April 11th-April 15

Dear Team Peake,

I thoroughly enjoyed meeting with you and your child for their spring conferences. I am so proud of each of them and know you are as well.We have had a wonderful week launching into outer Space! Our kiddos have been so eager to learn more about our universe and their relationship to it. We broke down our Central Idea: Humans have a relationship with the Earth's natural cycles. into manageable pieces. We explored the earth's rotation around the sun and how that impacts day and night, the earth's orbit around the sun as well as it's tilt and how that determines our seasons and why the location of our continent determines our climate and weather. The kids were amazed to find out that while we were studying about the Earth's rotation at 1:40 on Thursday, that it was 4:40 in the morning on Friday in Australia, which meant that our dear Lila was still asleep. What a wonderful and fascinating planet that we live on! I hope your child has many questions for you about space. I know that I have enjoyed learning about the recent discoveries with the kids. Please encourage your child to discover facts on their own, with your guidance, as this is an important skill for them to practice. I could not be more proud of the students' Spring Concert! Team Peake really represented and I am proud of each child and their hard work.

This pollen sure has affected our students. Please make sure to send a bottle of water in with your child if you notice their allergies flaring up at home as this will help to ease this discomfort.

The week that we return from Spring Break will be a great one! We will begin our study of fractions, continue our study of space (specifically the phases of the moon), continue developing our research skills to become better readers and writers and learn more spelling rules.

CONGRATULATIONS to our newest Star Students, Brooke and Cameron! I am proud of their hard work and determination as well as their curiosity and open-mindedness. We are so thankful to have these two friends join Team Peake and have loved learning more about them these past two weeks. Way to go friends!!

As always, thank you so much for sharing your wonderful children with me. They are a joy and I cannot believe they will be third graders soon.

All my best,
Jean Peake
jpeake@atlanta.k12.ga.us

Feb. 29- March 4

Dear Team Peake,

I truly cannot believe it is already March and that we are entering our last nine weeks together. We plan on making every moment count and are having a blast learning together and preparing for third grade. One of our main focuses this week and last has been to improve in our writing flow and organization. As we transition from writing paragraphs to essays, it becomes more difficult to keep our thoughts organized. I have been stressing the importance of having strong topic sentences and conclusions and I have seen a great deal of improvement. As your child is writing at home, please ask them if their writing includes those elements. I should also be seeing proper indenting before each paragraph. This is hard for our children to remember, but is very important as they read their essays to see a break between each paragraph. We are wrapping up our Research/Essay portion of the Black History Month Project this week and next. I can’t wait to see the creative visual displays to along with their writing!

Here’s a look into what we have been studying and will continue to study next week:

Phonics:

Y as a vowel (bunny, dry, hym)

Soft c and g when preceded by e, i, y  (city, gem)

Endings –dge and –ge (fudge, cage)

Next week: aw, au, a

Ex: claw, Auburn, ball

Grammar:

Commas in a series, contractions

Reading:

Fiction: Identifying major and minor events in a story as it relates to the plot.

Non-Fiction: Identifying the four text features in texts and how they help us to find important information. Ex: bolded text, graphs, tables, glossaries, headings

Math:

Measurement word problems, money word problems, graphing data

Writing:

Writing an essay on an informational topic

Reminders and Important Announcements:

·         Congratulations to India and Scottie, our most recent Star Students! These two girls have been working very hard in second grade! We are proud of India’s open-mindedness that she shows to her classmates and loved learning more about her family this week and what makes her so special. Scottie has been showing her curiosity by asking lots of great questions in class! We look forward to learning even more about our sweet friend this week. Way to go girls!
Please be reminded that the Black History Month visual piece (that is to be completed at home) is due on March 11^th. The students will be presenting their essay and visuals. It would be excellent if you could practice with your child to help build their confidence.

·         March 11^th will also be picture day. I can’t wait to see those precious outfits and smiles!

·         The Spring Book Fair is right around the corner! I have signed our class up to preview the books on March 16th. Your child will be making a wish list and bringing it home to discuss with you. Our purchase day is March 22^nd from 10:45-11:15. If you are able, you are welcome to accompany your child and meet us in the Media Center at this time. You may also send money in with your child in an enclosed envelope or baggy.

·         Our Student-Led Spring Conferences will take place the week of March 21^st. A Signup Genius invitation went home this week with specific times and dates. I am looking forward to guiding your conference with your child and assisting you both in making goals for the next nine weeks. Please be reminded that this is not an individual conference and that if you have any specific questions or concerns that require my undivided attention, it may be best to set up a separate conference. Report cards will be going home on the 23^rd and will not be a part of the conferences. Our children cannot wait to share how they have grown!

