Weekly Newsletter

June 8, 2025

Dear families,

It’s our last newsletter and our last week of school. What a wonderful year it’s been with 2B! 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. A shopping bag or tote 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. Let us know and we can arrange that with you. We’ll try to send everything home by Wednesday since many families have afternoon plans on the last day of school. 

There are many pictures on our Photos page, including from Open School Night. 2B Ellis Island Videos are on the website as well! 

Here’s a link to this week’s lunch menu. Please remember to send in snack every day through the last day of school. Extra snack is appreciated by your children since they have full and active days.

After School ends on Tuesday. Please Update PickUp Patrol to reflect this week’s changes and Thursday’s half day dismissal. 

Important Dates:

Tuesday, June 10:

Last day of After School

Thursday, June 12:

Noon Dismissal - Last Day of School!

Saturday, June 14:

Brooklyn Pride Parade. Sign-up here. 

What’s going on in our classroom

This week students will have a regular schedule while also participating in end of the year activities. We’ll play math games including new ones like marbles and jacks from our social studies unit and continue spelling long words in Fundations. We will share favorite memories of second grade and sign yearbooks. We’ll visit the third grade classrooms and clap out our fourth grade students. 

Changemaker Day 

On Tuesday morning students will march around the block, opposing book bans that are happening in the country. Many of the books are children's picture books that we read regularly as part of our second grade immigration unit, Anti-Racist curriculum, and heritage months. We'll puzzle together over why this is happening and revisit some of the texts that are being challenged. We'll reinforce why we at Poly Prep read them - for sustainability reasons, inclusion, and perspective taking. In the afternoon, second grade students will focus on the service component of the day and support KiND (Kids in Need of Defense) by writing letters supporting a bill requiring legal representation for unaccompanied refugee children called the Fair Day in Court for Kids Act.  We’ll also make welcome cards for immigrants who are being helped at KiND. 

Reading

Reading every day over the summer is super important, both independently and reading aloud to your child! We’ll be sending home a list of recommended book titles. This is only a starting point however since your child can pick out books on their own at this point. 

Math

Second graders will share their work on The Box Factory. Last week they worked with partners on this culminating high level math project. They used their multiplication and reasoning skills to solve the problem of figuring out all of the arrangements for 24 oranges in different box shapes. They represented the arrangements with blocks, drawings, and grid paper. They wrote multiplication equations using the distributive property to represent different layers of oranges in the box. 

What can you do at home this summer? 

• Complete the Summer Math Workbook that we sent home a few weeks ago. We recommend spreading it out over the summer so that it’s not too much to do at the end of the summer and also so that they maintain their math learning throughout the summer. Bring it back on the first days of third grade. 

• Play math games from Math Night. Ms. Pennington emailed game boards a few weeks ago. 

• Practice addition and subtraction math facts. 

• Practice adding and subtracting three-digit numbers with regrouping (borrowing and carrying). 

• Skip count by 2s, 3s, 4s, 5s, and 10s. 

• Tell time on analog clock. 

• Count coins. 

• Use your ixl.com account. 

Social Studies

Students are working on Genius Time this last week of school. They’re researching topics of their choice, taking notes, and then drawing and writing a poster to share their learning. Students research on getepic.com or with physical books.