favorite was??

In closing, I’d like to brag about my class 100% of my students had the honor of attending “Lunch Bunch” for completing all of their homework for the month and showing their virtue of responsibility turning it in on time WOW! Watch in this Friday’s folder for Book It coupons to come home for Pizza Hut for any and all that completed 15-20 minutes of at home reading on the homework calendar keep it up! 

Sincerely,

Mrs. Hedberg

Reading and Spelling Homework Begin!

Dear Parents,

You will find next weeks spelling list on the left hand side of the blog.  You may begin checking off the spelling homework each night that your child practices on their homework calendar.  On the back of the calendar you will find many fun ways of studying.  Your child will bring home his/her pretest each Monday so they will know exatly how much studying they need to do!  Of course if your child only misses one or two then study days could be reduced, as compared to a student that misses more he or she may need all four nights of study.

Reading homework will be sent home with every student this Monday hard copy so you can see what it is your are expected to provide your child by clicking on the Reading Homework link on the right of the blog.  I will assign each packet by date. Example the first packet is to begin on 9/19. Students should do one page a night in order.  This is important because it piggybacks the learning that day in the classroom. You may then check off the appropriate box on the homework calendar.   You do not have to send in the actual pages unless you chose.  Please feel free to call me if you have any questions about homework.  Thank you for sending back the math homework daily, it give students some responsibility and they enjoy the daily drawing for a prize.

Thank you for your at home support,

Mrs. Hedberg

Mrs. Hedberg's September Newsletter

Newsletter for Month of September 2012 

The students have completed a weeks worth of initial assessments including the fall IRI. You may view students IRI reading scores and words read per minute through Skyward gradebook as well as weekly graded subjects at anytime.  The words per minute break down is as follows for the Fall IRI: 
                                                                                               0-26 wpm= 1  Intensive Intervention needed
                                                                                             27-53 wpm= 2  Strategic Intervention needed
                                                                                             54-above wpm = Benchmark on Grade Level

Math:  Our first Unit is underway we are working on the new Common Core Standard : Number & Operation in Base Ten. One thing has changed this year, your child will not be given a homework sheet of math from the days lesson.  You may see work or evidence of learning that will come home
in various forms, such as Today's number lesson, Envisions skill sheets, Drops in the Bucket skills sheets, these will hopefully give you an idea of concepts and learning of target standards. I will also try to post pictures from our lessons on the blog as well.  In response to my survey of would you like additional math or practice provided or optional practice 99% of you said yes!!  I am working to create what will be called a Passport of Learning for Math,  that will soon be added to the back of your child's Daily Work Communication forlder. The passport page will be filled with one project or activity to do at home that applies to each of  target standards we are learning for Numbers and Operations in Base Ten.  Your child will be able to retrun his/her passport when it is done for stamps to earn I-pad, computer , or time playing game boards etc.  The Passport for Math will also help to inform you the parent of what concepts your child is learning and see them demonstrate mastery of the target!  You will here more about this soon~  I'm very excited about this idea and hope you will find it a fun and engaging way to be involved in your childs learning (rather than sitting with homework sheets nightly)!

Reading: Our first theme in

Open Court Reading

is “Sharing Stories”.  We will be sharing fables, fairytales and poetry the students will be reading fractured fairytales like The Three Little Figs, and Come Back Jack.  As an extension to our unit the students will be  writing a class fractured fairytale based on the Three Little Pigs.  As we begin each unit of reading you will have the option of downloading additional practice sheets at home off the blog, if you choose for your child to do these at home please do them the week I have dated as this would be a follow up to the phonics, sight words, vocabulary of what is learned in class. If your child has scored a 1 or 2 on the IRI I would encourage you to concider this option at home.

Character:  We will continue working on building our classroom climate and setting classroom goals and expectations of what our class should look like, sound like, and feel like when we are learning in a safe and loving environment.  Students have been building our classroom community in a variety of activities over these first few weeks of school.  We have celebrated our differences and diversity through reading and writing .  We read All About ME and wrote about what we liked best about ourselves, students selected their best feature and wrote explaining why they thought it was their best attribute.  The students also created a Classroom honey comb filled with "sweet" character virtues to help us stick together as a class community!

Our First Day

Students showing off their Marshmellow Feet

                                           Our Marshmellow Feet are a reminder of how

                                           our feet will sound walking in the halls of our school.
                                           Marshmellows are soft, and quiet!

 We had a fun filled first day learning routines, exploring our new classroom, and participating in various community building activities.

2012-13 Welcome to Mrs. Hedberg's 2nd Grade Class

Hello to all my new students and families and welcome to our class blog.  This will be my third year using a blog as my main source of parent information.  The class blog will be ECO friendly and provide you with easy access to all kinds of classroom information and  allow you to view weekly events! I will update the blog weekly, with current spelling lists as well as a monthly newsletter with accademic information.  You will notice as you explore the blog that I have already listed the entire year of Reading Homework assignments .  I will change the Unit and Lesson numbers into dates as we begin the year. Example U1-L1 will read (week of 9/19) as I begin to assign weekly reading homework. All you have to do is click on the date and the assignment will open.  I will keep a Looking Ahead calendar with important future dates, a section to add websites that will enrich your child's classroom understandings, scholatic online codes for ordering classroom books, as well as many other postings that will be of value throughout the year. I have tried to organize the blog in such a way to make it as user friendly as possible. Please make sure that you check it weekly!!! Please take a moment now to become a weekly follower by clicking on the side link and entering your email address. Everytime I post you will receive an automatic e-mail.  I'm excited for our new year together and can't wait to see all the smiling faces of my new second grade friends soon! 

Sincerely,
Mrs. Hedberg