It is hard to believe fall break is already here! The students have been very busy the past 2 weeks with many different activities. About half of our class ran to be our class representative for the SLT (Student Lighthouse Team). I was so proud of all of these students as they had to put in a lot of extra time outside of class to create their posters and write their speeches that they had to present to the class. Students then voted on who they thought would be the best representative for our class, and in the end Lily was voted the Primary representative, and Garrett is the secondary representative. We look forward to celebrating them both at the SLT Inauguration the week after fall break.

Students have been working hard on learning their math facts and solving word problems. When we return from the break, students will practice counting pennies, nickels, and dimes, as well as solving word problems with these coins. So if you have some spare change at home, encourage your child to count it up!

Our last science lab involved some messy experiments, especially when they got to make silly putty! Of course they all had a wonderful time though!

We ended our fall break by spending Friday afternoon with our 4th grade buddies. Students went outside to look for signs that fall is here, as well as have their 4th grade buddy share what kinds of clouds were in the sky. Then they all had some time to read with their buddies afterwards. It was a great afternoon!

When we return from the break, a lot of things will be going on. Make sure you check the October calendar that was sent home before the break, but here are a few extra reminders:

10/3- Reading logs for September due! Remember, in order for students to get the monthly reading reward, they must have read at least 5 nights a week for 20 minutes for the whole month of September. Parents must initial and put how long their child read those days in order for them to get credit for reading. 

10/5- The Media Center's fall break reading challenge is due, Directions on what to do for this are on the reading log that was sent home on Friday. 

10/6- Picture Day!

10/24- Conference week begins so students will be dismissed at 12:15 everyday this week. You will receive your conference letter with your scheduled time on Oct. 6th. It will be in your child's green daily folder. Please sign and return these ASAP. If your child has a sibling at this school, I have already met with your child's teacher and we have scheduled back to back conferences so that you don't have to come up to the school multiple times. 

This was a short, but busy week! Students finished up their reading unit with main idea and took their reading assessment on this comprehension skill. Next week we will begin our character analysis unit where we focus on how a character's actions, thoughts, and feelings tell us more about what kind of person they are.

Students have also been doing a great job with their narrative writing. This week we focused on adding "fancy words" in our writing, and coming up with interesting ways to start our stories-such as with a descriptive setting or action, We also finished up our unit on proper nouns, which students should now be capitalizing in their writing. Next week we will learn about collective nouns (a flock of geese, a team of players, a bouquet of flowers, etc.)

We started the making 10 strategy in math this week. Students are learning how to decompose numbers into ways that can make a 10 with the other addend. It is easy to add a number to 10 which is why this strategy can be helpful to students. Here is the anchor chart of how this strategy works:

The next few weeks in math will involve students working on memorizing addition and subtraction facts. We have done a lot of facts that make 10, but they need to know all their facts with numbers 0-20 by the end of the year. If you know your child does not have their addition and subtraction facts memorized, please consider practicing these facts at home with flash cards or with computer/i-pad games- there are a ton out there! See my links if you need a practice website for math facts. We will also be solving 1 step word problems daily using numbers, pictures, and words. Students will continue practicing the making 10 strategy within the word problems.

Next week we finish learning about Georgia's regions and begin to focus on Georgia's 7 rivers and the resources they provide to us.

Reminder: The Foundation drive ends this Friday  (9/16).  Please consider donating something to the science lab if you have not done so already. The top 2 classes in 2nd grade with the highest percentage of students donating will get an additional I-PAD for the classroom, and that would be great to have. Any donation is better than nothing-every little bit counts!

We had a lot of fun this week starting some new units in math and social studies. The class is now experts at making 10, and are excited to learn about this new strategy next week. We made some cool compass roses out of different designs from magazines and ads for a fun introduction into maps. We even got to learn about the region we live in, Piedmont.

For writing, we started to learn about proper nouns and how they need to be capitalized. We started working on including actions, thoughts, and feelings into our narrative writing, as well as incorporated our 5 senses for more descriptive writing. Next week we will finish up our main idea unit in reading.


 Students celebrated  the end of the matter unit with some cool experiments in the science lab Monday morning, and then made root beer floats in the afternoon to see how a solid, liquid, and gas could all be in one cup! They loved this yummy experiment!

                            We met Addison's school mascot when we visited the media center this week!

Hope everyone enjoys their Labor Day weekend! Please read the following note below from the Foundation:

The Foundation Funding Drive has been extended through September 16.  This is the Foundation's largest fundraiser for the year to help continue to keep our Science Lab going as well as provide other enrichment for the students and resources for Addison.  

There will be a classroom competition! The class with the highest % of participation by 9/9 will win an ice cream party! (right now, Mrs. Gillenwater is in 1st place)

The top two classes participating in the Drive in each grade level will receive an iPad, too!!  A percentage of the funds raised also comes directly into our classroom.

Don't forget...

When we hit $20,000, Mrs. Hallmark and Mr. Cohen will spend some time up on the roof for all to see!!!

When we hit $25,000, they will KISS A PIG!!

