Weekly Newsletter

November 2, 2026

Families,

We loved seeing your children in their Halloween costumes, enjoying the parade! We hope you had a nice weekend. 

This week is Solidarity Week where students learn about the importance of standing in solidarity with and being an ally to the LGBTQ+ community at Poly and in our larger world. We’ll read many books and have discussions. It will include an all school gathering on Wednesday, November 4th when students will do an art activity with students from the Upper School. Second graders should wear a blue shirt that day so we can form a rainbow flag with the whole school. 

Next Thursday, November 12th is our field trip to the Brooklyn Bridge. We will walk halfway over the bridge and then turn around and walk back. Thank you to those of you who have let us know that you’re planning on walking with us. Any chaperones who are interested may join us! Meet us at Cadman Plaza around 9:15 AM. We’ll walk over the bridge together and then students will board buses in time for lunch back at school. Meet us at this google maps link near the Brooklyn War Memorial at Cadman Plaza. 

Please review Pick Up Patrol for the week ahead and the lunch menu. 

On our website we add new photos every week. This week there are pictures from Halloween and inside the classroom. You can also review our in-class slideshows on our social studies page on our website.  

What’s going on in our classroom:

Reading

Currently groups are reading Pinky and Rex, The Littles, Catwings, and Bunnicula. 

Math

This week students will continue with multiplication. It was introduced with great enthusiasm last week. The goal for second grade multiplication is not memorization or times tables. Instead the goal is for conceptual understanding that multiplication is repeated addition. We support this understanding through hands on blocks, pictures, stories, and games. You can practice skip counting at home to support our multiplication learning. For example, count by 2s, 5s, and 10s. And then you can try 3s and 4s. Ask your child what multiplication is! You’ll notice from the homework book that we’re using our text book in a different order. We’re skipping ahead to multiplication in order to have it follow our recent unit on addition, and then we’ll return to subtraction and division later in the year. This sequence is based on recent research which links multiplication and addition and then division with subtraction. 

While we work on multiplication we’ll continue to work on addition fluency. Please continue to practice addition facts up to 20 at home with your child. Examples of these facts are 5 + 7 and 9 + 8. Strategies like memorizing doubles are helpful, as is making 10 and then adding or subtracting the rest. Having these facts automatic helps with bigger numbers and higher order thinking. Flash cards are great. Poly also subscribes to ixl.com, which is an online math and ELA website for extra practice as well as enrichment. Login directions are in the Classroom Resources page of the 2B website. 

Writing

Students chose one of their personal narrative stories to “publish.” They revised this story last week by adding transition words, dialogue, and replacing nouns or verbs with better ones.  They also edited their stories by correcting their spelling of trick words and phonetically spelled words from Fundations. They also checked their capitalization and punctuation. This week they’ll make a cover and then share their finished story with the class! 

Fundations

This week students will work on glued sounds and also closed syllables that use short vowels. Here is a link to our  November Trick Words for spelling. 

Social Studies

In our Brooklyn Bridge study, students learned about how sandhogs worked in caissons underneath the East River to dig the foundations for the two towers. Ask your child what a caisson is and whether they would have liked to do work in one. This week we’ll learn about how they spun the cables and built the roadway. You can look at our slides on the Social Studies page of our website and have your child teach you what they’ve learned so far. We’re so excited for our field trip on November 12th. 

Read Alouds

Last week we started our new chapter book read aloud, another first book in a series, Franny K. Stein, Lunch Walks Among Us. There are other books in the series and would be perfect for independent or read aloud reading at home. We also read many Halloween stories and picture book, One of Three. For Solidarity Week learning, we read Strong, My Name is Jazz, and Stonewall. 

Important Dates

NOVEMBER

03: Solidarity Week (Nov 3-6)

04: Solidarity Week Celebration at the US, Gr 2 students should wear BLUE

06: Fall Conference Sign-Ups shared in Pulse

12: Gr 2 Field Trip: Brooklyn Bridge, email Ms. Davies or Ms. Jourdain

13: LSPA November Meeting, 8:45 AM - 10:00 AM

14: HUGS B&L Friendsgiving, 6:00 PM

16: POLY PM Winter Enrichment Registration Opens, 10:30 AM

17: United Voices November Meeting,, 3:45 PM - 5:00 PM

19: No After School: In-Person Conferences (3:30 PM - 6:30 PM)

20: Regular Day of School. After School Open

23: School Closed: Virtual Conferences

24: School Closed: Lower School Professional Day

25: School Closed for Thanksgiving (Nov 25 - 27)