Welcome to my class blog!  I am very excited to be a part of your child's educational experience for 2nd grade.  I am beginning my 26th year in education and am very excited to be teaching 2nd grade.  I have been fortunate to experience many opportunities to prepare me for our year together.  Please refer back to this page for classroom updates and newsletters. 


August 7, 2009

It was very nice to see you all at sneak a peek today!  I am very excited about our year together. 

 

I do have a few housekeeping items from our administration to share.    Some of these may be a little different from last year.


1. There can be no guest riders on afternoon buses.  If your child is invited home with a friend after school, they will not be able to ride their friend's bus.  Other arrangements will have to be made.
2.  When your child is absent, you will need to send a written, signed and dated note when they return.  I can no longer accept emails as excuses.
3.  All transportation changes must be given to me in writing.  Please send these in your child's homework folder. 
4.  Lunch visitors are discouraged for the 1st 2 weeks of school.

We will have a special silent reading time each day in our classroom.  Your child may bring a book to leave at school or they may choose a book from my collection.  We will also have a poem each week for  your child to memorize.  I will send these home in your child's folder on Monday.  Please leave these in your child's folder and they will illustrate them for a poetry book which will be complete by the end of the year. 

Please email me if you have any questions!   donna.peppers@cobbk12.org  Enjoy your weekend and I look forward to seeing the children on Monday!!

August 13, 2009

 

Greetings from 2^nd grade!!  It is hard to believe that we are at the end of our first week of school.  The children have been very excited and it is difficult at best to attend all day when the weather SCREAMS summer !

 

We have worked hard all week on adjusting to the schedule and routines of second grade.  We have begun our writing instruction using the format of Writer’s Workshop.  This program uses the 4 components of writing: drafting, editing, revising and publish.  The philosophy encourages writer’s to develop topics while developing the writing structure.  We have actually begun our first piece as we learn about finding our stories.  We will look carefully at the habits of good writers and work on developing those habits.

 

I have introduced the literacy centers I will use in my class.  The centers are required and each student has 2 weeks to complete all the activities.  I will conduct reading activities with small groups as the other students are participating in literacy activities.  The centers will have various activities to assist the learners with areas that need developing. 

 

I will be incorporating the new Language Arts series with our reading and literacy time.  I will begin reading instruction next week.  I am currently assessing the students to ensure appropriate activities are available during instruction.  We also have a new hand writing program so you may notice your child transitioning in their handwriting as they begin to change over to this program which is different from the former D’Nealian format. 

 

Homework assignments will be very similar to this week.  Reading is the main emphasis of my homework.  Your child will also have a poem almost every week to memorize.  There will be an occasional book report to send in and there will be math homework to help support our math standards.

 

 

I do expect my students to exhibit appropriate behavior.  I have a pocket chart in my room with student names.  I use this chart to help  monitor behavior.  I will inform you if I have to provide repeated re-direction of behaviors for your child.  In an essence, no news regarding behavior is good news !

 

 

  

Please visit here at least once a month.  In an attempt to be environmentally conscious, I will provide most of my information through this blog. I will continue to provide hard copies of the calendar and information regarding special projects. Please refer any questions to me at donna.peppers@cobbk12.org 

I look forward to seeing you at our open house!
 

Thank you all for a wonderful beginning!!!  It is going to be an INCREDIBLE year!!!

 

Donna

 

 

September 3, 2009

My, my where did August go?  We are already well into the year and it feels like just yesterday we began our 2nd grade journey! 

I wanted to update you on a few things we are working on in our class.  We have been working on "finding out stories" using the writer's workshop format.  The children are really working on incorporating punctuation skills into their writing.  They are also learning about different types of nouns.  We read Chicken in the City and looked for various types of nouns in the story.  We will continue to look for nouns in our other language activities throughout this month.

We are still working on building numbers with base ten blocks, identifying place value and we are beginning double digit addition with reprouping. 

Our science and social studies time is going well.  The children are enjoying learning map skills with Mrs. Nevitt and we are working on inquiry skills and property of matter with me. 

Just a few reminders:
-Book orders are due by September 11. 
-Please sign and return your performing arts field trip form.
-We will not have a poem for the week of Labor day.  I will have students recite and illustrate the Tomato poem on Friday of next week. 
-I will be adding a few high frequency words to the spelling list after next week.  The total number of words will be 15.  The children have done WONDERFULLY and are excited about the challenge.
-Any donations to our treasure box would be greatly appreciated!

Have a great Labor Day with your family!
Donna


September 23, 2009

Hello everyone.  I hope this post finds everyone safe and sound after the recent floods.  I have had you and your families on my mind and in my heart as we all rebuild and re-evaluate and begin to return to a normal routine.  I look forward to seeing all the lovely smiles of my students as they come through the door of our classroom!! 

