2 A

Newsletter

June 7, 2026

It’s our last newsletter and our last week of school. What a wonderful year it’s been. We loved getting to know each of your children and are so proud of their accomplishments and growth. We’ll miss them, and you!

Thank you for coming to Open School Night last week. We loved chatting with you and seeing your children excited to share their work. All student work will come home this week, so please continue to send in backpacks each day. We don't want to send everything at once, so we’ll send some workbooks, folders, and projects each day. A big shopping bag or Fresh Direct bag for your child’s tenement would be a great way to safely transport it home. You’re welcome instead to come and pick it up yourself if you’d prefer. We’ll try to send everything home before Friday since many families have afternoon plans on the last day of school. 

Tuesday is Changemaker Day. We are collecting school supplies for KIND through Tuesday morning. Kids in Need of Defense (KIND) is devoted to the protection of unaccompanied and separated children, which ties into our social studies immigration curriculum. Second Graders will be making supply kits and cards to send to the children who will be receiving them. Items needed:

pencils/mechanical pencils

.07 lead

pencil cases/pouches

pencil sharpeners and erasers

color pencils

composition notebooks

spiral notebooks

black/blue pens

2 pocket plastic folders

Please send in materials on or before June 9. If you need to have materials shipped, please address them to your child’s teacher (Inha Yang or Sarah Davies) at 50 Prospect Park West, Brooklyn NY 11215. 

Wednesday is our field trip to Eldridge Street Synagogue. Please send in a bagged lunch for your child on Wednesday. We’ll learn about the history of the synagogue and Jewish immigration around the Turn of the Century. We’ll also go on a walking tour of the Lower East Side with neighborhood highlights from our read aloud, All-of-a-Kind Family Downtown. Then, we’ll have a picnic lunch and recess in Seward Park, the nation’s first municipally funded playground. 

Please remember to update Pick Up Patrol because there are no Enrichment classes this week. The last day of Regular After School is Wednesday. There is no After School on Thursday or on Friday’s noon dismissal. Read this week’s Lunch Menu, but continue to send in snacks, including on the last day of school. 

There are lots of pictures on our June Photos page. 

Your Second Grade Team,

Inha Yang (2A Head Teacher) iyang@polyprep.org

Joyce Vizcaino (2A Associate Teacher) jvizcaino@polyprep.org

Sarah Davies (2B Head Teacher) sdavies@polyprep.org

Bria Jourdain (2B Associate Teacher) bjourdain@polyprep.org

JUNE

8: United Voices - End of Year Celebration

8: POLY PM: MakeUp Week for Spring Enrichment 

9 & 10: Final Lost & Found Recovery Days 

9: Changemaker Day

10: 2A and 2B Field Trip to Eldridge Street Synagogue

10: Last Day of Poly PM for the 25-26 School Year

11: Clapping Out and Grade 4 Graduation

12: End of Year Community Time, 11:15 AM

12: Last Day of School, Noon Dismissal

What’s going on in our classroom

Reading

Second Graders will continue to read independently every day this week. 

Summer book list suggestions will be sent home. Try to have your child read every day this summer. Continue to read aloud to them too. Reading aloud boosts vocabulary, comprehension, and can be a wonderful bonding time with your child. 

Math

Second graders are continuing to learn about time and money. 

This summer it’s important to practice the most important concepts from the year. They are adding and subtracting with regrouping (carrying and borrowing), reviewing math facts up to 20, and drawing bar models for word problems. 

Social Studies

We are continuing to learn about life in New York City’s Lower East Side. Students are learning about what jobs people had and how children played. We will also expand our study beyond the Ellis Island Experience to Angel Island and more modern day immigration. Students will play jacks and marbles this week, just like the children from the time period we’re studying did. For Changemaker Day, we’ll learn about the practice of banning children’s books and that there are some places in our country where school districts and libraries are doing that, even for books that we regularly read at Poly. We’ll also focus on how to affect change through marching, protesting, and community support. We’ll make school supply bags for unaccompanied migrant children at KIND. 

Special thanks to Naomi’s mom Nicole Cochon, who shared her immigration story with our class. If you would like to come to our classroom anytime between now and the end of the year to share your family’s immigration or migration story, please email us.

This summer, visit historical sites and museums if you can. Children especially love museums that tell a story like the Tenement Museum on the Lower East Side, Weeksville Heritage Center in Brooklyn, the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia, Old Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts, etc. 

Writing

Students continue working on their historical fiction journal entries.

Fundations

Students are learning about the  long e sound and the different ways to spell it: -ee as in jeep, -ea as in -seat, and -ey as in key. We are also practicing trick words spelled with -ea. Sometimes -ea makes the short e sound, as in: bread, sweat, already but-ea also makes the long a sound, as in: great, break, steak. Click for our May Trick Words for spelling.

Read Alouds / DEIB 

We are reading All-of-a-Kind Family Downtown by Sydney Taylor, about a Jewish immigrant family of five sisters and one brother growing up on the Lower East Side in the early 1900s.