Welcome to Mrs. Dickens' Class 2008-2009
During the month of December
Welcome to our website! I hope you all had a terrific first quarter of school. This last month we had parent-teacher conferences, National Young Readers Day, our fall celebration, Family Heritage Week, and many other wonderful things. Something wonderful is always happening at Bristow Run!
CURRICULUM
In math, we finished up Unit 2 of Shapes, Blocks, and Symmetry. We started Unit 3 of Stickers, Number Strings, and Story Problems. In this unit, we will revisit place value, counting, basic facts, addition, subtraction, money, and problem solving.
In social studies, we are just finishing a unit on Economics. We learned about natural, capital, and human resources. We will also learn about scarcity, money, and bartering.
As we finish up Economics, we will begin a science unit on Matter. We will learn about the states of matter and their properties. We will learn how they can change states by adding heat. We will have our test on this topic towards the end of this month. Once we finish this unit, we will begin to discuss weather and the water cycle.
In language arts, we have been doing and will continue to do guided reading groups. We will be meeting with our reading buddies from Mrs. Gregory's class again on December 16th. We will celebrate our writing on this day as well.
In writing, we are continuing our third book of Writing for Readers: Teaching Skills and Strategies. In this book we will write and revise more of our writing. This will lead to our test that we will have during the week of December 15th. It will be on writing. I will be doing more with the children to help them prepare. We will also look some more at spelling and stretching words out as a spell, so that we can work towards more conventional spelling. We have also continued to do word study. We will have a quiz on these words every two weeks. Please review these words with your child to practice for the tests. Thanks.
I hope this is helpful and informative.
COMMUNICATION & HOMEWORK
I will try my best to keep you informed this year. I will try to inform you by a weekly newsletter from time to time and also by this website newsletter updated monthly.
Your child will have homework during this school year. One homework assignment that your child should do every night and may begin to start doing now is to read for at least 15 minutes per night. I will keep you informed as other additional homework presents itself. The children may have a math homework sheet as they present themselves in the unit, as the unit progresses. The only other things that the children may need to do is to study if we are having a test, including spelling/word study ones.
If you have any additional questions, please feel free to reach me at (703)753-7741 or by my e-mail address at dickenem@pwcs.edu
GRADING SCALE
Our grading scale in second grade includes the following grades: an S for making satisfactory progress, an S+ for making exceptional progress, an S- for making inconsistent progress, or a N for needing further experiences. This will help you with report cards and interims that will come home throughout the school year. If you see an x on their Friday Folders, this means that they are having some difficulty in that particular area, just to let you know. They will have weekly grades. All of these will be looked at to determine the interim and report card grades. We will also look to see any improvements.
Daily graded work will either come home in their Friday Folders or their Daily Folders.
As interims begin to come home on December 15th, please sign and return one copy as soon as possible.
Our discipline plan will tie in with our school-wide Baldrige Program. The children will keep notebooks, and we will keep track of our progress throughout the school year. We will also have weekly class meetings to help each other.
For those of you who have had other children in second grade at our school, this year we have one other change. In place of the CFA/CMS Tests that we used in the past, we will be using the Flanagan Tests. These will be given at the completion of each unit of study. This will better help the children to see what they have mastered in their studies. We will also have some teacher-made tests from time-to-time, too.
BIRTHDAYS & INFORMATION
The children's birthdays are important to them! If you wish to send in a special birthday treat, please let me know. We would have these during snack or for a lunch dessert. We do have a teacher with a peanut allergy who will be in our class and may have other children with food allergies so that they might bring in an extra treat for that day, so that everyone has something special to eat that day. So please, though, no peanut products or ingredients in any snack item or lunch item, if you could limit it. We just want everyone to be safe, healthy and happy. Birthday dates this coming month are: December 14th, 15th, 23rd, and the 30th. We will also have a celebration on December 19th probably from 1:30 - 2:30pm.
Please send in a nutrious snack with your child each day, such as carrots, raisins, or a granola bar. Again, please no peanut products. I imagine the children will become hungry around 11:30, since we don't eat lunch until 12:30pm. Water bottles are also permissible in class. Please just remind your child to keep the lids tightly on them to avoid spills. Water is food for the brain so if you have not been able to send in a water bottle and were thinking about it, it would be a good idea. Thanks.
I will not send out a book order in December due to the holidays being so close. I want to make sure they come in on time. However, if you wish to keep something for a surprise, I would be happy to put your November order aside if something is a special gift for the holidays and notify you as they come in-- please just let me know if you need me to do this by an e-mail or note. Thanks.
SCHEDULES
Also just as a reminder, our schedule is as follows on most days:
9:00 - 9:45 Core Extension ( Remediation
and Extension Activities)
9:45 - 11:45 Language Arts
11:45 - 12:30 Social Studies or Science
12:30 - 1:00 Lunch
1:00- 1:15 Recess
1:15- 2:45 Math
2:45 - 3:25 Encore/ Planning
3:30-- Dismissal
(note: times are approximate)
UPCOMING EVENTS IN December:
December 11th-- Family Math Night, 7pm
December 15th-- Interims go home
December 16th-- Reading Buddies with Mrs.
Gregory's Class
December 19th-- 9:15am School Sing-a-Long;
Winter Celebration
December 22nd - January 2nd-- Holiday-- No school
January 5th-- School Begins again
VOLUNTEERS
I love volunteers! I know some people can volunteer on a fairly regular basis. I have been in contact with anyone interested in the regular basis volunteering as they let me know so that I have formulated a schedule. However, if you wish to volunteer on a given day, please send me in a note at least one day in advance so that I may have something prepared for you to be able to assist. I appreciate all the help and support. Thank you so very much! I really do appreciate all you can do. If you wish to donate anything to our class, we could use some extra snacks for those days that the children might accidentally forget their snacks. Also, a few of the students are missing their scissors so check with your child to see if he/she misplaced his/hers. If you do wish to donate anything, please keep in mind that we do have some peanut allergies in our class. Thanks.
Thank you for visiting our website. I look forward to working with you and your child this year. Thanks so much! :-)
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