We will re-schedule our picture day and I will let you know as soon as I know when it will be.  We will also postpone  our spelling test until next Thursday. There will be no new words for next week.  We will also use the same poem for next week.  

Be safe and hold on to your loved ones!!

Donna

September 25, 2009

                       Just a few reminders.....

Picture retakes will be on September 30th.  We will begin working with graphs to answer questions for math.  I will continue to send 2 digit math problems home for practice.  We have a performing arts field trip on October 23rd. 

Have a great weekend!!
Donna


October 11, 2009
Happy Fall!
      I hope this post finds all of you enjoying the cool overcast Fall weather.  I have enjoyed watching the leaves begin their beautiful transition from Summer to Fall!  What a great time to really practice those inquiry skills we have been developing in science!
     It is hard to believe that we have completed our 9th week of school.  Report cards will come home on Thursday, October 16th. 
     We have enjoyed having our Mystery Readers come to our class on Thursdays.  If you are interested in being a reader, please contact Ashley Renew.  She is scheduling readers for me.  
     We are working on using available resources to answer questions relating to our standards.  We have used our Social Study and Science text books and explored the table of contents as well as the index to help us locate important information about our standards.  Much excitement has been generated as we learn what Cherokee people use to make jewelry or the types of houses in which Cherokee people reside. 
     We will be back on our Media center schedule beginning Wednesday, October 13th.  We will visit the Media center every other Wednesday.  The children may return books daily in the morning before the morning bell rings.

           October Reminders:
Monday, October 12- Wellstar Nutrition program
Wednesday, October 21-  Early release
Friday, October 23- Performing Arts- The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
Thursday, October 29-  Center day

Looking ahead:
We will have a progressive dinner on Thursday, November 19th.  You will receive more information early in November.


Enjoy the remainder of your weekend!!

Donna

November 5,  2009

Greetings everyone!  I am glad to see that all the students seem to remain healthy as we approach the upcoming holidays.  We are washing hands and cleaning tables to minimize the spread of germs.  

We are currently working on a Social Studies unit discussing Georgia's beginnings.  We will be reading stories about early settlers and important figures who helped establish Georgia as a colony.

We will continue to work with money in math.  We have been making various money amounts daily with the calendar and math center time.  We are also discussing plane and solid figures.  We will continue to work on double digit subtraction with re-grouping.  

The children did a wonderful job with their book reports.  It was evident that they understood the book and you could see their own styles represented in the format they chose to report.  I will send home the information for the next book report on Monday, November 9th.

We will have our progressive dinner with friends from other classes on Thursday, November 19th.  I appreciate all the responses I have received regarding providing supplies and food items.  I will send home final information on Monday, November 9th.

As Always,
Donna


December 4, 2009

Happy  Holidays!!  It is hard to believe that we are approaching the next break for the winter holidays.  The children are very excited about all the festivities this season brings.

We have been hard at work practicing our math skills.  We are learning about plane and solid figures.  We have learned about faces, edges, vertices and angles.  We have also learned how to do double digit subtraction with regrouping.  We have been learning about various parts of speech.  Please ask your child about homophones, antonyms, synonyms, adjectives, contractions and compound words.  We have been working on stretching our sentences to make our writing more interesting. 

Our holiday party will be on Thursday, December 17th.  We will wear our PJ's, make some crafts and watch Polar Express.  We will also read the Polar Express and compare the story to the movie.  Ashley and Missy will be in touch regarding supplies and volunteers. 

I look forward to seeing all of you in January at our conferences to celebrate your child's educational success.  You will receive more information regarding conferences when we return from the holidays.

Have a safe and happy holiday!  Enjoy the magic of the season with your precious children!

As Always,

Donna


January, 2010

Greeting friends!  It is amazing how time flies!  I apologize for the delay in my January post.  It seems like so far ago since the holidays..... and to think we have had snow, MLK day and now we will have conference!  My the year is flying by!

I am very proud of the work the children are doing.  We have taken great steps forward in developing our writing!  We are now working on using a Thesaurus to make our writing more interesting by choosing words that create more interest for the reader.  We have talked about similes and how these comparisions can be used to help further define a topic in your writing.  I am very pleased with the way the students are incorporating these new skills into their writings!

We hit the floor running with our new math units!  We have practiced place value to 1,000's and have compared fractions of many things in our daily routine.  We will begin a unit on measurement very soon. 

We spent our time since returning from the holidays studying Civil Rights studying Martin Luther King, Jr. We will begin a unit on phases of the moon after conference week.

January 25 through 30 is conference week.  The students will dismiss 2 hours earlier for this week.  I look forward to seeing you all at conferences.

Donna