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COMING THIS FRIDAY, January  27th:   ...Hooray for the 100th Day of School!  Remember to dress up! 

Happy New Year, Yellow Jacket Families!  I hope everyone had a terrific break!  We've been so very busy since we've been back from the holidays; and the Yellow Jackets have been working very hard since we've returned.   

REMINDERS and OTHER INFORMATION

The school will be closed on Monday, January 16th in honor of Martin Luther King Day.  School will resume Tuesday, January 17th.  Students have been learning all about civil rights and how they relate to Martin Luther King, Jr., and his life, in Social Studies.  We will continue activities about his life this week, including a "Just or Unjust" Activity, and they will create a fun Time Line of major events throughout his life. 

Calling all Yellow Jacket readers!  Last week, students brought home a Six Flags reading log, along with a letter explaining how this optional reading program works.  Those who participate are asked to read an additional 360 minutes by the end of February.  Logs are due on the last school day of February, as my due date for mailing the reading logs is March 1st.  The letter states that reading for homework does not count; rather, they are asked to read in addition to any homework reading assignments.  Students who reach the goal and return their signed reading log are given a free Six Flags ticket.  Tickets usually arrive near the end of the school year.  Let's go, Yellow Jackets!  This is a fun way to earn a free ticket to Six Flags!! 

Chick-Fil-A Spirit Night is this Tuesday evening, January 17th from 5-8 pm at the Woodlawn Chik-Fil-A.  This month's theme is Favorite Books!   Encourage your child to bring his/her favorite book to share with a friend while enjoying dinner out!  Free ice cream will be provided by some of our very own Sope Creek staff! 

                    

A Message From the Movie Night Committee

The first ever Sope Creek Movie Night is coming to our school on Friday,  January 20th, 2012.  It is being sponsored by the Student Council.  The Smurfs and National Treasure 2 will be shown.  Popcorn and drinks will be available for purchase, but you can bring your own candy!  We will be expecting that you bring your parents - this is a family event, so no drop-offs, please.  Mark your calendars for this date, from 7-9 pm in the cafe or the media center.  Optional donations for Must Ministries gladly accepted. 

WELCOME, Kaly Shingleton!  Kaly is a student teacher from Kennesaw State University.  She is currently working toward her Bachelor of Science degree in Early Childhood Education, and will be working with the Yellow Jackets for the majority of the rest of this year.  Beginning the week of February 13th, Kaly will teach the class independently.  I will be overseeing her teaching experience in the classroom as her mentor.  We are very excited to have Kaly join the Yellow Jacket class; and have every confidence that she will make this time both exciting and rewarding for your child.  Please be sure to introduce yourself and say "hello" when you see Kaly!

Report Cards were sent home with the students Friday.  Remember to sign the signature card for the Second Nine Weeks, and return just that card in the yellow envelope.  The paper copy of the report card is yours to keep.  As always, if you have any questions, don't hesitate to contact me.

CURRICULUM UPDATE

In Math, we will finish addition of larger numbers with regrouping.  A short assessment will be given this week.  We will then move into subtraction of larger numbers.  We will regroup, as well as subtract across zeros.  Please follow up with your child throughout the week to make sure he or she feels comfortable with this skill. 

In Language Arts, the third nine weeks focuses in Reading and Writing on informational and expository text.  We are currently writing a "How-to" to explain.  Next week, students will write to explain how to blow a bubble!  Stories will be displayed in the hallway.  You'll have to be sure to read them if you visit. 

In two weeks, students will create an informational "All About ________ Book".  We will focus on animals.  Students will choose an animal of interest to research in class for their book.  I will ask at that time for your assistance in taking your child to the public library to find and check out a few nonfiction books on their selected animal.  Although our media center will have a few, the students are only allowed to check out two books at a time, and they need these for their independent reading time.  I'll email when it's time to check out animal books from the public library.  In the meantime, I will ask the students to be thinking about an animal they would like to know more about; or an animal they really like, and would like to create a book about.  Thank you in advance for your assistance with this!

As mentioned earlier, we will continue MLK activities next week.  Afterwards, we'll move to Jackie Robinson and learn how sportsmanship, patience, and perseverance helped this baseball player win over the hearts of all who knew him!

Have a terrific week!

 

As they say, "Time FLIES when you're having fun!"  We've been very busy doing so many things over the past few weeks.  Only two more weeks until our next holiday break!  I'm proud and excited to see all the learning and growth taking place with your Yellow Jacket!  Following are some things we've been up to lately:

Reader's Workshop:  This month students learned more about comprehension strategies to help them become better readers.  We focused on how to use Questioning before, during, and after we read, and then practiced this skill in small guided reading groups.  Next, how to use the Inferring strategy was introduced.  We connected the unknown to the known by investigating an apple slicer/corer (the unknown)!  Students were able to identify this handy tool, only after being shown a paper plate (the known), and an apple (the other known).  They were then able to infer the purpose for the unknown tool.  We used a couple of Chris Van Allsburg's books to practice this skill, and continued with practice in small guided reading groups.

