Week of January 30th

Wow! What a week!

Here's a look back at all of the fun we had during National Lutheran Schools Week...

Comfy Day

 Crazy Hair or Hat Day...

 100th Day...

 We WON the Oatmeal Backpack Challenge!!

Thanks for all of your generosity!

We helped a lot of families!

Ever wonder why we love CCLS... 

Well here's 100 reasons brought to you by your kiddos...

Jump Rope for Heart - kids in action!

Estimation jars...

Ask your second grader which two kiddos were winners from our class!

This is what it looks like when we share, count and sort 100 things...

Oh! And a little bit of actual classroom learning...

Happy Birthday to Zoe!

Hopefully you all had some time to rest over the weekend. 
Here's a look ahead...
CHRISTIAN CHARACTER FORMATION PROJECT
The virtue we will re-encounter this week is self-sacrifice. Self-sacrifice is God’s power for you to give something up to help others. We will read in Matthew 9 about one of Jesus' disciples, Matthew.  Matthew was a tax collector, and in Jesus’ time tax collectors were not among the most favorite people of their culture. We don’t know how honest Matthew was before meeting Jesus, but his readiness to follow Him suggests that Matthew was ready for a change.  When Jesus tells Matthew to follow Him, Matthew has an important, sacrificial decision to make. As you talk to your child this week, ask yourselves this, “How can answering Jesus’ call to follow Him change your life completely?”

READING SKILLS and STRATEGIES 

This week we will revisit one of the more challenging skills of cause and effect. We will review one of our favorite points... "good readers ask themselves questions as they read." Asking questions like what happened? and why did this happen? helps the reader better understand and remember the story.  

PHONICS SKILLS and SPELLING

This week we will identify, sort, and spell words with er, ir, and ur spelling patterns.
LIST ONE

clerk	herd	churn	term	burst
sir	hurt	skirt	stir	turn

LIST TWO

clerk	herd	churn	term	burst
blur	nurse	dirty	shirt	fern

BONUS – famous American

GRAMMAR and WRITING
We will be working on linking verbs (such as "is", "are", "was", "were", and "am") and helping verbs (such as "is looking" or "are working") this week.  And, as we had so much to do in celebration of the 100th day of school last Friday, we did not get a chance to write in our Friday Journals.  So, this week your children will have so much to write about!  I can't wait to see what they choose to tell you!
NEWS and NOTES

 

• FIELD TRIP TODAY - CPH (Concordia Publish House) and Global Foods

• January Reading logs are due TODAY
• NO SCHOOL February 13th and 14th - teacher professional development
• NO SCHOOL February 20th - Presidents' Day

Week of Janary 23rd

Get ready for some fun...

This week is National Lutheran Schools Week!!
We're so excited to celebrate the gift of serving your children with academic excellence, but we are most grateful for the opportunity to share Jesus’ amazing love with them too! National Lutheran Schools Week gives us an opportunity to proclaim these wonderful blessings! 

Join us this week as we celebrate with a different theme each day.

Here's a reminder from the e-mail Mrs. Leet sent last week. 

Monday- comfy day

Tuesday - crazy hair/hat day

Wednesday - dress up for Jesus day

Thursday - favorite team day 

Friday - 100th day shirts 

We will have a variety of happenings throughout the week such as extra time and fun with chapel families, a 100th day parade, and our service project.

As a reminder, for the "Backpack Oatmeal Challenge" we will be collecting boxes of instant oatmeal with single serve packets to help hungry children in our area. This is part of Operation Food Search, where they send a backpack full of food home each weekend to needy children. The children return the backpack the next Monday to be filled again. Please send boxes of instant oatmeal any day next week. The class that brings in the most will get a little Emoji to clip on their backpacks. Thanks for helping!!

Hopefully you all read your child's new Friday journal entry. If you are able, please write your child back and send the journals back to school on Monday. It was a fun week and they sure had a lot to say...

Did you hear about "OREO" writing?

Ask your second grader how an Oreo can help them write a persuasive piece of writing. 

 Our two new friends are such a blessing to our class.

Everyone has been so welcoming, and the girls have just fit right in!

Friday choir time...

We will not focus on a specific virtue this week, but instead, we will celebrate our blessings with National Lutheran schools week daily devotions. 
This year's theme is "Upon This Rock" which comes from Isaiah 26:4 - "Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord is an everlasting rock.”

READING SKILLS and STRATEGIES 

Good readers ask questions!! This week we will practice asking questions before, during, and after we read. As we ask questions, we will find that we often compare and contrast. This week we will be comparing and contrasting with nonfiction. 

PHONICS and SPELLING

This week we will identify, sort, and spell words with r-controlled vowels (ar, or).

