Weekly Newsletter

April 5, 2026

Welcome back! We hope you had a wonderful spring break and we’re excited to be back together tomorrow. 

Friday is the judging for the Women’s History Oratory Contest. If your child is a finalist we’ll give them an opportunity to practice in front of the class before Friday.

We have an Ellis Island field trip date on Tuesday, May 12. We hope you can join us! It’s an all day field trip, departing at 8:30 and returning at dismissal. We can buy a ticket for one parent per child and you can ride the school bus and ferry with us. An additional parent may join us by purchasing their own ticket. Please let us know by May 1 if you’re able to join us. 

We have another field trip scheduled, to the Tenement Museum. 2B is going on Friday, May 15 and 2A is going on Thursday, May 28. We can take 2 chaperones per class so please email us by May 1 if you’re interested in joining us. We’ll choose names out of a hat if we have more than 2 volunteers, taking into account parents who have not been on a field trip yet. It’s a morning field trip and we’ll be back at school by lunchtime. 

Reading groups are shifting for the spring so your child might be with new students or a new reading group teacher. Ask your child about their reading groups. If you have any questions about reading groups we can discuss during our April conference. 

Please update and review Pick Up Patrol plans. Spring Enrichment classes begin Monday. Please also look at this week’s Lunch Menu with your child so they know what to expect for lunch each day. There are new photos on our March Photos Page from the week before Spring Break. There are pictures of mosaic making, bar modeling, and math games. 

What’s going on in our classroom

Reading

Second Grade reading groups continue to meet every day. We’re shuffling the groups and there will be some changes this week. 

Math

This week we are continuing our unit on representing word problems through drawing bar models. This is such an important unit since bar modeling will continue in math in third and fourth grades. For an overview of bar modeling, you can watch this two minute long Bar Modeling YouTube Video. We’ll spend tomorrow reviewing our subtraction and addition facts and also the different bar models. Remember that you can access our Math Night Games folder to play games at home. And here is Ms. Penn's Mathcast website.

Social Studies

This week we will begin our last unit of the year: immigration. During this spring unit we will focus primarily on the Ellis Island Experience, but we will also weave in many other time periods and experiences. If you would like to come to our classroom to share your family’s immigration or migration story, please email your homeroom teachers. We’d love to hear about your family’s experiences.

Writing

Students completed their graphic novels before spring break. This week we’ll start a two-week long “genius” project in which students research a topic of their choice, read about it, take notes, and create a poster demonstrating what they learned.  

Fundations

Students are continuing their learning on reading and spelling multisyllabic words. The three syllable types we’ve learned are open, closed, and vowel-consonant-e syllables. Examples of longer words that use these different syllable types are be-have and cal-cu-late. Click for our April Trick Words.

Read Alouds / DEIB 

We’re continuing our chapter book read aloud, Grace Lin’s Where the Mountain Meets the Moon. 

APRIL

6: Classes resume

6: Spring POLY PM Regular and Enrichment begins

8: Lice Check

10: Women’s History Oratory Contest Judging

16: No After School: Conferences

17: School Closed: Conferences

20: School Closed: Professional Day

24: Women’s History Oratory Contest Community Time, 2:00 PM

24: United Voices - 3:45 PM - 5:00 PM

24: Grandparents and Special Friends Day, 8:45 AM - 11:45 AM

28: Grade 3 Parent Preview, 12:00 PM