This document is a newsletter from Mrs. Ealy's 2nd grade class providing information about upcoming events and lessons. It discusses an early release day on December 7th, volunteering needs for a holiday shop on December 5th, and lessons the class is focusing on in math, reading, writing, and science.

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2 Grade News
Mrs. Ealy’s Class
November 30, 2012
Letter from Mrs. Ealy Next Week’s Specials
Dear Parents,
Can you believe it’s already December tomorrow!? The school Monday – P.E. (Wear Sneakers)
year is just flying by! I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving and Tuesday – Art and Computers
has started getting into the holiday spirit. Wednesday – Music and P.E. (Wear Sneakers)
Next Friday will be our first early release day of the year. Thursday – Library and Music
School will start at our normal time; however students will be released at Friday – Wellness
an earlier time. The district has not given us official times on when
school will end. Last year school ended at 1:07 and the buses were
dismissed at 1:14. Students will be eating lunch at school in our
What We’re Learning About!
classroom. Last year, the 2nd grade lunch time was from 12:30-12:50. It Math – This week in math we reviewed parts and total diagrams and used start
should be around the same time. If you have questions, feel free to to change diagrams to help us solve temperature change problems. We have
contact me or the school. been working very hard on using thermometers to tell the temperature. The
students were also introduced to estimation this week. We learned about
Over the next three weeks we will be working on a health unit estimating to the nearest 10 to help us add two digit numbers easier. We
on caffeine, alcohol, and tobacco safety. There are three short lessons practiced this by “shopping” for different items and estimating the cost to see if
to talk about the harm that these things may do to our bodies. If you we had enough money to buy them. When solving problems we use “ballpark
have any concerns about this topic please feel free to contact me. estimates.” Ballpark estimates are when we estimate each number to the
November reading logs are due on Monday! We will be taking nearest 10 and add them together. This way when we solve the real problem,
we can check to see if it is close to our estimate. If it is not, we learned that we
them out and putting the December reading logs in our binders. Each
probably made a mistake somewhere that needs to be fixed. We will continue
month more and more students are receiving a free pizza. Keep up the to work on this concept all year long. Next Wednesday will be our test on Unit
good work! 4. A test alert was sent home this week to help prepare!
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.
Remember you can reach me by our folder, by email, or by phone. Reading – We have continued to work on character traits. The students have
gotten really good at identifying a trait for a character and being able to tell why
that trait fits the character. Students use an example from the text to defend
Sincerely, their trait. We also spent time this week working on visualizing. While hearing
Mrs. Ealy a book read to them, students closed their eyes to make a mental picture in
their head about what they imagine is going on in the story. We will continue to
• Please remember to return library books every Thursday! work on this next week, as well as starting to introduce inferring while reading.
• Please remember to send your child to school with a coat! Writing – Since we're now done with our Authors as Mentors unit, we revised
• Please help your child return their Book N’ Bag every Friday! and edited the story we chose to publish. To help your child understand the
difference between editing and revising, here are the definitions - When we
Volunteers Needed! revise it means that we're adding to, changing, or deleting the text. Revising is
all about making our ideas better so that our reader gets a clear picture of our
On Wednesday, December 5 th , our class is
meaning/intent. When we edit, we make sure our stories can be easily read -
scheduled to shop at the school Holiday Shop. we check for proper capitalization, punctuation, and spelling that will help our
Everything in the store is $1.oo. Please send your reader. We also take time to rewrite our stories neatly as part of the publishing
child’s money to school that day in the provided process - since we've made so many revisions/edits, they tend to be a bit tough
envelope that was sent home this week. If you to read. The "sloppy" copies will come home for you to see. We hope to type
have misplaced the envelope please send it in a these stories next week on Dec. 5th. We will need volunteers from 10:30-
11:30. So far we have no volunteers so if you'd like to come in and help us type
regular one. If you are interested in volunteering
up these stories, please send in a note, we can really use the help. :)
to help the kids with shopping that day please
Upcoming Events and Dates to Remember
contact me. We will be shopping from 3:00-3:45. Science – This week we finished our science unit on mixtures and properties.
Thank you!! The kids were able to explore different types of mixtures. We learned that
something is only a mixture if the items can be separated back to their original
Dec. 3-7 Holiday Shop forms. The kids made play dough and we had a discussion about how it’s not a
mixture because you can take the ingredients out once they are all put together.
Dec. 7 Early Release Day Thank you Mrs. Murdock for making the play dough with the kids! Students
Dec. 12 Mobile Dentist have a chance to make their own mixture at home and bring them in next
Tuesday for the class to separate. Please remember we can only use a spoon,
sieve, filter paper, magnet, or floating to separate the mixtures! Next week we
will begin our next socials studies unit called, “Where is my Community?”