Welcome to Second Grade Ms. Al-Zaharnah

A- Attendance Regular school attendance is critical to the learning process. Our school day officially starts at 8:35 a.m. and we will begin “morning work” assignments at that time. When your child is absent or tardy, he or she misses valuable instructional time. If your child is going to be absent or tardy please call the office as soon as possible. This will also help us with our lunch count to ensure that everyone has the lunch that they prefer.

B- Book Bags Every night your child should be reading at least 10 minutes with you. Please make sure you are setting time aside to read with him/her. Your child will be bringing home a book bag that will have 3-4 books at his/her reading level. I will be sending you home with ways that you can help your child grow as a reader. There’s one for you today. Please use these resources.

C- Communication Parent-Teacher communication is crucial to your child’s improvement in school. There are many ways that we can communicate with one another, but please try to limit it to these ways: Planners- Sometimes I will write small notes in your child’s planner. Please make sure you check it every night and initial to indicate you’ve seen it. Parent-Teacher Conferences- These will be planned at least twice during the school year, unless we feel there needs to be more to address something out of the ordinary. - Feel free to me! I check my on a regular basis and will be able to respond this way the quickest.

F-Food Your child will have the opportunity to have snack every morning around 10:00 am. I ask that you send your child with a healthy snack. Examples were provided in the Class Handbook I sent home on the first day of school. Please refrain from sending your child with snacks that aren’t as healthy. These might include: chips, cookies, candy, pudding and cupcakes.

H- Homework The homework I send home is designed to be done by the student with minimal help from a parent. I do ask that you expect to set aside an hour every night to work on homework with your child (this includes the mandatory reading for the night). Your child will benefit from the following: Having a space set aside for homework. Having the supplies necessary to do homework. Having your full attention to help with homework. Your patience as you have them do the homework on their own; including writing portions.

P- PBIS/ Behavior Chart At River Oaks we use a system called PBIS to reward good behavior and penalize repetitive negative behavior. There are 5 colors that we are currently using. Each morning your child starts on GREEN which means he/she is ready to learn. Your child may be asked to clip up or down throughout the day. Yellow- Green- Ready to learn Blue-Think about it Purple- Teacher’s choice Pink- Parent Contact

Q- Questions Your child has learned a lot during the day. There are many ways to encourage your child to give you information about his/her day. Children will thrive on communication at home that encourages them to use full sentences and to truly think about their day. Pick up a questionnaire on your way out that’s full of lots of great questions!

S- Spelling Every week your child will have a spelling list stapled in his/her planner. Feel free to take it out and keep it at home if you would like. Spelling tests will be a little different this year- your child will receive the 10 “hot words” that are on the list but they will also receive 5 “cold words.” These cold words will follow the pattern that we are working on that week. To help your child study you can come up with words that follow that pattern. This is how we work on spelling in class and they will highly benefit from seeing these words at school and at home.

T- Trips We will be taking at least one field trip this school year. If you would like to volunteer I recommend that you let me know as soon as possible (even before the trip is announced).