It's ITBS Testing!

Hello Families of Second Graders,
This week your children will be finishing up their ITBS testing!  Due to testing, your children will not have any spelling lessons, regular reading lessons,  or tests this week.  The students will also not have any homework to assure that they can get to bed on time, so that they are well rested for their standardized testing.  You may also want to send your child with a "hearty" snack to boost their brain power to assist them in testing well.  Thank you in advance for all of your support and efforts during testing week.  Please continue reading to see what else will be transpiring this week in our classroom and right here at ACS!

ELA
Due to testing, the students will not experience their regularly scheduled language arts lessons.  Instead, the students will focus on writing.  This week, the students will be learning about the process of writing and how to write a narrative piece.  Paragraph writing is often taught with the visual of a hamburger!  Each piece of the hamburger represents one step of writing a paragraph correctly.  After the process is taught, the students will then shift their learning to creating an effective narrative paragraph applying their knowledge of the "hamburger paragraph format."

Religion 

Last week, the students were taught about the liturgical colors and calendar of the Catholic Church.  This week, the students will return to their Religion text books where we will continue our lessons.  This week's focus is on becoming a child of God.

The students will also attend our community rosary in the church at 2:20 on Monday afternoon.  

On Friday, the students will celebrate Mass at 8:15 inside St. Gabriel's.

Math ~ The students will continue their learning on number sense and place value.

Social Studies ~ The students will complete their lessons on map skills.   The lessons will end with each student creating their very own imaginary neighborhood map that includes a key and a compass rose.

The Tech Corner
Don't forget that your child has access to the following websites to enrich their learning at home:

• Spelling City(spellingcity.com) ~ This site will help your child in preparing for their weekly Spelling tests.
• IXL ~ This site will assist your child in their math skills.
• Your child's username and passwords to these sites are located inside their agendas.

Odds and Ends ~ 

• Please send your child to school with a set of headphones that they can utilize during our computer lab time on Thursday's.  The headphones may be kept in your child's backpack, so they may use them both at home and at school. 

Upcoming Dates

ITBS Testing begins - Sept. 6th through the 20th Mass - Friday, Sept. 15th at 8:15 a.m. Grandparent's Guild Meeting - Sept. 26th at 10:00 a.m. Homework Please feel free to continue your nightly reading as it will build your brain power!  However, reading and logging it is not a requirement for this week due to ITBS testing. The Flat Stanley Project is an optional cross curricular activity.  It incorporates social studies with writing and it allows the students to better understand the world in which they live.