When we hit $30,000, the kids will get to tape Mrs. Hallmark and Mr. Cohen to the WALL. 

Please support us in this effort! Visit www.foundation4addison.org for details.  

This week we started to wrap up a few of our units we have been studying this year. We will take our place value post assessment on Tuesday and then start a new math strategy for addition: making tens. In order for this strategy to be successful, students must know all the ways to make 10 by memory. We will practice this next week before learning about the strategy. Students enjoyed spending their last week with place value completing different centers and review activities.

Our matter unit is also complete, but we do still get to have a fun science experiment about matter on Monday in the science lab AND in the classroom! For our first social studies unit we will be learning about the compass rose and the cardinal directions, then move into the Georgia regions and rivers. Next week will focus on the compass rose and learning about the region we live in, Piedmont.

Students had their first week of reading groups and I enjoyed getting to read with students in a small group setting. We are continuing to focus on main idea and details in reading. We will continue improving our narrative writing by adding interesting words and details, and start some proper noun activities next week.

Upcoming dates:
September 5- Labor Day/ No School
September 9- Grandparent breakfast at school 7:15-7:45


Please read the following note from Foundation:

The Foundation Funding Drive is running through September 9.  This is the Foundation's largest fundraiser for the year to help continue to keep our Science Lab going as well as provide other enrichment for the students and resources for Addison. The new digital marquee out front is a gift from Foundation, as well as $15,000 worth of new iPads this year for the classrooms!  The top two classes participating in the Drive in each grade level will receive an additional iPad, too!!  A percentage of the funds raised also comes directly into our classroom.

And...

When we hit $20,000, Mrs. Hallmark and Mr. Cohen will spend some time up on the roof for all to see!!!

When we hit $25,000, they will KISS A PIG!!

When we hit $30,000, the kids will get to tape Mrs. Hallmark and Mr. Cohen to the WALL. 

Please support us in this effort! Visit www.foundation4addison.org for details on Foundation and the Funding Drive.  

We had another fun week in 2nd grade! Our Monday started out very busy with our first science lab. We learned how to be safe in science lab and got to use some cool science tools. We explored the garden to see what bloomed over the summer. Thanks to all the parent volunteers that helped out during science lab!

We also had a parent surprise us after lunch on Monday with 2 geckos and a baby gecko! The students enjoyed seeing these animals up close and even saw the baby gecko eat a meal worm. Very exciting!

The rest of the week consisted of sharing our matter museum, practicing all Daily 5 centers to prepare us for reading groups next week, and focusing on all the ways we can make numbers with place value.

Next week, we will finish up matter and place value. We will specifically focus on comparing numbers and skip counting by 5, 10, and 100 from any given number.  We will also begin Unit 1 of our reading program which focuses on main idea and details. For writing, we are focusing on writing narrative stories.

Quick homework reminder: Students have some comprehension questions on the back of their reading fluency passage that need to be answered in addition to the 1 minute timed reading. The reading log for August is on page 5 in the agenda and must have parent initials AND the number of minutes read every weekday in order to receive the monthly reading prize. We are teaming up with Pizza Hut who will be giving pizza coupons to students that have their reading log completed for the month. Please let me know if you have any questions about this.

We are staying busy in 2nd grade! This week we dove further into place value by completing a few lessons in our math book (Chapter 5 if you would like to check it out on the My Math login), and ended the week creating animals made out of base ten blocks! Students had to figure out what number their animal made when they put the base ten blocks together. They had a fun time and the animals turned out really cute!

We also started our matter unit and learned all about solids and liquids. Students then sorted through magazines and ads to find different solids and liquids. We will study gas next week as well as present our "matter museum" so don't forget to bring back the baggies on Monday.

Today we met our 4th grade buddies and read some books with them. We will hopefully see them next month to complete a fun activity together.

On Monday, we will start our spelling and homework. Please make sure this is turned in on Friday, Don't forget to complete the reading log in the agenda with a goal of reading at least 20 minutes a night.

Next week we have our very first science lab lesson! We are all very excited. We will continue to study matter, place value, and build our reading and writing stamina.

What a great first week we had in 2nd grade! We read some wonderful back to school books, got to learn more out about our classmates, and learned a lot of new routines and procedures. Everyone now has a leadership role in the classroom to go along with our school's Leader in Me program. We finished our class mission statement and signed it to ensure we try our best everyday at school. The students came up with this on their own and I think it sounds great. See the picture below to read our mission statement.

I want to thank everyone for making sure your child had his or her supplies by the first day of school. It really made our Monday a lot easier since everyone was prepared and had what they needed.

Next week we will start more academic activities, like place value and matter. We introduced a little bit of place value on Friday and let students play with the base ten blocks so they won't be tempted to play with them next week when it is time to learn! We will also be talking about what good readers and writers do.  We have our first light bulb lab, media center visit, and guidance lesson all next week as well!

Don't forget we have Open House on Thursday at 6:00 pm. This is where I will go into further detail about academic expectations for the year, homework, and our behavior plan. Hopefully I  can also answer any questions you may have. See you then!