Second Grade Rock Stars
Tour News!
Happy Mother's Day!
Thank You!
WCS Parent Survey
Please consider taking a few moments to complete our Spring WCS Parent-School Partnership Survey. This survey will assist us in reflecting upon our practices and will help us to plan school goals for next year. Your feedback is very valuable to us! Please complete one survey per family.
You can find the survey at: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/westlakecharter2014
Our Highlights: What We've Been Rockin' At!
- The Rock Star Scientists have been working hard learning all about life cycles! We have learned about and seen first-hand the life cycle of a sunflower and ladybugs. Our ladybugs have passed their larvae stage and currently are starting to come out of their pupa stage and enter into their adult ladybug stage. Most of our sunflowers have reached the stem stage and are about to flower. Soon, we will also be learning and writing about the life cycle of fish and frogs. Our Science Notebooks are really filling up fast!
- We also had Scientist Josh come visit on Thursday and do a fantastic experiment with the students…they extracted the DNA from a strawberry. How cool is that?! I left my pictures at school, but will make sure to add them to the next newsletter. It was amazing! Thanks again to Scientist Josh for conducting the amazing experiment and sharing what it is like to work in the field and continue to pursue your dream. Such an inspiration!
- In writing, students have been writing about the life cycles and are finishing up their non-fiction informational book on the life cycle of a sunflower. What fantastic writers we have! We can wait to publish our books this coming week!
- In Math, we've been working on place value, reviewing concepts that have been tricky in the past, and really working on reasoning out our answer and explaining how we found it, which strategies we used, and why we know that it is correct. Students are given a problem, we discuss what we know in the problem and what we still need to know to answer the problem. Then students solve using whatever strategies they think of. Then we discuss how we found our answers, and how we know it is correct and what we did to solve (we explain our reasoning). Then after listening, we try a variation of the same problem, but try a strategy that someone else used to solve the problem. This process has been great in getting student to show their work, explain their reasoning, and try out different strategies that they might not have thought of before. check out the pictures throughout to see what it looks like (they are answering the problem on the yellow paper on their table.)
- Have you checked out our Rock Star Video that the students made? If not, head to http://mrsmartinsrockstars.weebly.com and view it on the home page.
- In case you missed the short video of our field trip (or you just can't get enough of it), I added it below.
Rockin' and Rollin' into Next Week!
Reading: Non-Fiction Text Features, Valid and Relevant Resources, Review of Short and Long Vowels, Making Connections to Text.
Writing: Informational Writing and review of Figurative Language
Grammar: Produce, expand, and rearrange complete simple and compound sentences
Conventions: Capitalizations within Quotation Marks (dialogue)
Science: Life Cycles
Spelling: g, ge, dge (soft g: giant, badge, cage, etc.)
Life Trait: Habit #6: Synergy: Together is Better! (I value other people's strengths and learn from them. I get along well with others, even those that are different than me. I work well in groups. I seek out other people's ideas to solve problems because I know that by teaming with others we can create something better than anyone of us can alone. I am humble)
Next on tour: Upcoming Events
- 05/09- Progress Reports went home in Rock Star Folders
- 05/11- Mother's Day
- 05/12- WAVE Meeting at 6:30pm on DP Campus
- 05/13- WCS Board Meeting
- 05/15- Talent Show 6:00-8:30pm in NP3 Gym
- 05/16- Mix and Match Spirit Day
- 05/16- Signed Progress Reports due back
- 05/17- Valley Oak Park Kickoff
- 05/21- Open House 6:00-7:30pm (both campuses)
- 05/26- No School
- 06/18- Field Day (Potluck in Mrs. Martin's room after for students and parents!)
- 06/18- Last Day of School
Contact the Band Manager!
Second Grade Teacher
Westlake Charter School
Twitter: @MrsMartinsRoom
Email: jmartin@westlakecharter.com
Website: http://MrsMartinsRockStars.weebly.com
Twitter: @MrsMartinsRoom
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to the phone number: (925) 203-1369