10/08/26 – Hi Families, October is off to a beautiful start! Our classroom tends to be on a colder side from now until April. Please make sure you child has uniform-appropriate layers for inside AND for outside i.e. a sweater and a coat/jacket. I am still looking for chaperones!!! Please reach out if you can help out. Take a look at what we’re doing this week.
Classroom Worship: We are learning about the covenant between Abram and the Lord
OG: Our focus of the week has been suffixes. A suffix is a letter or a group of letters added to the end of a base word. We have reviewed the following suffixes; -s, -es, -ing, -ful, -less, -ness, -ed, and -er.
Language Arts: Our vocabulary words of the week are redundant, gesture, acknowledge, clutch, and persevere. We have been reviewing the parts of speech and creating the grammar section of our binder. The kids are familiar with nouns, proper nouns, verbs, and adjectives. Adverbs are a more recent addition. The kids are also busy working on their personal narratives.
Math: This week we took our end of unit assessment for unit 1. We are doing a mini unit on even and odd numbers before jumping into addition and subtraction.
Science: We continue to learn about nutrition. This week we learned about dairy, compared dairy alternatives, and began learning about protein foods.
SEL: October is bullying awareness month. We started off with the book, “Strictly No Elephants,” by Lisa Mantchev. We had a wonderful conversation about what qualifies as bullying behavior and different types of bullying. Then we focused on how we can be good friends. We created signs we would hang on a club house that are welcoming and made a cute craft from the book. We will continue with conversations around bullying for the rest of the month.
10/01/26 – Happy October!!!
On Friday after lunch, our class will have their end of the month reward for September, an ice cream party! A friendly reminder as we go into the next month. Our behavior system at school should not carry over into your home. The students are recieve consequences and rewards within the system. Adding further incentives or “punishments” to specific colors i.e. if you get a blue day you can play extra video games, if you get yellows you have to eat extra pickled pigs feet, tends to put too much pressure and stress on the kiddo. This can also make our system less effective here in the classroom. We communicate the colors with you in the planners so that you are aware of what is happening, and with the hope that you will reinforce expectations via conversations. Please reach out if you have any questions!
We have two upcoming field trips! I am looking for one parent to drive and chaperone for each. Please let me know if you are able volunteer.
Tuesday, October 20th – We will head to Beechwood Farms for a seasonal nature walk where we will learn about trees, plants, seeds, and wildlife. We will leave the school at 9 am and return by 1:40.
Wednesday, November 18th – We will head to Heinz Hall for to see the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra School Time Concerts: How can music help tell a story? In Grace Lin and Kate Messner’s beautiful book Once Upon a Book, a young girl escapes the winter doldrums by immersing herself in stories set in faraway places. Award-winning author and illustrator Grace Lin joins the PSO on stage to read Once Upon a Book, with illustrations projected above the stage and full orchestral accompaniment. Magical adventures come to life through the combined power of music and storytelling in this vibrant performance. We will leave the school at 9:30 and return by noon
09/24/26 – Happy Fall!!! Summer definitely ended with a bang. As the seasons change, please be sure to send your child with dress code approved layers. Our classroom is often cold in the mornings and we try to go outside in all weather. If you haven’t yet done so, please send in indoor shoes or slippers to help keep our classroom floors clean. We introduced classroom helper jobs. Ask your kiddo to tell you about the different jobs. Here is a look at what we are up to in the classroom!
Classroom Worship: This week our story is about Cain and Able
OG: This week we have continued to review Vowel-R syllables while learning how to work in centers. From time to time I will use centers during OG so that I can work with small groups of students to remediate or extend their learning. The kids got to try out several different spelling centers on Monday, and on Wednesday they worked on reading comprehension passages. We also began adding pages into our scientific spelling notebook. This will give us a great resource to turn to when we are writing and need to remember spelling patterns and rules.
Language Arts: Our Vocabulary words of the week are: convince, swiftly, rely, rare, and precise. Our WOW word is Colorless. The students have had a lot of fun gathering memories for their “i-phones”. Next week they will begin writing their personal narratives.
Math: This week we focused on skip counting by 100’s and 10’s, and building our fact fluency within 10.
Science: We have moved on from vegetables to fruit! The kids will enjoy a fruit tasting on Friday. If you haven’t signed up to bring in a fruit, there is still time to do so.
We have three upcoming field trips! I am looking for one parent to drive and chaperone for each. Please let me know if you are able volunteer.
Wednesday, October 14th- We will head to Triple B Farms for some fall fun! Join us for a hay ride, pumpkin picking, a lesson on pollinators, and fun on the farm. We will leave the school at 9 am and return by 2:30.
Tuesday, October 20th- We will head to Beechwood Farms for a seasonal nature walk where we will learn about trees, plants, seeds, and wildlife. We will leave the school at 9 am and return by 1:40.
Wednesday, November 18th- We will head to Heinz Hall for to see the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra School Time Concerts: How can music help tell a story? In Grace Lin and Kate Messner’s beautiful book Once Upon a Book, a young girl escapes the winter doldrums by immersing herself in stories set in faraway places. Award-winning author and illustrator Grace Lin joins the PSO on stage to read Once Upon a Book, with illustrations projected above the stage and full orchestral accompaniment. Magical adventures come to life through the combined power of music and storytelling in this vibrant performance. We will leave the school at 9:30 and return by noon
09/17/26 – Classroom Worship: This week we read about creation and the garden of Eden.