LIST ONE

farm	dark	storm	short	horse
part	start	park	sort	for

LIST TWO

farm	dark	storm	short	horse
spark	starry	charm	cart	porch

BONUS – Lutheran school

GRAMMAR and WRITING 

It's a little tricky for second graders to understand that sometimes verbs are not action words. This week in grammar our focus will be to learn about and identify linking verbs.

Your second grader is doing so much writing! It's amazing! This week we should finish up our persuasive passages, edit and revise them, and rewrite a polished published piece. We will also work on a silly writing project, but it's a surprise... (Hint. It has to do with the 100th day of school.) You'll have to check Twitter, Seesaw, our even our halls to see the finished products.

NEWS and NOTES

• National Lutheran Schools Week January - this week!
• FIELD TRIP January 30th - CPH (Concordia Publish House) and Global Foods
• January Reading logs are due this Friday January 27th (or Monday January 30th if you need the weekend)
• NO SCHOOL February 13th and 14th - teacher professional development
• NO SCHOOL February 20th - Presidents' Day

Week of January 17

Well, having a four day weekend was a nice surprise. 

I hope you all stayed warm and safe over the long weekend.
We also have a surprise today!
We welcome Morgan and Madison to our class!
We can't wait to get to know you both!
We've had a lot going on in second grade... a great balance of work and fun!

These girls are explaining a new cover they designed for the book they finished in their book club, Cam Jansen and the Chocolate Fudge Mystery

If you follow us on twitter or have been in our hall, you've probably already seen these fun snow-globes. Your second graders wrote about what it would be like to be TRAPPED inside one! Ahhh! If you are not following us on twitter, consider giving it a try... 

follow us at www.twitter.com/cclschargers

 The "ice day" did not allow us to write in our Friday journals this week, but your kiddos are really excited to write you again! 

Thanks for all the letters back, this is such a valuable tool for SO many reasons!

 As we learned and brainstormed for our persuasive writing pieces, your kiddos had fun with a little debate... "Should we have school uniforms?"

 I got to sub for Mrs. Leet and teach some math!

WE loved practicing building numbers with base ten blocks.

CHRISTIAN CHARACTER FORMATION PROJECT
This week's virtue is diligence. Diligence is God's power for you to focus on your work. The bible reading comes from Matthew 6:5-14 where Jesus gives us a specific model of prayer, The Lord's Prayer. By giving us this model of prayer, Jesus shows us how to focus on what’s important to Him, and to the Father. He lays the foundation for this prayer by explaining that our motives should be pure, that we should not seek people’s attention or show off, or make it a ritual. Jesus teaches us that we should be diligent in seeking God and the things which are important to Him by coming to Him in an attitude of praise, humility, and dependence on Him. I challenge you this week (if you do not already do so) to be diligent about praying with your child. Say The Lord's Prayer together and focus on being faithfully connected to our Father in heaven.

READING SKILLS and STRATEGIES
This week's reading skill is cause and effect. A cause is an event that makes something happen (WHY), and an effect is WHAT happens. As your children read (or you read with them) encourage them to ask themselves about WHAT happened and WHY it happened. This sure ties in perfectly with our persuasive writing pieces!

PHONICS and SPELLING
This week students will practice identifying and sorting words with scr, str and spr spelling patterns. Please note that list one and list two are not very different. This may be a good week to challenge your child with list two.
LIST ONE

screen	scream	scrape	struck	strict
sprain	spruce	strap	stripe	spring

LIST TWO

screen	scream	scrape	struck	strict
sprain	spruce	strap	stroll	springtime

BONUS WORD - Martin Luther King Jr.

WRITING and GRAMMAR
Our specific grammar skill this week will be to combine sentences. If sentences have subjects that are the same or predicates the same, students will practice combining the sentences with the word "and." We will also review previous grammar skills and I will watch for application in their writing. I've started grading the vocabulary sentences for basic grammar skills (capitals and punctuation).

Have you heard about your child's persuasive writing piece? If not, be sure to ask about what topic they chose and what their opinion is about the topic. Things are getting interesting! This week students will focus on their reasons and examples and also come up with an introduction that can "hook" a reader.  

NEWS and NOTES

• NO SCHOOL January 16th - Martin Luther King Jr Day
• National Lutheran Schools Week January 23-27 (be on the lookout for details)
• FIELD TRIP January 30th - CPH (Concordia Publish House) and Global Foods
• January Reading logs are due Friday January 27th (or Monday January 30th if you need the weekend)
• NO SCHOOL February 13th and 14th - teacher professional development
• NO SCHOOL February 20th - Presidents' Day