Archway Lincoln Second Grade Blog

Thank you for all your patience as we have transitioned back to brick and mortar.

Reminder: There is no school on Monday, 9/7 in observance of Labor Day. There will be no online or in-person classes

This weekend 9/5-9/7 is R&R. Your scholar has no homework. Please enjoy this time with your family and get plenty of rest and relaxation.

New to Great Hearts? Want to learn more about Singapore Math and Spalding Phonics? Please join us for an information night via Zoom on Thursday, September 10th at 6pm. Zoom links will be sent out on Wednesday, September 9th. We look forward to connecting with you.

A Glance at Next Week:

Poetry: Our first poetry recitation will be a pair of Limericks by Edward Lear. Poems will go out on Tuesday and be recited on 9/28.

Spalding: There will only be 20 words due to the holiday on Monday.

Reading: We will continue our study of visualization.

Literature: Chapters 4 and 5 will be read in Boxcar Children

Writing: We will be reviewing the 4 types of sentences and differentiating between them when mixed.

Grammar: Our study of singular and plural nouns will begin.

Math: We will continue with addition and subtraction. Word problems will be introduced.

Science: Our simple machines unit will continue as we look closer at each type of machine.

History: We will begin our unit on Ancient Greece.

Good Afternoon Second Grade Families!

Thank you so much for another wonderful week. As you prepare for the weekend, we’d like to share a few bullet points on what’s coming.

Monday 8/31

There will be NO Synchronous Learning scheduled. (No Zoom session from 8-10 am, but there is still Independent Google Classroom work due!)

For those of you transitioning to the school for in-person learning, please remember that Monday will be a half-day and scholars will need to start the process of bringing their school supplies in. (Please see the email sent earlier this week from your teacher for more details.)

Curriculum Coming Next Week

ELA: We will be starting words in Spalding this week!

Literature: We will be starting to read our first novel, The Boxcar Children on Monday. (Please make sure you have this novel either ready for Distance Learning or you are sending it in-person with your scholar!)

Grammar: Subject/Noun/Verb sentence parsing

Writing: Exploring our last two types of sentences, exclamatory and interrogative

Reading: We will start learning the skill of Visiualization

Science: Our new unit is on Simple Machines

History: Taking a look at South and Central America

Math: We are finishing up our unit on Place Value (Look out for a Unit Quiz on Wednesday!)

As always, we wish you a very happy weekend. Teachers will see In-Person scholars on Monday and Distance Learning scholars on Tuesday!

Best,

The Second Grade Team

Thank you to those of you who joined us for Curriculum Night. We hope that you enjoyed getting to learn about what your scholar will be learning about this year. It was our intention that your questions would be answered to the best of our abilities after our presentations, but if you have any more questions, please reach out.

We also wanted to thank you again for your patience and understanding as we figure out what Phase 2 of reopening looks like. We assure you that we will inform you of any information as it becomes available.

You should receive an email today regarding DIBELS signups. Please make sure you signup for a time. All students need to be tested. This testing will take place outside of normal synchronous Zoom times.

We will be starting our first novel, The Boxcar Children, the first week of September. Please purchase this book if you have not done so already, and have it ready with your child by then.

A Glance at Next Week:

Good Afternoon, Second Grade Parents!

Can you believe we finished our first full week back? Thank you so much to all of our families and scholars who helped make this week successful!

We have a few updates and recaps to share with you for our weekly blog post:

Curriculum Night Save the Date

Please save the date for our K-2 Curriculum Night via Zoom on Thursday, August 20th from 6-7:15 pm.  During our time together we will share with you Archway Lincoln’s philosophy and vision, dive into the school’s curriculum, and introduce your to your scholar’s grade level and classroom procedures. Zoom links will be sent out via email on Wednesday, August 19th.  Please note, this evening is intended for parents only.

Independent Learning Time

Please be aware that starting next week, the amount of asynchronous/independent work will be increasing as we ramp up to match our normal amount of workload. We purposely started off the school year with less amount of work to help us ease into the school year and get used to Distant Learning.

Zoom Etiquette

We would like to remind families to make sure that their child has their First AND Last name along with their section posted on the zoom meetings. (e.g.: “Christine Bachman 2B”) This helps with attendance and safety.  We understand that many scholars are using another adult’s Zoom account, but ensuring that the name is changed when logging in is very important. Our specials team is asking for scholars to use the same name format on Zoom in all of their Zoom sessions.

