100th Day Recap and Monday News!

Dear Parents,

We had a GREAT 100th Day of School on Friday!  Check out some pictures of our class dressed like 100 year olds and completing the 100 cup stack challenge at the bottom of this post.

This week, we're continuing to learn about Civil Rights and Jackie Robinson, the first African-American to play major league baseball.  We're having a speaker visit the 2nd grade on Tuesday to talk to us about African-American history, and we're looking forward to this presentation!

In math, we'll be solving word problems involving money up to $5.00.  Students will need to be able to compare amounts of money, add up combination of bills and coins, and determine if someone has enough money to buy an item of a specified price.  Students do NOT need to understand making change at this time!

In reading, we're learning about determining the lesson/moral of the story and using text evidence to support our thinking!

I can't wait for the great week we have ahead!

Love,
Mrs. Kidd

Tuesday News

Dear Parents,

I hope you enjoyed your second long weekend in a row!  We had an awesome day today, and I'm so looking forward to celebrating the 100th Day of School with your children on Friday.  Thank you again to Ashley Mangine for volunteering to be our Weekly Helper last week!  Please check our Shutterfly site to see how you can help!

Here are a few upcoming events:

• East Side's International Festival
  When-  Saturday, January 21, 2017 4:00-6:00 PM in the East Side Cafeteria
  The International Festival is a fun, family event to learn more about cultures and traditions from all over the world. You will watch exciting performances while sampling delicious traditional food from many countries.
  Purchase tickets online through the PTA website before January 18^th for $7.00. Tickets will also be available at the door for $10.00. Children 3 and under are free.

• East Side’s Annual Family STEM Night:  Please join us for our annual Family STEM Night this January 31^st or February 1^st from 6:00-7:30! Cheer your child on as they make paperclips fly, build roller coasters, play with robots, and much more!  Families whose last name begins with the letters A-M will join us Tuesday, January 31^st and families whose last name begins with the letters N-Z will join us Wednesday, February 1^st.  Pizza will be sold by the slice beginning at 6:00!  Mark your calendars and bring your whole family for this fun-filled STEM Night!  **Please note: this is not a drop-off event**

Here are a few pictures of what we've been doing in class!  Please read your newsletter, which was e-mailed out today and can also be found under News You Can Use, to read more specific details about what we're learning!

Place Value Snowman to represent a number in many ways!

We can represent numbers through 1,000 in each of these ways!

We have been learning how opinion reviews are organized with a clear opinion, at least three reasons/examples, and a closing sentence that restates our opinion.

We read real reviews written by kid critics and wrote down what we noticed about how they were alike, so that we could match these traits in our own writing.

As you can see, last week was a busy and fun week!  This week we'll continue to learn about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., start learning about counting and solving word problems involving money to $5.00, and continue reading folktales and fairy tales!  We're growing smarter every day!

Love, 

Mrs. Kidd

Happy Wintery Weather Weekend!

Dear Parents,

We had a great first day back of 2017 yesterday.  As I'm sure you are aware, all Cobb County schools will be dismissing 2 hours early today, due to the threat of inclement weather.  Please note that there will be NO ASP or Enrichment this afternoon!  Please help our school get your child home quickly and safely, but ensuring that your child knows how they are going home this afternoon!

Report cards will be coming home today!  Your child's report card should stay at home with you, but please returned the signed report card envelope unsealed on Monday!

I hope that you all get home safely and quickly, well before any snow/ice arrives.  Then, I hope we all get some fresh, white snow to play in throughout the weekend!

Also, in honor of my Clemson Tigers playing in the National Championship on Monday evening, bonus points to any students who wear ORANGE and/or PURPLE to school on Monday!  By bonus points, I really just mean it will make my heart oh so happy!  Go Tigers!

Mrs. Kidd

Tuesday News

Dear Parents,

We are in the home stretch before winter break!  Tonight is PTA Eat-Out Night at Tijuana Joe's!  A copy of this week's newsletter, The Weekly Hoot, is under the News You Can Use tab.

Next Tuesday, December 20 from 12:45-2:00 is our class holiday party.  Please check our class Shutterfly account to see how you can donate supplies and/or your time to our party!  All parents are welcome to attend.  Parents who come for the party may check their child out of school and take them home at the end of the party if you wish!  Don't miss out, because it is going to be SNOW much fun!

We DO NOT have a spelling rule this week, as we are using our word study time to review grammar concepts learned this quarter.  We'll be reviewing contractions, proper nouns, possessive nouns, and reflexive pronouns!

Please continue to practice basic addition and subtraction facts 0-20 with your child on a regular basis.  Building basic fact fluency will help your child to solve multi-step/multi-digit problems and problem solve with more confidence and consistency.  Greg Tang has some great games for building fact fluency on his website www.gregtangmath.com--BEST OF ALL, these games are all FREE!!

