Hi everyone,
I hope you and your family had a great weekend despite all the gloomy weather. I can't believe tomorrow is already June 1st and we will begin our last month of school this week! Here are the updates for this upcoming week: Picking Up Student Materials As Ms. Tapper mentioned in the last Maple Hills E-News, you will be able to drive through and pick up your student's materials during the week of June 15-19th. This will be your opportunity to pick up your student's personal items- materials in their desks, books from home, yearbooks, and any medicine from the health room. This will also be a chance to return any library books, classroom materials, book bags, etc. I will be in the school this week packing up students' materials, if your student knows they left a book from home in their book bin, a water bottle in our room, or something in the lost and found, please email me specifics about the item by either Tuesday or Wednesday so I can be sure to include it with their things. More specific details will be coming about picking up materials, but please mark your calendars for June 15th-19th. Transitioning to Summer As we typically would if we were in our physical classroom, our class workload will begin to lighten as we grow closer to the end of school with our core units being wrapped up, and state standards/ENLs having been met. That's not to say I want your student to start slacking off I still expect your student to stay on top of their assignments, but you will notice the Weekly Choice Boards will naturally begin to look lighter as we approach the end of the year. Survey Feedback Thank you so much to everyone who filled out the survey last week. It was hugely helpful for our 2nd grade team and gave us some great insight into how online learning has and hasn't been working. It was also wonderful to hear about all the successes students have been having in online learning! This has been a difficult transition for everyone, but I've been so proud of all their hard work. I know many of you wrote down that the current workload was "too much"- hopefully the lightened workload over the next few weeks will be beneficial to you and your student. Many people also noted they/their student have been enjoying online programs like Lexia, Zearn, Epic, and RazKids. Some great news is your student will have access to those programs throughout the summer (more information on this to come). Required Weekly Learning Checks Here are the required weekly learning checks for this week:
If your student has been struggling with any particular topics, would like me to go back over a lesson, or if you'd like them to check in with me about their work I'll be holding my Homework/SeeSaw Help drop-in session on Zoom on Wednesday from 3:00-3:40. I will send out the Zoom invite link via SeeSaw on Wednesday morning. Student of the Week and Featured Mathematicians I'm so happy to announce our very special Student of the Week: Christian AND our amazing Featured Mathematicians of the week! Christian always knows how to makes us laugh, and is also an amazing hard worker. Keep up the great work, Christian! Our amazing mathematicians who solved today's math challenge correctly are Amani, Carter, Christian, Dray, Evan, Ollie, Lilly, Luna, Macy, Mary, Natalie, Oliver, Rogan, and Ryan! Way to go mathematicians! Here's to a great week! -Miss Sonneland
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Hello everyone,
I hope you're enjoying this Memorial Day weekend with your family! Here's what you should know for this upcoming week: New Units Last week we wrapped up Module 5 in math, and our Opinion Writing Unit. This week we will be starting one of my favorite units of the year: Fairy Tales and Fractured Fairy Tales. Students will be reading and writing fairy tales, and learning about fairy tales around the world in Social Studies. We will also be starting our new math unit: Module 7 (we already completed Module 6 in school). Module 7 works with representing data in graphs, recognizing coins and their values, and problem solving with money. Epic! and Fairy Tales When we do this unit in school, students spend almost all of their reading time reading different fairy tales. While I'd still like students to be working on Lexia and Razkids, for this unit I'd encourage your student to spend a bit of time exploring the Fairy Tales & Fractured Fairy Tales collection I've assigned to them on Epic. This will also make their writing time easier if they are familiar with more fairytales! If your student hasn't signed in yet at home, they'll need to go here: https://www.getepic.com/sign-in/educator and enter our class code (please see my email for the class code). Wednesday Zoom Help Sessions Starting this week, I will be offering a Wednesday drop in help session for students from 3:00-3:40. Students can come with questions about reading, writing, math, social studies/science, and/or about using SeeSaw. This will not be a chance to catch up with classmates (that's what Friday's Zoom call is for!), but a chance for your student to ask questions and get support for their learning. I will send out the Zoom invite via SeeSaw on Wednesday mornings. Online Learning Family Check In I can hardly believe we are now more than a month into online learning. Thank you all for your patience (and kindness!) during this time as we try to get a handle on what online learning looks like. I know there have been many ups and downs, technical difficulties, and things that have just plain not worked so again, thank you for your patience and dedication to your student's learning through all this! Our 2nd Grade team would like to check in and see how online learning is going for you and your student, so please fill out this survey sent in the newsletter email. Required Weekly Learning Checks The required weekly learning checks for this week are:
Our amazing Student of the Week this week is Macy! Macy always has a smile on her face, works hard on every task, and perseveres when things get tough. Keep up the great work, Macy! Our amazing Featured Mathematicians who solved our Friday math challenge are: Audrey, Carter, Christian, Cole, Dray, Evan, Ollie, Josie, Lilly, Luna, Macy, Natalie, Oliver, Rogan, Ryan, and Zach. Way to go mathematicians! Here's to a great week! -Miss Sonneland Hi everyone,
I hope you had a lovely weekend with your family. Here are the updates for the upcoming week: Writing Celebration: Opinion Picnic We will be wrapping up our Opinion Unit this week, and students will have a chance to write a new letter with some more freedom about what they write about (it doesn't just have to be about books this time 😊). Since we're at the end of our unit, we will be having our writing celebration: The Opinion Picnic on Friday, May 22nd at 3:00 via Zoom (this will be our class meeting for the week). The students will take turns sharing their letters with the class, and we'll celebrate all their hard work. They can choose to share the new letter they write this week (on their favorite movie, book, or video game), or they can share the one on a book that they've been working on the past few weeks. For the Opinion Picnic students should take their letter, a blanket, a snack, and weather (and wifi) permitting head outside! Opinion Picnics are just as fun inside as well, so no pressure to actually have your student get setup outside if that isn't feasible for them. As with all our Zoom meetings, details will be sent out via SeeSaw announcements on Friday morning. Module 5 Assessment This week students will be taking their Module 5 End of Module assessment. It will be a multipage activity on SeeSaw. If you have a printer at home, there will be a link to print the test if you'd prefer- or students can work on a blank piece of paper if they'd rather not work on the template. Students should of course do this task on their own, however parents may help read questions if necessary (although students can hit play on each of the different pages to listen to the directions themselves). This could be a long task for some students, so if they need to take a break and finish it a different day, they absolutely can- they just need to make sure to save their progress as a draft. Students should try their best and make sure to show their work, and as I mentioned last week- all assessments can only improve their grade, not hurt it. Zoom Groups I will occasionally be offering drop in help for students or small group instruction for students on Zoom. This week I will have my first drop in help session on Zoom. If your student would like extra practice, or needs extra help with vertical form they can drop in to my Zoom Vertical Form Help session on Wednesday, May 20th from 3:00-3:40. This is completely optional and students can drop in at anytime to ask questions/review concepts. Details will be sent out via SeeSaw. Student of the Week and Featured Mathematicians Our Student of the Week this week is Rogan! Rogan is a rockstar, always cheerful, and does an amazing job turning in quality work every week. Keep it up, Rogan! Our Featured Mathematicians who solved our math challenge by 3:00 on Friday are: Amani, Carter, Christian, Evan, Ollie, Lilly, Luna, Mary, Natalie, Oliver, and Rogan. Way to go marvelous mathematicians! Math Tip: Vertical Form, New Groups Below, and Decomposing As I know many of you already know, our Eureka math curriculum uses pretty different language than what you probably heard growing up. This comes up quite a bit when we're working with adding and subtracting with vertical form. Vertical form is what our curriculum calls the standard algorithm, where the numbers for adding or subtracting are stacked on top of each other instead of written horizontally. For adding, when making a new 10 or 100, students write a new group below by drawing a 1 in their ten's or hundred's column on the line beneath the numbers. It's written on the line so that students can easily add their units together going down the line. For subtraction, a word we use is decompose for breaking apart a 10 or 100 to get more units to subtract. Decomposing is essentially the same concept as "borrowing". We use the word decomposing instead of borrowing so students can tie it to their understanding of place value, and so they understand exactly where they got those 10 extra ones or 10 extra tens- from breaking apart/decomposing a 10 or 100. Since students are still getting used to vertical form, decomposing goes on the top for subtraction and new groups below go on the bottom line. That way students can keep the two operations separate. Here's to a great week! -Miss Sonneland Hello everyone,