Our second reminder is regarding cameras and microphones. Please help your scholars understand that if they are asked or placed on mute, we greatly need them to remain on mute until asked otherwise. (We have been explaining that having your mic on when unnecessary is similar to shouting out in class.) We’d also like to remind families that students’ cameras must be turned on AND their faces must be visible at all times during the Zoom. Being able to see their faces is for ensuring all our scholars stay safe on the internet, as well as being able to interact and fully engage them in our lesson.

Starting next week, we will be enforcing these policies and we greatly appreciate your help in making our remote learning run smoothly. Please understand that if these criteria are not being met, we must place your Zoom account in the waiting room in order to ensure safety and protect our learning environment.

Watching Videos with School Issued Laptops

We have been aware of an issue with watching Google Classroom videos from School Issued Laptops. Going forward, we have found a solution to this issue and don’t expect it to be a problem again. If there are any videos/assignments you are still working on from this week, we ask that you will kindly watch these videos from another device. Thank you for your patients and we navigate this new terrain and figure out our best practices.  

A Note on Student Work

Early this week we sent out an email to all four sections regarding allowing students to display their own authentic and unedited work. We understand that it is hard to know where and when to step-in for help. Please keep in mind that we are trying to mimic an in-person school day as best as possible, regardless of being remote. Allowing your scholar to make mistakes and act as independently as possible helps us provide them with the best educational experience. As a reminder, please check out the newly added Distance Learning Grading Guide page. Please take some time to review this and partner with us to help grow your scholar’s mind and skills.

We hope you have a wonderful weekend and we look forward to seeing our scholars on Monday!

Best,

Second Grade Team

Thank you for your patience and flexibility as we navigated the first days of online learning. We all felt that today went much smoother than yesterday. We anticipate this trend will continue and we hope to smooth out any kinks that continue to arise.

A few points for next week:

• We will still be varying a bit from our posted daily schedule next week as the kids get used to online learning.
• We will start our Tuesday/Thursday small groups next week. They will not be reading-based for a couple weeks as we have not yet assessed their reading levels, but will be used to get to know the class in smaller groups. We will be seeing half the class on Tuesday and the other half on Thursday. If it is not their day for groups, they will be excused at 9:25 a.m.
• The assignments that we have given have been to get to know our class and get everyone used to turning in assignments. Going forward we will be checking and grading all assignments that are turned in. It is really important that your scholar keeps up-to-date with assignments. You can see what is due each day by looking in their agenda or on that day’s section of Google Classroom.
• From here on out, you should be able to access the daily Zoom from the Continuous Classroom on Google Classroom. If you are having trouble getting into the Zoom, please contact both of your teachers. This makes it much more likely that you will get a quick response and we can trouble shoot the issue.
• Starting next week, we will be adding a daily question into Google Classroom to help take attendance quickly and not take up precious live Zoom time. Please have your scholar do the question daily.
• Reminder: Please have your scholar working in a common area of the house (if possible) where there will be supervision and free from distractions. We cannot have children completely unsupervised on Zoom.

Items needed for Monday:

• white board and white board marker
• agenda
• pencil
• provided lined Spalding paper
• pink Spalding notebook

Please let us know if there is anything you need to help online learning be successful for your child. We are here to help in any way we can and appreciate constructive feedback.

Thank you for your partnership,

The Second Grade Team

Hello, New Second Graders and New Second Grade Families!

We are thrilled to welcome you to a new school year. Although this school year may feel different, we cannot wait to meet each of you and are committed to our journey together as a community.

By now you should have received an email from your teachers giving you some crucial beginning of the year information. Please take some time to review this email and complete the action items listed.

We will be using this blog as a portal, resource, and means of communication. (Please hit “follow” on the right-hand side navigation bar to get updates!) You will find useful links in the upper right-hand corner including our “Teacher Bios” and “Parent Resource Portal.”

We are excited to see you at Meet the Teacher!

In Partnership,

2A: Mrs. Duran & Mrs. Tiner

2B: Ms. Bachman & Mrs. Bushanam

2C: Mrs. Abreu-Rosa & Ms. Pitman

2D: Miss White

Hello, new Second Grade families! We are currently getting ready for the upcoming 2020-2021 school year. Please check back on our blog at a later time for more updates!

We are looking forward to seeing you soon!

(If you were previously in 2nd Grade and no longer have any 2nd Grade students at our school, you may unsubscribe from this blog to stop getting updates.)

-Mrs. Duran (2A), Ms. Bachman (2B), Mrs. Abreu-Rosa (2C), and Miss White (2D)