26 March, 2023

“Education is the best weapon for peace.” -Dr. Maria Montessori

Dear 2nd grade parents,

This is our last full week of St. Scholastica Term! The students have made a lot of progress this term, and I am very proud of what they accomplished.

Last Friday 2nd grade read to preschool! It was a lot of fun, and the 2nd graders did a marvelous job. The preschoolers were very excited to have visitors from the older kids. A big thank you to Mrs. Wood for arranging this activity!

We are reading C. S. Lewis’ classic, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe in class. The students are very excited and are very much enjoying this longer read! If your child is absent, please reach out to me to find out what chapters we read in class and if possible, have your child read or listen to at home so that they can follow the story as we read in class.

March reading challenges: we have two reading challenges for the month of March. The first is a schoolwide competition won by the class who spends the most minutes reading. Minutes are recorded in the small notebooks students were given (book title, # minutes, parents initials), and must be signed off by a teacher if done in school, or by a parent if done at home. I calculate the minutes at the end of the week. Please help your child keep track of the notebook! I have been encouraging them to keep their notebooks in their desks or backpack whenever not in use. The class with the most minutes wins an ice cream party!

The second challenge is 2nd grade specific: students have a star sheet, and I stamp a star for every book students read. To keep track, students fill out a small book report form in school on the book they have read before receiving the stamp. Students also have a list of books I have selected that are worth more than one star (these are decided on length, difficulty, and to help expand students reading horizons), but any book–provided the pages are not cardboard and have more than one sentence on them–is worth a star.

We also have a can drive going on for Hope Clinic. Please check the attachments on the weekly email updates for a list of needed items.

We are also beginning a new unit in writing. Returning to story-telling, students are now looking at a sequence of three pictures, ordering them, and then creating a three paragraph story from them.

Happy Lent!

Put simply, every story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. When we retell our stories in class we use a 3 paragraph structure. Our first paragraph is the beginning, the second paragraph is the middle, and our third is the ending. The first paragraph serves as an introduction; we need to make our readers feel comfortable in our story. This is where we introduce our main characters, set the story in time and place, and get it ready for the main action. The plot, or the main body of a story takes place in the second paragraph. What is the main conflict? Or even simpler, what is the main thing that happens in our story? Finally, the third paragraph is our clincher; our closing. The third paragraph ties up our story by telling us the resolution, the outcome of consequences our character’s actions. Since we are retelling fables, we also include a moral at the end of our tales.

Please keep reviewing an Act of Spiritual Communion with your child. Some students were still struggling with this prayer, and may need a little help to ensure they have this prayer solidly.

This prayer is part of faith formation, and encourages children to speak to Jesus, present in the Eucharist, and helps instill in them a longing for full Communion with Jesus. A lot of fruitful discussion can also come from this prayer, and it can be a wonderful entryway into dialogue about the Sacrament.

A few reminders:

• Student planners and green homework folders ought to go home every day, and be brought back to school every morning along with any textbooks that were taken home.
• Please check homework folders and sign student planners daily. Students should be practicing their spelling list and poem at home for 5-10 minutes every day.
• Please make sure students bring a water bottle to class daily. These can be refilled at school from the school water fountains.
• Wednesday is Library Day for 2nd Grade. Any library books students have checked out must be returned on Wednesday. Otherwise, they will not be able to take out a new book! Students are allowed to renew a book if they want to keep it for an additional week, but it must be returned after 2 weeks.
• We go outside for recess most days. Please make sure students have appropriate clothing (hat, gloves, scarf, winter coat). Snow gear and winter boots should be brought in a bag for snowy days.

Virtue for the school year: Devotion

Virtue for the St. Scholastica Term: Perseverance

This week in 2nd grade:

Grammar/Phonics: This week we continuing to look at verbs: where to find them in the sentence (the predicate), abstract vs. concrete verbs (thinking vs. eating), number in verb (has vs/ have), and past tense forms of verbs. There is no phonics test this week.

Religion: Every Tuesday we have Catechesis of the Good Shepherd, which is an experience-based catechesis focused on connecting the heart of the child to God and making God “real” and “tangible” (so much as He can be!) to children. This is supported and supplemented by the formation we do in class, which is rooted in the Spirit of Truth curriculum and the Baltimore Catechism. We are memorizing definitions from the Baltimore pertinent to the sacraments and basic catechesis.

These past few weeks we have focused on the Sacrament of Confession. We discussed the form of Confession, and looked the different parts: preparation, confession, absolution, and penance. To prepare we make an examination of conscience, where we reflect on our days and our choices: our victories we thank God for, and for our failings we ask for mercy. When we enter the Confessional, we confess our sins to the priest, who is acting in persona Christi, the sins we have uncovered through reflection. The priest absolves our sins–that is, acting as a channel for grace, God completely takes away our sins. Finally, we are assigned a penance: a small duty we are given to reduce the temporal punishment of our sins. I also explained that when we sin, we are putting something bad into the world. A penance is way we can put something good into the world to help counter the bad thing we have let enter.

This week we are taking a break from Confession to review the rosary: how to pray the rosary, the basic prayers and their order, and also learning the mysteries of the rosary and the days associated with them.

Writing: Our poem for this week is “The Snowbird” by Frank Dempster Sherman. Individual recitations are on Friday.

We are beginning a new unit! Starting this week, students are looking at a sequence of three pictures, putting them in order, and then developing a story from these pictures. The stories will be three paragraphs long, and every paragraph must end with a “clincher”: a summarizing sentence that helps the paragraph feel finished.

Spelling: Our spelling list is List 25, which focuses on the sound “n” spelled kn and gn, and “ch” spelled tch and ch.

Reading: We are getting deeper into The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, which we are reading until Easter break. This week we will cover chapters 11-15.

This is our first long multi-chapter story where each chapter is a continuation of the story rather than a new or separate narrative. We are focusing on using the text to promote good discussion, and to help students understand symbolism and allegory. We are reading about a chapter a day, so please reach out if your child misses a day so I can let you know what chapter they missed, and they can catch up at home. Otherwise, students will have a difficult time following the story.

Math: This week we are beginning our unit on fractions. Students will learn what a fraction is (equal parts of a whole), how to recognize them, make them, and write them.

History: Continuing our journey with France, this week we are looking at the Sacred Heart devotion, which began with St. Margaret Mary Alacoque during the reign of King Louis XIV, The Sun King.

Science: We are beginning our unit on plant and animal life.