1. Open House: This Thursday, September 9 th, is Open House for Grades 2, 3, and 5. I’m really hoping you are able to come in and meet me in person, see your child’s learning environment, and explore some finished student work. Having come from the 4 th grade where an orientation is offered, I find that it’s really helpful to offer an information session to parents. The other 2 nd grade teachers feel similarly. Therefore, we are each offering our parents the opportunity to come to an information session. The parents of my students are invited to join me in my classroom (Room 16) at 5:30pm. I will have a PowerPoint presentation and can answer any questions that you may have at that time to the best of my ability. I’m looking forward to seeing you there! Materials Needed: Help! I’m looking for some of the following items: Extra tennis balls Gallon sized Ziploc bags Sandwich sized Ziploc bags ***If you are able to help provide any of the above items, I would be grateful! Thank you in advance! Homework: Lucky Listener Log: EVERY NIGHT!!! Have your child read “The Sun” poem (kept in the take home folder) every night to one Lucky Listener. The Lucky Listener should sign the log and is welcome to make any comments/ask questions. Math Log: EVERY NIGHT!!! No Home Links this week. On Thursday I will send home Practice Set 2. Even though there is no Home Links and Practice Set for Tuesday and Wednesday, your child should still do some math activity. Practice counting small piles of coins or telling time on a clock would be very helpful for most children. Addition flashcards or practice on a math website would also be beneficial. Please be sure to fill in the Math Log identifying what your child did. Unit 1 Fundations packet: I realize I was not super clear on what to do with this packet last week. This is a great resource for practicing marking, spelling, tapping, and building words. When I send the Unit packets home, please go through these with your child over the course of each week. I’m hoping you have not thrown this packet away! Many students have been working on the activities (I’ve seen them in the Take Home Folder). Remember it takes us two weeks to go through a unit, so some of the skills may not seem crystal clear to your child until we get closer to the end of the unit. Please spend some time each night working on the Unit 1 Fundations packet if you have not done so already. I will collect those on Monday. If your child finishes sooner, he/she can hand it in on Friday. Our Unit 1 test will be this Friday. ***See PURPLE LOG SHEET for a summary of homework this week!!! Important Announcements: Please remember to fill out PTA forms, Emergency Medical Forms, and Parent Surveys and return those ASAP! I have been updating my website! Go to www.madisonschools.net, and find my website off of the staff websites link on the RBE homepage! I do post weekly homework assignments, link the class newsletter, and feature other important information. The next thing I’ll be updating is helpful website links. There are already some neat interactive websites posted there now that you might like to explore with your child! www.madisonschools.net Behavior Calendars: You might have noticed that a calendar is now stapled to the back of your child’s Take Home Folder. This is his/her behavior calendar. Each day, your child will color the calendar square the color that his/her card was on by the end of the day. I will initial the square (MB for Mrs. Bacher) and will try to write a little blurb as to why the card was pulled that day. I ask that at the end of the week you sign the behavior calendar to indicate that you saw it. At the end of the month I will attach a new calendar. Please also note that we put important events on the calendar as a reminder to you. Take Home Folders: The question has come up about what to do with homework as it is finished. I would recommend you keep the lucky listener and math logs in the take home folder. You can keep the poem at home – your child has a second copy in his/her poetry journal at school. Any worksheets that you finish can be sent to school (even if it is before the day it is due…I will put it in the tray for that subject). Please help remind your child to pack his/her book bag the night before school so that they don’t forget their folder. This can lead to disorganization and a greater chance that you don’t see the things that you should be seeing from school. The Bacher Blog For parents of students in Room 16 Tues., Sept. 6, 2010

2. Fundations: Last week we began Unit 1 of Fundations. The first Unit focuses a lot on reviewing digraphs, blends, and digraph blends, along with closed syllables and short vowel sounds. We practiced those through tapping, building words, and marking. This week we will continue to drill and review basic sounds, practice marking, and tap sounds to spell words. Everyday Math: Last week we completed Lesson 1-2 thru 1-4. Through those lessons we focused on counting by 1s, 5s, 10s, and 25s using coins; identifying ordinal numbers (1 st, 2 nd, 3 rd ) using calendars; identifying the hour and minutes using clocks; and reviewing basic addition facts through a partner game called Addition Top-It. There are a few students who struggle with these concepts, but we will continue to revisit them. See the Unit 1 Family Letter for activities you can do at home to help your child become more successful. This week we will work on Lessons 1-5 thru 1-7. ***Please note that a math log is on the back of the Lucky Listener Log. Your child should do something math related each night, even if a practice set worksheet or Home Links is not sent home. This can include practice telling time, math flashcards, counting bills/coins, or a spending time on a math website. Science: To get a better understanding of the scientific process skills, we began reading about them in our science books. Before reading, we explored the book and talked about some of our favorite pages. One of my students brought in a skeleton of a sea horse and we talked about using our senses to observe, which happens to be a process skill. We also practiced using our observation of the cloud and temperature changes to predict what the weather might do in the later part of the week. This week, my hope is to do a writing hand lab. Poetry: We did our first week of Living Poetry and it seemed to go very nicely! My students are keeping a journal of the weekly poems. In those journals, we’ll be illustrating pictures that come to our minds as we read the poem. We ill also use our poetry journals to focus on building other skills that will hopefully help us to become better writers and readers. This week we will be working on a poem called “The Sun”. Again, you will see a Lucky Listener Log in the take home folder. Please make sure that your child practices reading his/her poem to at least one lucky listener per day. Remember that we are encouraging the children to read the words in the poem off of the page, even if they seem to memorize it. English: Last week we went through our first week of DOL (Daily Oral Language). We did the Monday activity completely together to talk about capitalization and punctuation rules and marks we should use when editing. In the remaining days of the week, I had my students try the daily practice on his/her own for morning work. Later in the day, we went through the practice as a class. I have sent home the first DOL. I did check to see what corrections each child made – I marked things they should have fixed when we went over it as a class. You might want to go over the DOL with your child…later this week I will give a DOL quiz to my students based on the format of week 1 practice. Our “All About Me Tee’s” are almost finished and will be proudly displayed at Open House. Next week we will spend some time learning about types of sentences and nouns. Reading: Through our class book Miss Nelson Is Missing, we have begun to practice developing vocabulary skills – using picture clues and context clues to determine what unfamiliar words mean. We also looked for clues in the pictures and words to help us figure out what happened to Miss Nelson. This week we will be detectives using the book – continuing to use context clues to determine word meanings, to develop writing skills, and to analyze characters. Contact me at the following: Send a note in Take Home Folder Call 440-428-2151 Email ma_bacher@lgca.orgma_bacher@lgca.org Turn over!!! The Bacher Blog (con’t…)