I hope that your extended weekend was memorable and lots of fun! I spent the weekend visiting family in North Carolina. It certainly was nice to have a long weekend to recharge!

Here are some important dates for the upcoming month:

Thursday, December 1 - Book Orders are due

Tuesday, December 6 – Kaukauna Holiday Parade 

                      - Yoga Day (please wear comfortable clothing)

Thursday, December 8 – Pizza, PJs, and Publishing Family Night 5:30-7:00

                       - Pajama Day

Tuesday, December 13 - No School (inservice for teachers)

Thursday, December 22 – 2^nd Grade AM Field trip to Barlow Planetarium

December 23-January 1 – No School Winter Break

Tuesday, January 3 – classes resume

***Just a reminder that I will be leaving for a reading institute at Columbia on Saturday. I will be back to school on the afternoon of Wednesday, December 7. Although I will be checking email while in New York, please let the office know if there is something that needs immediate attention. Thank you!

Curriculum Updates:

Reading ~ This week will be spent learning how to connect information across books on the same topic. We will be noticing how information is connected, similarities and differences among books on the same topics, and how to use the information from several books to retell about the topics. 

Writing ~ Our informational writing unit has been an enjoyable one. Second grade writers have loved writing informational texts with lots of information and text features. This coming week will be spent fine-tuning, revising different parts of the text, editing, and adding the finishing touches to our published pieces. 

Math – Unit 3 begins this week. This unit focuses on length and shapes. Students will use measurement skills to collect and organize data as they display measurements on line plots.  They will analyze measurements given in different units to learn the relationship between the size of a measuring unit and the number of units. During the first week of this unit, we will be learning how to measure with centimeters and how to distinguish different shapes by their features. 

Word Study/High Frequency words ~ New high frequency words will come home on Monday. The words will be assessed next week Friday, December 9.

Science ~ It is an exciting week in science! Students will choose a planet to begin researching. Groups will decide what we would need to learn about each planet and will create a research template from there. This research will happen over the course of the next few weeks. 

Have a GREAT week!

Lisa