Writer's Workshop:  The second half of this nine weeks focuses on writing a response to literature.  We spent last week taking a look at how to do this correctly (not just a summary...rather, using our voice, hooking our audience, telling a little, but not too much, about the book while making a connection to the text, stating our opinion strongly, and stating whether or not we would recommend the book to others, and why).  This can be a challenging task for Second Graders, so we dissected several examples to see whether or not they met the standard and why.  We then generated  a class-collaborated response to Chris Van Allsburg's Two Bad Ants.  With each Yellow Jacket's input, there was rich discussion and I again am so proud of their completed masterpiece!  I believe it's a response that exceeds the standards!  Next, students began to write a response together in their Learning Clubs (groups of 3 or 4) to Jan Brett's The Mitten.  Once that is complete next week, we will have an Author's Share to listen and discuss students' work.  Finally, towards the end of next week, students will create their own, individual responses to literature which I will then score.  The idea is that they will have had enough practice first, before creating their own.  This has been a lot of fun!

Additionally, we have other weekly skills including our Words Their Way word study and Spelling words.  Last week students learned about Author's Purpose.  We learned an acronym PIE to help us remember the 3 main reasons an author writes.  We looked at several reading passages to see if we could identify the reason, and then discussed why a particular passage was the reason it was.  Finally, students were given a handfull of Goldfish crackers and a writing task!  Each was given a strip of paper saying either Persuade, Inform, or Entertain and they had to write a paragraph about these Goldfish crackers...while snacking on them, of course!   In our Author's Chair I was persuaded, informed, and entertained with laughter.  This turned out to be some of the best writing they've done! Next week we'll look at using and punctuating dialogue in our writing.

Math:  This month has been all about Geometry...specifically, Plane Shapes.  This has been particularly fun for the Yellow Jackets!  They have excitedly worked hands-on with pattern blocks to combine and separate shapes, and to see how smaller plane shapes can fit into larger ones to create patterns, or larger shapes.  They learned about names for several shapes, how many vertices each has, names for and how many angles each of these shapes has, too!  As you know, they had a super fun time sharing their Geometry Celebration creations in class.  See pictures below of some of our Geometry and other December Fun!

Science:  Our latest Units have been Energy and Force, in the form of Pushes and Pulls.  Students learned about energy forms and sources, and created an immersion board to depict their learning process and show off their verbal-linguistic and visual-spacial smarts!  They explored force through pushes and pulls, and participated in our ESPN (Eventful Science Pushes/Pulls Network) Day.  Thank you for sending in sporting equipment for our experiments!  The students recorded and we shared together the results from this fun time.  Pictures below. 

Social Studies:  Last week we began talking about the difference between Wants and Needs, and what Goods and Services are.  Students milled through magazines to cut out examples of each.  It's difficult for them to see the difference between wants and needs!  As their parents, I'm sure you know what I'm talking about!  This will lead us next week into Allocation of these goods and services. 

Be on the lookout next week Monday or Tuesday for an Allocation assignment.  Your Yellow Jacket will need to bring in an item to be allocated on Thursday.  This should be something small, as in some cases, he or she will need enough to allocate to everyone.  Examples such as pencils, or erasers, stickers, candy, pretzles, etc. are a few ideas.  Participating in this type of experience will help your child remember ways to allocate goods and services easier.  By the end of the year, Second Graders need to know at least 8 ways in which goods and/or services can be allocated.

Have a great weekend, and next few weeks ahead!  I look forward to seeing some of you at our upcoming holiday party, on December 21st, at 12:30.  Thank you for volunteering to help!  Also, if you remember, I emailed you last week to ask you to consider helping this year with our Holiday Bear gift card program.  I wanted to say a special "Thank you!" to those who have stopped by to take a bear or two in order to help those in need this season. 

 

 

 

 

 

CONGRATS, IXL Champs!

Curriculum Update and Reminders:

THANKSGIVING FOOD DRIVE:  Next week is our big school-wide Thanksgiving Food Drive! Service Council will collect canned and boxed foods from our classrooms daily ! We are looking for and need a big community response! Also, loose change will be collected in the cafe all week to purchase gift cards for turkeys! Search your cupboards or go shop for canned vegetables, bags or boxes of stuffing, and other holiday favorites.

