Mrs. Dallke's Classroom News
September 11th-22nd 2017
What's Happening in 2D?
- These last two weeks have been really wonderful! Our classroom routines are in place and the classroom community has become a positive and collaborative place for learning! It is awesome to see students settling in and beginning to show growth in their learning. I am watching relationships build and friendships begin! I know that we have a bright year ahead of us! Thank you for your continual support of your child at home to help them be successful students!
- Our learning in under way! These past two weeks we have begun our small group reading instruction. The kids have been meeting with me daily as we work through texts from our Reading Street anthology and a readers theater text. We have set the routines for these small groups and begun our learning as second grade readers! Keep up the good work with nightly reading at home!
- Thank you to those that have been working hard on our Columbus Day Challenge for P.E.! We are currently in first place and leading the second grade classes! Keep working hard and logging all your reading and physical activity!
- Grandparents Day is Oct. 6th! Please be sure to return your pink form to let us know if your child's grandparents can make it. We will be preforming a readers theater for our grandparents while they visit. Please let me know if your child will be absent that day so that we are not missing any parts to our readers theater performance. I am so sorry again that I will be missing this day due to my brother's wedding, but I know that everyone is going to have so much fun with the performance!
- REMINDER! If your child has not brought in headphones yet, please have them do so as soon as possible! We use these headphone daily during our reading workshop. Thank you in advance!
What are we learning?
Reading- These last few weeks in readers workshop we have focused on asking questions before, during, and after reading a text and identifying the characters and setting of a text. To practice the skill of questioning, we read the book "Swimmy" and stopped to think and answer questions as we read. We also used our close reading skills to identify the characters and setting in the book "Arthur's Teacher Trouble" and discussed these characters traits. We added character resources into our readers notebooks to support students independent reading to practice this skill. In guided reading these past two weeks, we read "Iris and Walter" to focus on our character and setting work. We also read leveled readers theater texts to help us learn the structure of readers theater in preparation of Grandparents Day.
Writing- This week in writing we have continued to learn about the narrative writing process. We studied master author Jane Yolan and Angela Johnson and the books "Owl Moon" and "The Leaving Morning". We noticed the "small moment" that they wrote about and how she used a meaningful moment to create her book. We also studied how these master authors plan their writing and began this process on our own. The students tried these skills during their independent writing time and had to opportunity to share their work with their writing buddies. Each student has also received their "tiny topic notebooks" where they have been recording and gathering small moments to write about. I am so proud of the work that they are doing as writers!
Social Studies- This week we continued our learning about communities and the different types of communities around us (urban, suburban, and rural). We looked at familiar communities and compared and contrasted the characteristics about each one. We created a book about our Geneva community and all students built a community of their choice on paper to represent their knowledge of communities. We will begin to look at mapping skills next week!
Important Dates!
Don't Forget...
Friday, Oct 6th Grandparents Day Event (1/2 Day)
Monday Oct 9th NO SCHOOL! COLUMBUS DAY!
Thursday Oct 12th Fire Safety Presentation
Tuesday Oct 17th Bus Evacuation Practice
Tuesday Oct 24th School Picture Retakes
Home-School Connection!
Here are some strategies to help support your child at home!
Reading Tip: Picture This! During your next outing or gathering, take action-packed photos, then have your child create captions to go with each picture. Assemble the pictures and captions in a picture book or album, and add speech and thought bubbles to create a personalized – and probably hysterical -- graphic novel.
Math Tip: Make math a game. Math games are fun and inexpensive. They are a wonderful way to get your kids to enjoy working with numbers, as well as improve their number skills. Here are a few suggestions:
- Many games that we take for granted are excellent math lessons. “Go Fish” teaches counting and grouping in sets. Games that use play money teach how to make change. Board games that use dice teach addition and counting. Backgammon teaches addition, subtraction, and strategy.
- Beans, stones, or marbles can be used to play number games. Let your child develop his or her own games by sorting beans into different sizes or types, setting up the rules for a counting game, or using different types of pasta to make a picture.
- Give your children a geometry lesson by letting them create a collage of circles, squares, and triangles. Challenge them to come up with as many different shapes as they can using only triangles.
- Play store with the items in your cupboard.
- A pan of water and some jars or cups of different sizes will amuse a child for hours while teaching capacity and volume.
Meet our Stars of the Week!
Click on button below to view a video about our star of the week!
Shwan Aljumaili- September 11th-15th
Kylie Bowlin- September 18th-22nd
August/ September Birthdays!
Eugenia Ocheva- August 20th
Charlotte Francis- September 1st
Sam Sheehan- September 13th
Autumn Dawson- September 24th
Ben Larsen- September 30th
Happy Birthday! We hope you enjoy your special day!
Contact Me!
Email: rdallke@geneva304.org
Location: Williamsburg Elementary School, Williamsburg Avenue, Geneva, IL, United States
Phone: 630-463-3120
Twitter: @MrsDallkeWES