Happy Thanksgiving!

We love second grade at CJDS!

We finished this wonderful week with our first trip to the South County Regional Library! The students had the opportunity to explore the library and learn about how the materials are organized. We went on a hunt to find specific sections and learned how to use the computers to find books. The students will have two more trips to the library this school year. Please send your child’s library books back to school by December 10th if you’d like me to return them for you.

Reading

This week the students took the first end-of-unit test in their Journey’s reading curriculum. This test required the students to read several passages they had not seen before and then answer comprehension questions. Earlier in the week, the students participated in activities to practice answering “right there” questions. The answers to “right there” questions are directly stated in the text and the students were taught that you can point to them and say, “My answer is right there!” These questions are easier to answer and do not require students to make inferences about what they have read. Throughout the school year, the students will learn strategies for answering more complex questions.

After Thanksgiving break, the students will begin Unit 2 in reading. The first selection they will read is titled, Animals Building and is an informational text. The students will use this text to study how to read text features and graphics. The students will begin studying the prefixes “un” and “re.” Our vocabulary words will be: Beaks, break, deepest, hang, pond, shaped, winding, and branches.

Spelling

The students studied words containing the short “u” sound, like bug, this week. They also studied words that end in “y” and contain long vowel sounds, like sway and pretty. Our next spelling lesson will cover silent letter patterns. The students will learn that sometimes vowels make a pattern in which one vowel is long and one is silent, like in rain, read, and road. We call this pattern, “When two vowels go walking, the first vowel does the talking!”

Writing

We began our second writing unit on organization. The students learned that it is important to organize your writing so that your ideas are clear for your reader. We practiced organizing and writing recipes. The students also learned to start their writing off in an interesting way, and we will continue this more after our break.

Here are some of our writers organizing the letters they wrote to special people in their lives!

Math

All of the students have either begun unit 4 on addition and subtraction strategies, or they will begin it after next week. This unit provides the students with different strategies for solving word problems and helps them identify which operations the problems are asking them to do. The students will also study temperature and estimation.

We did a lot of small group and partner work in math this week. This allows the students to learn from their peers!

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving Break! I will see you next week for parent conferences!