Clocks have sprung forward and we are in the final week of winter!  I am hoping that the saying is true - If March comes in like a lion, it will go out like a lamb.  I am really looking forward to taking advantage of warmer, longer days.

The end of this blog post contains many, many school-wide updates and links for parent volunteer opportunities.

This week at school:
Tuesday - Junior Achievement with Mrs. Bodenheimer
Wednesday - No School for students
Friday - St. Patrick's Day - wear Green

Just a reminder that our portfolio conferences are the last week of March - Tuesday the 28th and Thursday the 30th. Specific dates and times were sent home last week. If you didn't receive your child's conference time, please let me know.

Curriculum Updates:
Reading - Students began their nonfiction topic book clubs last week. The room was buzzing with excitement and learning. Students will continue learning and teaching about their topic this week by transferring our minilesson strategies to their independent reading. Main idea, key details, summarizing, and putting everything together are our focuses for the week.

Writing - Parents were able to enjoy our 2nd grade poetry collection at our Author's Breakfast on Friday. Those collections went home Friday. This week we begin our new writing unit, Lab Reports and Science Books. This is a very hands-on unit that teaches students the scientific process and how to write like a scientist.

Math - Our next focus from Unit 5 is graphing. Students will be learning to create picture graphs and bar graphs, how to read a graph, and how to answer compare questions using the data on graphs.

Word Study - Students will be tested on their current high frequency words this Friday. We continue to work on contractions and homonyms, along with our word sorts, in class.