Happy Mother's Day! I hope you had a great week with your family, and had a chance to enjoy some sunshine together. Here are the updates for this week: Assessment and Feedback In case you haven't seen it, the official guidance from our district and OSPI is that for elementary students, their Trimester 3 grades will not be lower than their Trimester 2 grades. They can raise their grades, but their grades will not be lower than where we left off at Trimester 2. I have been collecting data and taking notes from SeeSaw, Lexia, Zearn, and RazKids, but from this week on I will be letting you know specifically which assignments on SeeSaw I will be assessing and giving specific feedback for. These activities will have a *Required note in the subject line and description on SeeSaw, and will also be noted on the Choice Board. That's not to say your student should only be doing these activities, as the more your student is staying up to date and completing daily activities the more prepared they'll be for third grade. Hopefully though, it will help with prioritizing activities. Required Weekly Learning Checks As mentioned above, each subject will have at least one required activity each week. I will be giving students detailed feedback for these assignments. As these will be activities I will be assessing, it's important that your student complete these activities independently. If they need assistance reading directions or need a question clarified, you can assist them- but otherwise please let them complete the task on their own so I can get a true sense of how they're understanding the content and progressing toward grade level standards. PTA Scholastic Virtual Book FairMaple Hills Elementary PTA is hosting a Virtual Scholastic Book Fair from May 11th- September 4th. The Virtual Fair is a fantastic way to get books in the hands of your students now to keep them reading at home. See the attached flyer for more information. Visit the Book Fair Homepage here to get started: https://www.scholastic.com/bf/maplehills Student of the Week & Featured Mathematicians Our Student of the Week this week is Natalie! Natalie completes her work with enthusiasm and care, is a SeeSaw Superstar, and always has a cheerful thought to share. Way to go Natalie! Our Featured Mathematicians this week are: Amani, Carter, Christian, Evan, Luna, Macy, Mary, Natalie, Oliver, Rogan, Ryan, and Zach. Keep it up mathematicians! Here's to a great week! -Miss Sonneland Hi everyone,
I hope you've had a great week with your family, and are continuing to stay happy, healthy, and safe together. Hopefully this sunshine keeps sticking around! Friday Catch-Up Day Fridays will now be our designated Catch Up Days! This is a day your student should go over and check the activity tab to make sure all their assignments have been completed and they have no missing work. They should also double check their student folder and make sure that no assignments have been sent back to them. If I've sent back an assignment it means it was either incomplete or incorrect, and gets saved as a draft in their folder (it will say draft at the top with a big orange bar). Just like with regular assignments, students will have until Sunday to fix any mistakes, resubmit work, or complete any missing work. On Sunday afternoon, I archive all of the past week's assignments and students are no longer able to submit or resubmit any work. Choice Board and Activities for the Week There are some minor changes to this week with the addition of the Friday Catch Up Day. One other minor change that will be made this week- assignments will now be posted on SeeSaw between 6-6:10AM the day of the assignment. I had heard from other teachers that some parents had requested activities to be posted earlier, so I've moved our posting time as well. It shouldn't affect much, but will potentially give families a bit more flexibility with their morning. The postings will be slightly staggered so that the activities will pop up in the same order they appear on the Choice Board. Student of the Week & Featured Mathematicians We have our very first Student of the Week this week: Evan! Evan is a rockstar student in school and at home! He always goes above and beyond on his assignments, and completes his work carefully and neatly. Way to go, Evan! Here are our Featured Mathematicians of the Week: Amani, Audrey, Carter, Christian, Cole, Evan, Ollie, Josie, Lilly, Luna, Mary, Natalie, Oliver, Rogan, Ryan and Zach. Way to go mathematicians! *All students have the opportunity to be a Student of the Week or a Featured Mathematician. I do a random drawing of students names for Student of the Week. To be a student of the week, students need to have completed at least one activity on SeeSaw. For each activity they complete, their name gets entered. So if a student completes 14 activities for the week, their name gets entered into the drawing 14 times. I will be moving the time when Student of the Week is chosen to Friday before 3, so that I can announce Student of the Week to the students on Zoom when I announce the featured mathematicians. To be a featured mathematician, students need to have solved the Friday Math Challenge (correctly) by 3:00 on Friday. Zoom and SeeSaw Reminder Reminder that details for our weekly 3:00 Friday Zoom call will be sent out on SeeSaw on Friday morning (not via email). You can find any and all assignments in the "Inbox" tab. Your student also has an inbox on SeeSaw and will receive the information as well. Here's to a great week! -Miss Sonneland |
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June 2020
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