Remember, there will be NO SCHOOL for students this coming Tuesday, November 8th.  Please have your Yellow Jacket use this time to rehearse his/her lines for our class Thanksgiving play, which will be Monday, November 14th at 9:00 a.m.  I am asking students to know their lines by Thursday next week, as Friday will be the last day we have to rehearse before the big show!  THANK YOU SO MUCH to those parents who have jumped right in to volunteer to make this a very special time for all!  The Yellow Jackets are very excited to perform for you!  It should last about an hour, including refreshments which will be served afterward.

The Yellow Jackets have been very busy and continue to impress me with their learning!  October was a fun month, with lots of hands-on experiences.  We began with Red Ribbon Week:

We wrote stories about our Monsters.  These beastly creatures  apparently loved fashion, sports, the playground, video games, and driving the car around the neighborhood!  Upon completing these narratives, we had a small celebration by making paper plate Monster faces, having an Author's chair, and even enjoyed Monster-shaped lollipops:

Math has been ALL about two-digit subtraction...regrouping, no regrouping, and more regrouping!  We built numbers to subtract with partners using decks of cards.  We built subtraction problems by using a spinner to get our numbers!  And we rolled the dice to make number problems as well.  The class is really beginning to make fewer careless mistakes when solving these problems!  I do ask that you encourage your Yellow Jacket to practice the basic Math facts daily though.  There is still a lot of counting on fingers, as well as longer delays in recalling some of the higher number facts.  Counting back as a subtraction strategy is tricky for some still at this point, and causes a bit of a delay.  Any additional practice you could assist them with is appreciated.  Even a few minutes in the car, just asking them to count backwards from 19 to13, as one example, will help in becoming more efficient.  We count up and count back to reach a desired number. 

This week we begin to tell time to the nearest 5 minutes.  Students will practice this skill using a Judy clock.  We will also play some Time games!

 

Our Reading focus has been on story elements, such as naming the characters, setting, problem, solution within the text.  Students are doing a nice job of initiating AR tests when finished with their books.  Please remind your Yellow Jacket to use the 5-Finger Rule when selecting their "just-right" book.  Remember, a copy of this rule is in their binders.

Finally, in Social Studies we continue to learn about many of Georgia's first people.  The class has learned about James Oglethorpe and his contributions to the founding of the Georgia colony.  They created a class book about him!  They have also learned about Oglethorpe's friend, Tomochichi, the leader of the Yamacraw Creek people.  Be sure to ask them about it.  They are currently creating a class book about him as well.  Additionally, they know a woman named Mary Musgrove ran a trading post and served as an interpreter for Oglethorpe and Tomochichi, but will learn more about her this week! 

Have a wonderful weekend.  Remember to set your clocks back one hour and enjoy an extra hour of sleep!  I know I will!

 

 

 

As promised....Scientists at work with matter!

Matter changes...from liquid to solid




Matter changes...by burning and melting



And matter changes by mixing, dissolving, and tearing.  We created a Trail Mix and made Kool-Aid to show how this works, all in our Yellow Jackets' Matter Cafe!

  MONSTER MASH next up!  We collaborated in our learning clubs to compose a paragraph with descriptive adjectives about a test tube monster!  Our classmates had to show active listening in order to guess which monster was ours!

It was a super-duper week!

 

Dear Parents,

Just a reminder that next week, October 24-28th is Conference Week and EARLY DISMISSAL (12:20).  I look forward to seeing each of you here at Sope Creek in our classroom, at your scheduled conference time!  I have lots of great things to share about your Yellow Jacket! 

October 24-28 is also Red Ribbon Week.  This week teaches students about saying NO! to things like drugs and peer pressure.   Each day next week the students will be asked to wear or do something special to show how they support its purpose.  Monday we have asked the students to wear their favorite team jersey.  Look for each activity on next week's homework sheet. 

IXL Champs of the Week!

Have a lovely weekend!  Look for other pics of our week soon!

   

It was truly a day of fun learning more about the Creeks and Cherokees!

Please join us for our monthly Chick-fil-A Spirit Night on Tuesday, 10/18, any time between 5pm and 8pm!

While we dine and socialize, we will also be working on writing letters to service men and women as a part of The Bert Show's Big Thank You!  We will have paper and pencils available, and you will leave the letters with us.  We will make sure the letters get delivered.  More information on The Big Thank You, click here. 

Our goal is to have Sope Creek submit at least 1,100 letters!!!  If you would like to write letters at home, you are welcome to have your child bring them to the front office before October 26th.  They must be hand-written on 8.5 x 11'' paper and contain no political messages.

Thank you for supporting our school (a percentage of all proceeds help to fund field trips and staff development) and for supporting our troops!

 IXL Champs this Week!

 

 

Second Grade students collected new and gently used books for Ringgold Primary School.  Ringgold's roof was lost during the tornado last spring and many books were lost.  HUNDREDS of books were donated in a variety of genres and reading levels.  Thank you, second grade, for making a difference!