·         Wish List: Our class is in need of a few more nutritional emergency snacks and small treasures for our treasure box. Please do not send anything that may have had any contact with peanuts. We have severe allergies.

Some things to think about

Our study of space is coming up in a couple of weeks. If any of you have any special experience with this subject matter and would like to send in anything with your child or come and share please let me know.

If you have not been able to sign up as Mystery Reader or Fun Friday and would like to before the end of the year, please let me know as soon as possible and I will try and find a time for you to come in. J

Feb. 8-11

Dear Parents,

These past few weeks have FLOWN by for us in Team Peake as we have been very busy with Read-a-thon, learning new math concepts and exploring the matter around us. Thank you for supporting our school and your child during Read-a-thon. We are excited to hear how many minutes we read as class and how much money we raised for our school! I wonder who the top boy and girl readers will be… I am proud of them ALL! This upcoming week will be another fun-filled, yet short, week as we will begin our Winter Break on Friday. We will celebrate our friendships in second grade on Thursday as we will have a Valentines’ Exchange. A letter went home with the correct spelling of each child’s name as well as a brief explanation for our party. Thank you to Dawn Dwyer and Elizabeth Sharpton for offering to bring in a special treat.

Here’s a look into the curriculum:

Phonics:

Y as a vowel: y=long e as in happy, carefully, lady, etc and y=long i as in cry, try, fly, my, etc.

*Please make sure your child practices his or her red words at home. They are going to become more challenging. There are also more red words each week. This week there are 5 words that your child will be expected to know and use in their writing.

Reading:

Comparing and Contrasting throughout texts.

Math:

Estimating lengths using feet, inches and centimeters as well as measuring exact lengths with the same units.

Writing:

Writing “I Have a Dream” essays

Science:

An inquiry into force and motion

Important Announcements and Reminders:

·         Please make sure that your child arrives at school no later than 7:50. There are many students who are trickling in right when the bell rings and it is starting to become a bit disruptive to their morning routine. I begin Morning Meeting/instruction as soon as announcements conclude.

·         Please be on the lookout for a letter detailing a meaningful project that the students will be completing in the classroom as well as at home. This letter will be going home on Feb. 11^th. The letter will include a choice board that will need to be turned in when we returned from Winter Break on Feb. 17^th.

·         Congratulations to our most recent Star Students, Henon and Himanshi! These two friends have been working very hard in the classroom and have impressed me with their independence. Keep up the great work, girls!

Have a wonderful week!

Jan. 11-15

Greetings Team Peake!

We have had a wonderful week and a half back together celebrating the New Year and discussing our goals for the last half of second grade. It’s hard to believe that your second grader will be a third grader in a few short months! Your child came home with a letter noting some of the high expectations that we have for your student and ways that you can help support them as they prepare to become more independent learners. Please continue to discuss these expectations with your child.

At this point in the year, I would like for each child to be reading fluently on their current reading level. This means that they should be reading quickly, smoothly, with accuracy and expression. The best way to improve fluency is to reread a “good fit” text. Your child may also like to listen to a recording of themselves reading to hear where they can make improvements.

 This semester we will also continue building our reading comprehension and answering text-based questions as this will be an important skill for your child throughout their education. When you are asking your child questions about their reading make sure to ask them to show you the evidence in their text to support their answers. We will be working on this throughout the year as we continue to look closely at a variety of texts.

Please continue to make sure that your child is reading at least 20 minutes a night and tracking their reading in their “book it” log to add to our monthly class total and to earn a pizza coupon!

While we want to be fluent readers, we also want to be fluent mathematicians to better prepare us for multistep problems in third grade. We have been working diligently to improve our basic addition and subtraction fact fluency. Your child should know their basic addition and subtraction facts without using their fingers, etc. to count forwards and backwards. This automatic retrieval is extremely beneficial especially as we solve double digit addition and subtraction problems that involve regrouping. This past week I introduced the students to double digit subtraction with regrouping. I am proud of how well they are catching on and would love to see them continue to improve in solving any kind of addition and subtraction problem.

Important updates and reminders:

Congratulations to our new Star Student, Yamil! We are proud of our hardworking and kind friend. Yamil has been a great helper this year and we can’t wait to learn more about his interests and what makes him so special this week.

READ-A-THON is coming soon! Our class is SO excited to build our reading stamina and raise money for the best school ever. The lovely Kathryn Brown is our Read-a-thon rep and will be in touch with you soon about details.

I will be out the 22^nd and the 26^th of this month. I have secured Ms. Prayma as our substitute and know that she will do a wonderful job teaching and caring for our children on those two days. Please make sure to send all notes/transportation changes via note in your child’s backpack on those days as I will be away from email.

Thank you for your support!
Mrs. Peake