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