OG: This week we reviewed Vowel-Consonant-e syllables (hive, shake, rude, tote), Vowel pair syllables (feet, moon, book), and Vowel-R syllables (bird, fern, turtle, star, fork, world)
Language Arts: Our vocabulary words of the week are pause, gasp, ancient, observe and brief. Ask your kiddos to tell you what these words mean and some antonyms and synonyms for them. Our WOW Wednesday word was prearrange. How many other words can you think of with prefix pre? We have continued to learn about personal narratives through books. Next week the kids will begin to gather some of their own memories to create a book.
Math: We continue to work hard each day to build a strong foundation. This week we have continued to focus on really understanding what each digit represents in a numeral i.e. what does the 4 represent in 489? in 246? in 354? We have also been comparing two numbers using the vocabulary terms greater than, less than, and equal to.
Science: We started off our week by checking in with our egg-speriment! After four days in various liquids, things got pretty funky. The eggs that were in rootbeer and black tea were stained brown, the egg in grape juice was stained purple and had strange barnacle-like growths on it, and the egg in vinegar doubled in size and became squishy. When we cracked the eggs open we could see that holes were starting to form in the egg shells (cavities!) We are moving on from teeth into our unit on nutrition. First up, Vegetables!
Special project: This morning our class had a fun opportunity that tied in with our nutrition unit and with our whole school worship unit on serving the neighbor. We worked together to make garden foccacia that will be sold at the bake sale. Make sure to stop by and check it out, it is sure to sell out fast!!!
09/10/26 – Classroom Worship: We are finishing up our lesson on Psalm 23
OG: This week we reviewed open syllables and VCe syllables, we also talked about the many sounds that the letter a makes!
Language arts: We started our unit on personal narratives by exploring the genre through stories. In the books “Big Red Lollipop” and “Come On, rain” We found that both stories could happen in real life, the author used “I” statements and made us feel like we were there, and there were strong emotions! We pulled nouns, verbs, and adjectives from “Lulu and the Brontosauras” to make silly sentences.
Math: My math class is working hard! We are focusing on place value and different ways of demonstrating the same number. i.e. 250, 200 + 50, + 6, two hundred fifty six, as well as building or drawing the number with base ten blocks.
Science: This week we continued our exploration of teeth. We learned about ways to keep our teeth healthy and what happens if we don’t take care of them. Today we begin our egg-scelent egg-speriment! This will demonstrate the effects of sugar, acid, and carbonation on our teeth. Next week we will slide into talking about nutrition and learning all about the food groups. Keep an eye out for an e-mail from me with a link to sign up to bring in various fruits, veggies, grains, etc.
~ Melissa Angelo
9/3/26 – We are settling into our routines nicely as we ease into academics. Take a look at what we are learning in our classroom!
Classroom Worship: Our theme in our classroom this year is, The Lord is my Shepard. This week we focused on Psalm 23.
OG: This week we have reviewed the concepts of Vowels, Consonants, Syllables, Closed Syllables, and digraphs th, ch, sh, and ck. We have played sounds down the lane, hop and spell, word building, reading, and phonemic awareness activities.
Language Arts: Every week we will have 5 vocabulary words and a WOW word. Our words this week are fragile, defend, research, pledge, and specific. Our WOW word is rediscover. We are reviewing and practicing our manuscript handwriting, eventually we will be learning cursive this year! We are using a fun book, Lulu and the Brontosauras, to review nouns, verbs, and adjectives. Our first writing unit will be personal narratives. We will get started with that next week.
Science: Our first unit in science is teeth and nutrition! This week we labled a diagram of our mouth and made a model of the inside of a tooth! We have a fun experiment about sugar on our teeth coming up!
SEL: We read the book, My Mouth is a Volcano, by Julia Cook. We talked about how it feels when our friends interrupt us (not good), and what we can do when we feel ourselves about to interrupt (breath, close our mouths, take a sip of water).
Read Aloud: Our first afternoon read aloud book is The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Katie DiCamillo. Once, in a house on Egypt Street, there lived a china rabbit named Edward Tulane. The rabbit was very pleased with himself, and for good reason: he was owned by a girl named Abilene, who adored him completely. And then, one day, he was lost. . . . Kate DiCamillo takes us on an extraordinary journey, from the depths of the ocean to the net of a fisherman, from the bedside of an ailing child to the bustling streets of Memphis. Along the way, we are shown a miracle — that even a heart of the most breakable kind can learn to love, to lose, and to love again.
8/27/26 – Hello!
Our first day back was short, but sweet! It was so good to have all of my kiddos back in the classroom. Keep an eye out for important information coming home in your child’s folder over the next few days. If you haven’t done so yet, please remember to send in your child’s school supplies. You should have received an email with that list earlier in the summer. Let me know if you need a copy!
We will spend the rest of this week re-building our classroom community, setting expectations and goals, settling into routines, and adjusting back to the school year. Next week we will begin to dip our toes into academics.
08/23/26 – Hi PNCS families!
I hope you all had an incredible summer. I definitely enjoyed my time exploring some of the National Parks out West with my family in our little pop up camper. We hiked, swam, kayaked, saw lots of animals, took in countless gorgeous views, and of course, drank plenty of coffee and read to my hearts content.
I look forward to welcoming your kiddos back into my classroom next week. I know we are going to have an outstanding year in 2nd and 3rd grade. As always, please reach out with any questions or concerns!
Melissa Angelo
