It's Apple Season!

Thank you to the Kennedy's for hosting Primary classes on an apple orchard visit this week! We had a beautiful day for learning about growing and harvesting apples as well as picking our own!

Following our visit, we made applesauce and learned about procedural writing. We wrote each step necessary for making homemade applesauce. 

In Math, we worked on some 'apple math', representing numbers in many different ways!

Fall is here!

Our apple orchard walking tip has been postponed to Monday September 30th. That day is also Orange shirt day. Students are encouraged to wear orange shirts in support and recognition of those who went to residential schools.

Thursday we have our annual Terry Fox run. Please try to wear a superhero shirt, or something to celebrate. Thank you for your fundraising for this important cause!

Thursday night is also our meet the teacher night at Nottawa from 5:30-7. Pizza is available to purchase and you are welcome to come into the classroom and visit.

Friday is our spelling test, picture day and also, when students' family trees are due. Please talk with your child about their family tree and where your family has come from. Thank you for returning these for our lessons next week.

An additional note

On Fridays, students are invited to bring in items from home for 'Sharing' with the class. It is fun to learn of students' interests, successes, collections and travels. Toys are not an appropriate sharing item, but pictures, medals, collections, creations, etc are great items to share.

We have also began an incentive for showing kindness to others through our words and actions in our: Kindness is stronger than Kryptonite. When I catch students encouraging others, helping others and showing kindness, they receive a ticket to put their name on and there will be a draw at the end of each week.

Monday is our visit to the Kennedy Apple orchard. We will be walking there at 11:30 and returning before lunch. No permission form is needed and parent volunteers are welcome if you already have a police check in at the office. Just send me a note if you are interested.

Finally, see below the note about the Terry Fox run to answer any questions you may have.

Let's Fundraise for Terry Fox Run!

Please note that September 26th is our school's Terry Fox Run. Students are encouraged to raise money for Cancer research. The class who raises the most in the school wins a pizza party this year! Also, students are encouraged to wear Superhero capes, hats, shirts, anything they would like to celebrate our hero, Terry Fox.

On Monday you will have seen our blue Sharing Books come home. Please use this book to read with your child, practice spelling words and to practice our poem "Stuck on a word" this week. These books need to be returned Friday.

In Writing, we continue to practice Recount writing, writing recounts of our weekend. In Reading, we are discussing reading strategies that help us figure out big words, like 'chunky monkey'.
In math, we are continuing to practice representing numbers in different ways. This is an example of some of our practice this week:

Super start to week 2!

This week in Language we have read stories of summer recounts as models for our own writing.

We used a planner to help gather some words and ideas for writing a Recount of our own summer vacations.

This week we are now putting these words and ideas into a Recount using full sentences and with capitals and periods on our sentences.

In math we are practicing skip counting by 2s, 3s, and 5s, to 100 as well as skip counting when we start at any number up to 100. For example: start at 24 and count by 2s. We are also using base ten blocks to represent numbers and counting and comparing numbers using hundreds charts.

On Wednesday your child will bring home a letter explaining our Flat Stanley Project. We hope you have fun with this project! Feel free to contact me with any questions.

Friday will be our first spelling test. The words September and school are bonus words. See your child's agenda for the word list.

We are SUPER students!

What a great first day we had in Grade 2! We are a group of superheroes in Mrs. Hammond's room!
Today we read the Superhero Instruction Manual to begin our day.

We also read the poem "Today" and found some rhyming words in the poem:

In Math we explored how skip counting helps us add large groups of things quickly and then we made our superhero rise above the buildings and up to the sky by skip counting up the page!

Please check your child's agenda tonight to learn more about our classroom and communication methods. In addition, please send an additional set of clothes in a ziplock bag in case of emergency.

Thanks and looking forward to a great year ahead!

Welcome Back!

Welcome to Mrs. Hammond’s Grade 2 Class!

I hope you have had an excellent summer and are now ready for an exciting year! I would like to introduce myself as your child’s teacher this year. My name is Krista Hammond and I love boating, hiking, camping and adventuring with family and friends! Other teachers working with our class this year include: Mr. Morin who will be teaching Music, Ms. Paterson who will be teaching Health and Media, and Mrs. Johnson who will be teaching Science. Please sign up for Remind 101 as this is an easy way to stay informed of the happenings in the classroom or last minute reminders. The agenda is the best way to stay informed but this is another helpful tool for communication.  When you do sign up, it will send messages to your phone or email. To sign up, follow the instructions on the back of this page. As with other years’ teachers, I will also be using the agendas for communication. Please note changes to pick up or bus routines in the agendas. Another way I communicate with families is through the class blog. It is linked to the school website and if you ask to follow the blog it will send you an email update of the newest post. In addition, please feel free to contact me via email at: khammond@scdsb.on.ca In the next few weeks I will be sending home our “At Home Reading” Program. Until then, please have your child read with you or on their own daily.

What are we learning in Grade 2? 

Language: 

In Reading we are going to be reviewing some reading strategies such as “using the pictures”,
“chunking sounds”, etc., as well as, identifying the 5 W’s in texts. During our read alouds we will
be using the reading strategy of Making Connections to understand and remember what we read.
In Writing, we will be looking at Recounts and will be writing Recounts of our summer holidays.
We are focusing on using capitals and periods properly in sentences and will practice putting
things in chronological order in their writing. Next week we will begin our spelling program and
students will have a list of words to learn in their agendas for a spelling test each Friday.

Math:

For the next few weeks we will be working on representing numbers in different ways such as;
using pictures, numbers, tallies, base-ten blocks and words. 

Gym days are Days 1 and 3 and Library Day is to be determined. Picture Day is September
27th and Meet the Teacher Night is September 26th from 5:30-7:00.

** Please take the time to fill out the parent survey that will help me get to know your
child and your family a little better. 

Thank you for your support,

Mrs. K. Hammond