Lots of Upcoming Events!

Report Cards go home Friday. If you have any questions regarding a grade, a comment or overall progress do not hesitate to write or call. This is a team effort!

Next Week is Spirit Week!
Monday: Sports Day-Wear something to represent your favorite sport today. A hat, t-shirt, jersey.
Tuesday: Pajama Day-Wear pajamas, slippers, a robe. Bring a stuffed animal or doll
Wednesday: Backwards Day-Be crazy! Wear something backwards today! (Zero Waste lunch, too!)
Thursday: Dress Up Day-Today is all about being fancy. Wear something extra fancy today.
Friday: School Colors Day-wear red and black or wear an Irving shirt.

Zero Waste Lunch: On March 23rd Irving School is striving to have a ZERO waste lunch. We are urging kids to take responsibility for packing their lunch that day or if they are ordering a hot lunch to take only what they know they will eat. Please see this handout for additional information and tips. Our class will be helping the whole school sort their waste during lunch this day. As leaders of this initiative, the students will become experts on reducing waste and learning about our environment.

It's getting to be that time to mark the calendar.
Other dates:
April 8:Academic Fair and Egg-Drop contest registration is due by April 8th
April 15: Centennial Celebration
April 20th: Academic Fair and Egg Drop
May 19th: Field Trip to Peggy Notebaert Museum and Lincoln Park Zoo
June 2nd: End of the Year 2nd Grade Picnic

Ask your child about

• the opera
• what courage means to them
• Amelia Earhart
• the three branches of national government
  

In Like a Lion

Brrrr! So much for hoping for an early spring.
Reading: We finished our reading unit on Dinosaurs and Fossils. We learned a lot and practiced reading strategies with expository texts. As you read with your child (which you should be doing at least once a week...) make sure you ask what the main idea of a story is. Ask your child to give you alternate titles. Identifying the main idea of a story was a focus of this unit and still proves to be difficult.
Writing: Students wrote a narrative story with a dinosaur chase as the main event. It was an opportunity for me to assess punctuation and story organization.
Math: We have been very busy working on beginning multiplication concepts. We even spent a day doing division. We will continue to practice addition and subtraction computation.
Science: At the end of next week we will begin work on a new science unit on Rocks and Minerals.
Behavior: The students have been working hard to make me "burst my buttons." They earn buttons in a jar every time they work as a team to be good listeners, hard workers and respectful friends. When the jar is full we will have a celebration. Individual students who aren't working as a team member might earn a strike. Once a student has five strikes they will miss 5 minutes of our celebration. 10 strikes is 10 minutes. 15 strikes is 15 minutes. Beyond 15 strikes a student will miss the entire celebration.
Pizza on Wednesday: Students will be eating lunch in the room next Wednesday to celebrate the New Beats dance victory AND the phenomenal, outstanding, wonderful, perfect listening during the dinosaur presentations. I will provide the pizza. Please send in a piece of fruit/bag of vegetables for your child to supplement the pizza. Kids can order milk or bring a water bottle.