I'm looking forward to another awesome week in second grade!

Mrs. Kidd

All About Problem Solving

Problem Solving...it's a challenging task that students will encounter for most of the rest of their mathematical school lives.  We will work on one and two step problem solving for the remainder of second grade.  Here's the good news:  with consistent practice and a routine for attacking each problem, problem solving can actually be fun and easy!

There are several different types of addition and subtraction word problems that students must be able to solve with consistency by the end of second grade.  (Click on the picture to download a copy!)

Greg Tang is a nationally respected math guru.  He has a FREE word problem generator on his website, which can be found here:  Greg Tang Math Word Problem Generator!  He trained East Side teachers the past two years on how to teach problem solving and how to break down the steps for solving with our students.  He suggests the following steps, which is what we use in class to solve problems!

Rewriting the question as a statement, helps students to truly understand what missing information they are looking to find.  Creating and labeling a bar model is one of the most important steps in this plan!  A correctly formed bar model, will show students exactly how to write a number sentence and solve their problem.  Is the whole (biggest/total amount) missing in the model, but you have both parts?  Simple, add the parts to find your answer!  Do you have the whole, but you are missing one part?  Subtract to find your answer.  A number sentence, or equation, includes numbers to add or subtract and a variable, or unknown part!  When solving comparison problems (keywords more/fewer), the students should first determine who/what has more and who/what has fewer or less.  We try to solve several problems of the day each week.  Here is what these steps look like in action:

Another great site for practicing modeling and solving word problems is Thinking Blocks.  This site also includes a FREE app for practicing these problems.  We use the app in class to help us practice these problems in an interactive way!

Problem solving takes time and practice, but it doesn't have to be an unsolvable mystery.  When working with your child at home, he/she should be familiar with the steps above and be able to work through these steps to solve homework problems!

Happy Problem Solving,

Mrs. Kidd

Welcome Back from Thanksgiving Break!

Dear Parents,

I can't believe we've made it to the last week of November!  I hope that you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving Break!

The week before Thanksgiving, our class enjoyed reviewing nonfiction text features by "performing" Text Feature surgery!  Students were asked to go through nonfiction magazines to cut out examples of text features of text we've been studying, like heading/subheadings, photographs, captions, charts or diagrams, and bold faced words.  Students also were asked how these text features help them better comprehend the text!  To see all of our text feature surgery pictures, check our class Shutterfly site later this week!

On the Friday before break, the second grade worked on STEM projects related to the founding of Georgia, which we'll be learning about next in Social Studies.  Students were asked to review/research the five regions of Georgia, imagine they were settlers who needed to create a settlement in one of the regions, and use necessary materials to build a settlement!  Here are some of the team STEM creations:

Our class newsletter for the week was e-mailed out this afternoon, and you can also find it under News You Can Use!  Please read it carefully to see what we're learning about this week!  I'll post this week's spelling sight words and rule of the week under Homework Resources.

I'm looking forward to finishing second quarter STRONG over the next three and a half weeks!

Mrs. Kidd

Monday News

Dear Parents,

Thank you to Mrs. Toma and Mrs. Shah for volunteering as parent collaboration helpers today and doing an Adventures in Art lesson with our class while I was in 2nd grade collaboration.  The class loved learning about Piet Mondrain, and I appreciated planning and data discussion time with the other second grade teachers!

We are in need of more donations for Thanksgiving food baskets for Fair Oaks Elementary.  All donation items need to be sent in by Wednesday mornings, when baskets will be collected and prepared for delivery to Fair Oaks.  Fair Oaks Elementary is our sister school...and is not far from East Side.  The students and families at Fair Oaks may not have access to enough food throughout the holiday, without the donation of baskets from our school.  Please help out if you are able!

Here's what we've been doing in class:

In math, we're working so hard on adding and subtracting 2-digit numbers!  Here's a look at the strategies we've been learning and using!

In Social Studies, we're learning all about economics and the distribution/allocation of goods and services.  We're learning about scarcity, first-come/first-served, majority rule, sharing, and lottery.  A study guide all about economics was sent home today in your child's HOOT binder!

In Reading Workshop, we've been learning all about nonfiction text features--how to locate them and how they help us to better understand nonfiction text!  We'll be doing "text feature surgery" later this week!

While on maternity leave, I prepared STEM BINS for our class to use for extra enrichment/challenge opportunities during morning work, after finishing other work early, and more.  These bins provide challenge and extension opportunities for students to build, create, construct, and problem solve.  I introduced the STEM BINS to our class last week, and the kids are already LOVING them!  Thank you to the parents that have already donated refill supplies for some of the bins...we can't wait to learn and grow with these this year!

As we draw close to Thanksgiving Break, please know that I am so thankful for each of you and your amazing children!  We have a great class.  I hope that you have safe travels and a restful, wonderful break next week!

Love,

Mrs. Kidd