Weekly Update, May 2 - 6

Hello Smart Pre-Second Graders and Super Pre-Second Grade Parents!


Wow!  Can you believe it's May already?!  This year has flown by and the pre-second graders have made so much progress!  Harelson's 50th birthday celebration was a blast!  Thank you to all the parents and kids who helped make it so wonderful.  Everyone had a great time and the castle and slide were so much fun!

Ms. Koopman, Harelson's art teacher, is hosting two special Ben's Bells events this week on Tuesday (5/3) and Thursday (5/4) in the art room.  Ben's Bells have been fired and now they need to be glazed.  Students and their families are welcome to work on the beads.  The activities will take place from 3:00 - 4:30.  All students need to be picked up by 4:30.

PRE - SECOND GRADE SPELLING CHALLENGE!!!
It's almost time for second grade!  Are you ready??  Are you spelling like a second grader???  I am challenging the class to all get 100% on their spelling tests this Friday.  If EVERYONE gets an A+ or A++, I will provide surprise afternoon treats for the class on Friday.  Are you up for the challenge???  YOU CAN DO IT!!!

This week in social studies and guided reading we are continuing our Eric Carle author study, having career week and learning about Mother's Day!  We will read "Rooster's Off To See The World" to get ready for second grade and make predictions about next year.  Mr. Heinemann was our surprise guest to kick off career week!  He told the kids all about his job and they loved having him in class!  He came in all dressed up in a silly scientist costume and the kids thought this was hysterical!  He gave special medals to the kids for being great readers and he even let them talk into a microphone to practice being on the Bobcat News!  The kids had a blast with him and it was such a fun and special way to kick off career week.  Ms. Ann from the Harleson office will visit us tomorrow to talk about her job as a behavior intervention monitor.  Mr. Rowland, Conor's dad, will visit on Wednesday to discuss his job as an engineer.  Mrs. Kring, Andrew's mom, will visit on Thursday to discuss her job as an rehabilitation therapist.  Mr. Jones, Ethan's dad, will also visit on Thursday to discuss his job in finance.  The kids enjoy learning more about the adults they see on a daily basis.  The kids love having visitors in our class! On Friday we will learn about the history and traditions of Mother's Day.

This week in writing we are working on a variety of exciting things!  The kids are finishing their research papers on Eric Carle.  These are coming along great!  The kids will write thank you letters to each of our class guests.  The kids are letter writing experts now!  The kids will also make several different class books about each career they learn about this week.  They are such wonderful and enthusiastic writers.  I really enjoy reading their writing.

The kids came home with Rainbow Words and they are due tomorrow.  This week in making words we are working on question words with patterns (words that begin with the "wh" chunk) and we are also reviewing "are" and "is" contractions and adding "not" contractions.  The kids have really tackled our contraction study and it is such a treat to see correctly used contractions in their writing.  Way to go, pre-second graders!

The kids enjoyed their career week centers today!  The centers include:
1.  Listening - The kids watched a short video of Eric Carle reading a story, talking about his life and career and demonstrating his illustrations.  This is a very neat and interesting video!  They made a page to our class book about what it would be like to be an author and illustrator.
2.  Social Studies - The kids took a mini-field trip to the Harelson office.  They interviewed the wonderful people in our office (Ms. Ann, Ms. Janice, Ms. Jill, Ms. Sharon and Mr. Heinemann) to find out more about their jobs.
3.  Writing - The kids looked at different books about careers.  They wrote a letter to themselves about their hopes for the future.
4.  Math - The kids practiced addition and subtraction on a space ship paper to get ready for our upcoming space unit.
5.  Reading - The kids played sight word flash card races.

The kids did a great job on their assessment of making combinations of three numbers that add to 6.  This was a challenging concept for the kids.  They stuck with it and it started to click at the end of the week.  It was great to see!  This week we are working on strategies for quickly and efficiently solving different types of addition and subtraction problems.  The kids are good at addition and subtraction, but speed is still an issue.  These additional strategies will help increase speed.

We were unable to go to computers today due to MAP testing in the older grades.  Instead, we worked on a top secret project that you will find out about on Sunday!

Have an A+ week!
Mrs. Johnston