Breakfast, Lunch, the Menu, Oh My!

Here's a link to the menu in case you lose your paper copy.

Second grade is still in need of volunteers for the Family Fun Night on October 21.  We second grade teachers would hate to have to beg for parents to cover the 5 shifts!  Please let us know if you could help.  Thanks in advance!

Have a great weekend!
Mrs. Leitze

Hey, Check this Out!

Leitze Learners, look what I found to help you practice what we talked about in math!  It's a game to help you practice your tens and ones!  It's just like what we talked about in math today!  It would be great practice along with your homework.  Speaking of homework, it's a math worksheet on grouping tens and ones and writing the numbers in a place value chart.

Have a great night!

Wednesday 9/28

Homework tonight was just to read.

We've been working VERY hard on our reading at school.  One of the things we've been talking about it how if we're voracious readers, we're reading all the time.  All of this practice is what really helps us to improve on reading.  I just read this article tonight from author James Patterson.  He has many words of wisdom on how to get your child to be a fanatic reader.  He agrees that kids need to read voraciously!

Leitze Learners, that means that you need to eat words with your eyes all the time like Winston the Book Wolf!

Read!  Read!  Read!  and have a good night.

Tuesday 9/27

Welcome to our new student!  We're glad you're here.

We're reviewing for a math test tomorrow, so we're working on math facts.  Homework is to complete the fact and coloring page that was started during math centers.

Don't forget your library books!

Marvelous Monday

Tonight's homework is to read and to enjoy the sunshine :)

Don't forget gym shoes for tomorrow!

Week of 9/26

Here's this week's newsletter.

It's a great week to be a Blackhawk!

Wonderful Weekend

Just two quick notes:

-Family Fun Night for the PTO will be on the 21st of October.  We (the second grade) will be running a bean bag toss booth.  The teachers will be setting everything up after school.  We are in need of volunteers to staff the booth for 45 minute slots (between 6 and 8:45).  If you are willing to help out, please comment below or send me an email and I will get with you to schedule a time.

-Book order forms went home tonight.  If you'd like to order, I'd encourage you to do so online.  Our class code is on the front of the first form.  If you order that way, it's best for us.  Our class gets a $3 coupon to buy books for the classroom each time a parent makes an online order!  Our order has to be in by Friday the 30th to get the extra back to school bonuses offered in September, so please check the fliers and order soon if you're interested.

Hope all of you Leitze Learners and your families have a wonderful weekend!

Readers and writers learn from each other by studying books together.

 This "Science group", as they called themselves, started meeting last week.

 These readers started looking for books that were written by authors they already knew about.

 These readers were looking at different animal books.

The science group met again today and looked for forces and motion in all different books.

Way to apply your knowledge and work together, Leitze Learners!  We'll have to work in book club groups more this year!

Writers learn by trying to write and illustrate like published authors.

Not sure why this won't turn the right way, but Emma tried out her own version of The Trouble with Dogs...said Dad.

Sami tried out Smile!

A new version of Pete the Cat.  This Pete likes to roller skate.

Tyler was making his own version of a read aloud.

Dylan worked on his own version of The Zoo.

Writers create spreads.

Hannah creates a spread across the bottom of her pages.

Lydia spreads her work WAY across her pages!

Tyler's diagram of our room is spread across his pages.

Jamie's haunted house story is spread across her pages.

Terrific Thursday 9/22

Homework for tonight is the color lesson paper 3-5 #3-13.

We had some great community moments today.  I can tell that we're working on growing as friends in our room.  There was definitely more cooperation and kindness shown today.  Good job, Leitze Learners!

Wonderful Wednesday

We writers worked "weally" well Wednesday.  Check back later tonight/tomorrow for photos of what we were up to.

Homework is read 20 minutes and get outside and enjoy the sunshine.

Tuesday 9/20

We've really been immersing ourselves in reading and writing this week.  We've been looking at things that we learn right from the words in the story and those that we figure out from thinking about what we already know along with what we've learned from the text (drawing conclusions or inferring).

In our illustration study, we've looked at how illustrators craft pictures to show the reader just what they want them to see, and also how the illustrator uses color to help the reader feel a certain way.

In Math, we're talking more about how our addition facts help us to know subtraction facts.  Yesterday we worked on facts with sums up to 10 and today we'll build on with sums up to 18.

We've been so busy!

Homework tonight is Math 3-4 and bring library books for tomorrow.

Week of 9/19

Here's the link to this week's newsletter.  Check out everything that's going on in our room!

Monday night's homework- Math 3-3 and wear gym shoes

It's a great week to be a Blackhawk!

Our First Writing Celebration!

I've located my camera cord, and I hope to be able to share more photos on a more regular basis!

 After reading our favorite page to the whole class, we shared our entire stories to our table groups around the room.

 We toasted to our successes as writers with some tasty juice and walked around to see each others books on our desks, like a writing museum.

 It was fun to celebrate our writing work!

 Cheers to us!

Here's to the next books we'll write!

