LAST WEEK OF SCHOOL!

Happy Last Week,

This truly has been an unforgettable year. This is a great group of kids that you are all raising. They are kind, creative, and fun. I enjoyed my year with them and will miss them. I hope you all have a wonderful summer and feel free to contact me throughout the summer if there is anything I can help with! tumat@kaukaunasd.org

Upcoming Events:

5/24: Dress like your teacher

5/25: Vacation Dress Up Day

5/25: Field Trip: remember to pack a lunch if you did not order one from school

5/26: Field Day

5/26: Superhero dress up day

5/26: Movie Day

5/27:Purple Day

5/28: Epic Day

5/28 Half Day and Last Day of School

Field Trip

We are planning our field trip for Tuesday.  If it is raining we will skip the walk to the park and stay back at school until it is time to go to 1,000’s Island Nature Center.  I encourage you to watch the weather and dress your student appropriately.

Sending Material Home

Each day this next week we will be sending things home for your student to keep at home.  PLEASE check your students backpack nightly to unload it.  It is our hope to send a little each night to make the load more manageable, rather than waiting till the last day. 

Movie--

We will be watching Judy Moody and the Not Bummer Summer this week.  It is PG.  The characters in this movie are reflective of the book series Judy Moody.  We read the first book in this series this school year!

Mini Courses

On Thursday the entire school will participate in mini-course, taught by the 4th graders.  It will be an afternoon of fun.  Students will get to pick between two sessions, each half an hour. 

Photos from May

5/17-5/21

Upcoming Events:

5/17: Pajama and stuffed animal day

5/18: Wear red

5/19: Wear Green

5/19: All library books must be returned

5/20: Beach Day

5/21: All school books returned. Look for the name Tuma on the inside cover, stickers in the corner, or the label 2A on the back. Those are all books from our classroom library. We will also no longer be sending books home for homework.

5/21: Tie Dye Day

5/25: Field Trip: remember to pack a lunch if you did not order one from school

5/26: Field Day

5/27: Movie Day

5/28 Half Day and Last Day of School

Spring Cleaning

With the end of the school year in sight I wanted to ask you to do a light spring cleaning for any books that may belong to the classroom or the school library.  With the crazy year it has been, a few quarantines here and there, it’s easy to have a few extra things laying around. 

Writing

Last week we started Passion Projects.  Mrs. Steif introduced us to Passion Projects last spring while virtual learning.  We started the week off watching her video, brainstorming things we are passionate about, and then researching our idea.  Students are working in partnerships or individually to write about their topic across many genres: posters, informational chapter books, game boards, narrative nonfiction, and more! Students are very motivated by this and it allows us to keep the writing rigor going until the very end, while using all we have learned this year. 

Reading

Next week we are going to spend some time creating a Reading Folder for the summer.  The folder will help us set goals, identify the type of readers we are, give us ideas for books to check out this summer, and much more.  

Students love reading so much.  It is our goal, as a school, that we are creating lifelong readers.  We want students to visualize themselves reading over the summer and find excitement and joy in it. 

iReady

If your student was at school last week and was able to complete the iReady assessment, you will be getting a printed report this week.  Please look it over, don’t stress about it.  Remember there are lots of data points that we use.  And no test really shows your whole child.  They are so much more than a test!

If you have any questions please reach out to me.

Report Cards

We will be working on Report Cards over the next few weeks.  You may get notifications of changes.  However, they will not be done till June 3rd.  If they are finished before that, I will notify you since we will only be doing electronic report cards to end the year. 

5/10 to 5/14

Hello,

We have a busy few weeks ahead of us! I will keep you updated as much as I can with things we are doing here at school in these last few weeks. This week has quite a few assessments. But after that, the last few weeks I will fill with fun activities to make a few more great memories of 2nd grade!

Today (Monday) after school students will bring home a list of dress up days for the rest of the school year. Spelling out the word Unforgettable. 

Upcoming Events:

5/10-5/14: Pet Supply Drive

5/12: Field Trip Forms Due

5/12: Sunglasses Day

5/13: iReady Testing

5/13: Favorite T-shirt Day

5/14: iReady Testing\

5/14: NDLC Wear Day

5/19: All library books must be returned

5/21: All school books returned. Look for the name Tuma on the inside cover, stickers in the corner, or the label 2A on the back. Those are all books from our classroom library.

5/25: Field Trip: remember to pack a lunch if you did not order one from school

5/26: Field Day

5/27: Movie Day

5/28 Half Day and Last Day of School

Fish Update:

I had a few families reach out that they are willing to give Silver a home. Thank you! I will spin a wheel or something later this week and reach out to all of you who expressed interest to let you know the results.

Helping get ready for all of the tests!

This week is going to be a big assessment week. Which can be hard for students at school and at home! My best advice to help them with these assessments it to ease their anxiety (if anxious) with things they enjoy and reassure them and encourage them. Also, helping make sure they are well rested before the exams can help them do their best. Please reach out if students are expressing being worried at home. I will do my best to ease the text anxiety here at school as well!

