Welcome to second grade at East Elementary School! We are excited to have your child in our classes and we are looking forward to a great year. Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns throughout the year.

Behavior

We have a color card system to look for good behavior. We hope your child will work hard to stay on green!   Green - Great Day! Yellow - Lose 5 minutes of recess  Pink - Lose 10 minutes of recess  Purple - A note or phone call home  Blue - See the principal-

Reading

Everyday your child will have reading in a small group. Your child will bring a book home to read each night. Please set aside a time and place for your child to read. In class we will also be focusing on a shared reading time when the whole class will read together and students will have a chance to read in small groups. Students will also have time to read just right books in the classroom.

Writing

Your child will be participating in Writers Workshop in our classrooms. The students will be writing daily and we hope that you will encourage your child to practice writing at home too. Writing is a process that includes planning, a rough-draft, editing, revising and publishing. We will focus on the 6-Traits of Writing: Word Choice, Ideas and Content, Sentence Fluency, Organization, Conventions, and Voice. Students write in journals, create poetry, write to promts, write personal narrative and descriptive pieces. They construct responses to prompts and reading passages, write reports, friendly letters, create lists, take notes, and record observations.

Everyday Math

Our math instruction will build on what your child learned in first grade. We will work on addition, subtraction, fact families, story problems, geometry, place value, measurement, time, fractions, and the use of calculators. We encourage you to help your child with their math homework. We only send home math homework to review what was learned in class that day.

Science and Social Studies

In science we will be studying: Safety and Good Health Habits, Sun, Shadows, and Seasons, Dinosaurs and Fossils, Weather, and Plants. Our units in social studies include: Maps and Globes, Colonial Times, Celebrations Around the World, Pioneers and Old Littleton.

We use GLAD - Guided Language Acquisition Design, to teach and reinforce Vocabulary, Reading, and Writing,  throughout our units in Science and Social Studies. These are best practices for English speaking and ESL students.         

Dear Parents,

           We are very pleased to have your child in my classroom! We believe that we will have a wonderful year working and learning together. We hope to see you at Back-to-School Night on Tues., August 24^th, from 6:00 – 7:15 p.m. We will go over what will be taught during the year, classroom procedures, and give you a chance to ask questions. We want to welcome Mr. Steven Brush, who will be doing his student teaching with us!

          Just to let you know, we will start today with sending home a Monday Folder. It has notes from the office, and has your student’s work that has been checked. You are to review and keep your student’s work, sign the front of the folder, make comments for me, if you wish, and have your student return the red folder to school on Tuesdays.

          Everyday your student will bring home a Homework Folder. Our expectation in the 2^nd grade is for our students to read for at least 15 minutes each night. This folder is to come to school each day and go home each night. There will be a weekly Spelling list that comes home in this folder starting next Monday. Students will also have a Spelling packet to help them study for the final test, which is on Friday. Math homework will also come in this folder, for students to complete and return to school the next day.

          To start off the year, we will be testing each student to find their reading level; so that we can better work with them is small groups. In Everyday Math we will be looking at patterns in numbers, understanding money, and working on addition and subtraction facts. In Science we will start off with a unit on Safety and Good Health Habits. Please help your child learn their phone number and address.  In Writing we will be working on Launching Writer’s Workshop and writing Small Moment stories.

          Please feel free to call me before or after school, or e-mail, if you have any questions or concerns. Also, we welcome parent volunteers in the classroom, and encourage you to be involved in our school P.T.O.

         Sincerely,

         The 2^nd Grade Teachers

         Mrs. Smith and  Miss Salzman

clsmith@lps.k12.co.us      voice mail: 303-734-3128

bsalzman@lps.k12.co.us     voice mail: 303-734-3144