Dear Second Grade Families,

I want to welcome you and your child into my classroom. My name is Ms. Clapp and I will be your child’s teacher this year. This is my first year working at Manchester Elementary, but I have almost five years of experience working in early childhood education programs. I graduated with a degree in Elementary education from Valparaiso University, tutoring and spending a great deal of time working in elementary classrooms.
I enjoy spending time reading, cooking, and listening to music. I also love traveling and spending time with my family. My philosophy for teaching is that each child is unique, and each child learns in a different way. One of my jobs as a teacher is to help your child discover his or her individuality and engage them through hands on learning. I believe in teaching creativity and learning through play. I am really looking forward to a fun–filled and educational year!
I am looking forward to interacting with you and your child this upcoming school year. If you have any questions please feel free to contact me.

Sincerely,

Ms. Kindra Clapp

In this class 2nd graders will be learning and working on fluency, comprehension of fiction and nonfiction text, word recognition, vocabulary, and parts of the writing process.

1. Reading Planet has lots of fun reading activities you can do. Click around and see what you like. Try writing your own stories!
2. Navigate the rocket ship through space and collect the letters to spell words.
3. There is even a fun Gorilla Game to help you with your grammar.
4. Need help reading the book of the week? Go to Story Online to get some help.

To check your students grades you can go to the Reading grade book

This year in math, we will be working on mastering both addition and subtraction. I have even seen students go as far as multiplication just in the first semester. Continue to work with your children on mastering these skills. We will be doing rocket drills every week to keep track of where each student is.

A great website to help your child masster these skills is called Cool Math for Kids. If you click on the link it will take you to a page and you will click either addition, subtraction, or multiplication. Each week I will send home where your student is for that particular week.

We will be spending this semester learning about the Ocean and life on the ocean bottom. Your child will be taking home inforation on the report that they will be doing on an aquatic animal.
I will be sending home information on how to log onto our online photo gallery where you can see pictures of aquatic animals as well as pictures of our class working on our projects!

There is a wonderful ocean webquest I have found that we will be working on in the computer lab, but feel free to log on at home and you may work with your child and see what they are doing in class :)

This page is to help parents and or other teachers who have students with disabilities in their classrooms.

Strategies for differentiated instruction

If you would like more information on assistive technologies here are a few helpful websites:

http://www.enablemart.com

http://www.abledata.com

Teachers, this is just for you!
PBS kids
Interactive learning
Social Studies through music
motivation
Help from Scholastic

Valparaiso University
Kindra Clapp