Math

We are ending Unit 6 this week, focused on place value and adding/subtracting multi-digit numbers. We will then spend some time reviewing all the skills and concepts we have learned this year, before taking an end-of-year assessment.

Writing

We are ending this year talking about passion projects. Passion projects is when students find something that they are passionate about and write about it with any genre. It is a fun way to end the year!

5/3-5/7

Happy May!

We will be going on our first field trip this year! Look for a permission form to be sent out later this week for a field trip to 1000 Islands.

 Spelling Words This Week:

• they
• said
• bought
• brought
• piece

Upcoming Events:

5/7: The Last Book Orders of the Year are Due!

        You can also order online at https://clubs.scholastic.com/home Our class code is: QJMYM

5/9: Mother's Day

5/10-5/14: Pet Supply Drive

5/13: iReady Testing

5/14: iReady Testing

5/14: Field Trip Forms Due

5/19: All library books must be returned

5/25: Field Trip

5/28 Half Day and Last Day of School

Fish News
If anyone would like our beta fish Silver, he is up for grabs! I borrowed the fish tank and supplies from a co-worker and will need to return their materials to them. Which means Silver is going to need a new home. Let me know if you are interested and if I get more than one I will draw a name or something like that!

Reading

Last week we spent time getting to know the characters of our books. We learned to notice how they change throughout the book, what character traits describe them, and how to use text evidence to support what the characters might be thinking or saying.

On Friday we played a fun game showing all we know about our characters. We thought about what they might be like if they spent a day in our class, how they might respond to a tough situation, and many more thought provoking questions letting us think about all we know, regarding our characters.

Researcher's Workshop

Last week we talked about weathering and erosion through discovery activities of how landslides and canyons are formed. As you discover erosion around your yard and neighborhood be sure to stop and point it out. Talk about what is happening? Why it happens?

This is a picture of a cornmeal and salt mixture. Students dropped water on it to see what happened.

Here is the link to the subtraction math video!

4/26 - 4/30

 Hello,

Happy last week of April. Wow this school year flew by. This week I included a video for math to help teach you some strategies that we are working on in school.

Spelling Words This Week:

• they
• said
• bought
• brought
• piece

Upcoming Events:

4/26: Ice Cream Party for K.A.T

4/30: No School

5/9: Mother's Day

5/13: iReady Testing

5/14: iReady Testing

5/28 Half Day and Last Day of School

Testing

May is close...too close.  We will begin testing in May.  We will take our end-of-year iReady assessments in math and reading.  We will give students a reading test to identify their reading level and needs.  We will assess your students' spelling growth.  Finally, we will give an end-of-year math assessment to look at the growth your child has made.

 

There is nothing fancy you need to do to prepare for these tests.  These tests are a great resource, for us as teachers, to reflect on our teaching and student learning from the year.  It is also a great tool for next year's teachers to start the year off.  We DO NOT WANT STUDENTS stressing about this work!!  We will work hard to build them up.  

Math

Here is a video I recorded explaining our current unit!

4/19-4/23

 Hello,

Last week was very busy, but fun! I hope you had a nice weekend with the great weather.

Upcoming Events:

4/22: Earth Day

4/30: No School

5/9: Mother's Day

Writing

In writing we started a new unit.  It is our Writing Project Unit.  This unit is unique and fun. Students get to choose which genre of writing they will write under.  What’s super cool is that one student might be writing a fictional book, one a nonfiction book, while others might be in opinion, comics, or others. 

In this unit students will work through the writing process.  From picking an idea, planning, drafting, to editing and revising.  We will work through this writing process while studying other author's to see how they write in each specific genre. 

Reading

In reading we are working to lift students' level of talk with one another about books.  Students learn that talking with others about their thinking helps them to grow new ideas.  Students are learning to write powerful post-it notes that they can bring to their talk time, with partners or clubs.  

Math

This new math unit has been lots of fun for students.  They enjoy learning about place value.  They are learning about groups of hundreds, tens, and ones.  They are learning how to add equations like: 500+85 by thinking about each place value.  We have been building numbers, decomposing them, and really working to understand that 565 means 500 hundreds, 6 tens, and 5 ones. 

The next part of our unit takes us into addition and subtraction problems with three digit numbers. 

KAT

Our Knowledge-A-Thon was such a great success.  So much fun was had Friday with a Kahoot (think Jeopardy like game) that had students answering the questions they studied.  We had a special visitor from Pete the Cat. And...movie and popcorn to end the day Friday!!!  Thank you to all the families for helping your student practice their questions.  We also want to thank everyone for their donations.  I can’t wait to see if our school meets our goal!

4/12 to 4/16

A short and sweet blog this week:

 KAT

Our school-wide Knowledge-A-Thon is approaching. This is one of NDLC’s biggest fundraisers. Students receive a prize for bringing back those yellow envelopes, even if it is all digital donations.

We will take the KAT "quiz" on Friday morning. In the afternoon we will celebrate with a movie and popcorn! In addition we will celebrate all week with dress up days:

--Monday--Pajama Day

--Tuesday--Purple Day

--Wednesday--Sportswear Day

--Thursday--Hat Day

--Friday--Rock Star Day

KEEP PRACTICING THOSE QUESTIONS!