Our Class Promise

We have been working on making our classroom a community.  Today we talked more about the things we need to be doing.  We made a promise to ourselves and each other.  We said:

I promise to make our classroom a great community.  This will help us to work, learn, and do our best.  I will do my part.  I will be polite and kind.  I will know and follow the rules.  I will listen and learn.

We all signed this promise.

We will be working and learning together all year.  It's important for us to have a great community.  Our community will be great and each of us will do our part to make it that way.

Thursday 9/15

Math homework today was 3-2.  We are working on taking the doubles addition facts that we know (like 3+3=6) and using them to know subtraction facts (like 6-3=3).

Wonderful Wednesday 9/13

We've been working hard this week at reading non-fiction text.  We've really learned a lot already about how readers minds think when they read non-fiction.  We've talked about:

*using text features like captions, headings, bold print, and the glossary.
*looking for cause and effect relationships.
*checking for understanding in non-fiction reading.
*telling the main idea (or what we learned) in our own words.

These second grade readers are going to be pros at how to read non-fiction!  This will really serve them well in life as they start to read to learn (like in textbooks) in the upper grades.

Homework- Math 3-1 (We're subtracting 0, 1, and 2.)

Have a great evening!

Terrific Tuesday 9/13

We are such a lucky class!  I told you that we would be having Mrs. Logan each Mon.- Thurs. morning, but... SURPRISE! ...we also get to have Miss Thie (pronounced like tea) in our room for the same amount of time!  These ladies will be such a help in getting students individualized instruction that really helps to meet each child's needs as a reader and to help all of us grow!

Today we took a test in Math, so we don't have any Math homework.  Homework for tonight is just to bring back the midterm progress slip (just the bottom part) signed tomorrow.  Please look for these papers in your child's folder.  Students would also benefit from some running around outside in this beautiful weather tonight.  We have just been filled to the BRIM with energy this week!

Week of 9/12

It's going to be an exciting week in second grade!  We're going to be starting a lot of new things, like our illustration study in Writing Workshop, our non-fiction study and Science unit in Reading Workshop, and a new topic in Math (subtraction strategies).  Plus, Mrs. Logan will be here each morning (Mon. through Thurs.)!

Here's the link to our newsletter for other classroom news.

Have a great week!
Mrs. Leitze

Cheers!

Cheers to several things!

1) To all of you who came out for Open House!  Thanks for taking time out of your busy schedules to come in and show your child how important his/her work and school is to you.

2) To all of the students who are now published writers!  We had our writing celebration today and it was GREAT!  It's so fun to celebrate our hard work.  I'm looking forward to celebrating a lot more great work this year!

3) To the weekend!  Have a happy, safe, and restful weekend!  Don't forget to read and I'll see all of you Leitze Learners on Monday ready to work and learn!

Mrs. Leitze

Newsletter: Tuesday Edition

Here is the link for this week's newsletter.

A Peek Inside Our Room

Some of these pictures were taken before school started, so things have changed a little since then.

 One of our table groups.  Each table group has a caddy and cups at the end of it to hold our writing supplies and a basket underneath to hold our math manipulatives.  In the background you can see our meeting area in the corner.

 This is the entrance area to our classroom.  The bulletin board is where we will share some of the work we're proud of.  We also have the pocket chart on the board where we put our daily schedule.

 The middle of our room.  We have two more table groups here.  On the right in the back is Mrs. Leitze's desk area and the coffee table small group and assessment area.

 Another look at the back corner of our room and a peek at the word wall on the back wall just waiting for some word wall words.

 The classroom library!

 This is our meeting area.  We spend a lot of time here on our reading, writing, and math focus lessons.  Students who make good choices get the privilege of sitting on the couch during lessons.  On the board, you'll see our CAFE literacy menu.  We've added a lot of reading strategies to this board already this year with lots more to come.

 Another view of the meeting area.  It includes our calendar and now that we've charted some of our work, the blank areas are full of charts.  Mrs. Leitze has a new chair since this picture.

 Our small groups meet at this table and many of the individual assessments are done here, too.  We sit on the floor on pillows!

 During reading workshop, readers choose comfortable places to read.  Here, Lydia likes reading at her seat.

 Aidan P. loves to read in the sunlight on the floor.

 Grace chooses to stretch out on the couch where she can be comfortable and concentrate.

 Dylan, Noah, and Emma choose to do their think sheets for reading at their seats.

 We also choose seats for independent work at writing time.  Here, Jacie is stretched out on the couch working on writing a letter.

 We use a lot of charts in our room.  This one records the parts of a friendly letter.

 We started our year with these charts on the set up of reading workshop,

and writing workshop.  The predictibility of these workshops makes it easy for us to concentrate on our work, because we always know what comes next!

Hope you enjoyed this look inside our room!

Happy Labor Day!

Look for the Leitze Ledger and parent email on Tuesday.  We'll also be having our pretest on Tuesday as usual!  We'll need gym shoes for PE.

Have a good, safe Labor Day weekend!

Mrs. Leitze

Say cheese!

We all smiled for our pictures today!  We also worked hard on our reading, writing, and in our new math groups.

Homework tonight was to study spelling for tomorrow's test and do math page 2-3.

Have a good night!