Second Grade is in Full Swing!

What a busy week! We began each morning with the sounds of the Shofar and then jumped right into our first reading unit and our second math unit! The students did a fabulous job working together and staying focused on our classroom goals!

Reading
Our first week in the Journey’s literacy curriculum focused on putting story events in order. The students read Henry and Mudge by Cynthia Rylant and sequenced the story events in a flow map. Henry and Mudge is a classic series of early chapter books, so if your child enjoyed it they can read other books from this series! Our grammar skill this week was identifying subjects and predicates in sentences. The students will build on this skill next week as we work on writing complete sentences. The students had a great time sorting fall themed subjects and predicates in sentences like, “The Autumn leaves fell from the tree.” The Autumn leaves are the subject and fell from the tree, is the predicate.

Check your child’s gold folder for their sight word list. The highlighted words on this list should be studied at home so that students can read them quickly and without any decoding. Once they have mastered the second grade sight word list, they are done with sight words!

Next Week’s Vocabulary: crown, cousin, piano, porch, remembered, spend, stuck, visit.
Next Week’s Reading Strategy: Compare and Contrast.

Spelling
This week we began our first spelling unit. The students reviewed words with long and short “a” sounds. Our spelling instruction is differentiated to meet all of the students’ needs, so each student has a different spelling list. The first four words on their list were from the long “a” short “a” list, based on how they performed on our pretest. The other four words are from their results on the “250 High Frequency Word list.” Throughout the week, the students sorted their words by vowel pattern, found other words with the same pattern, and wrote sentences using their words. The students are now encouraged to apply this spelling pattern in their writing when possible.

Writing
We are currently studying the writing trait of crafting ideas. The students reviewed a writing checklist this week that encouraged them to include many details, write on a topic they know, and make their writing interesting for their reader. The students wrote drafts that they will have the opportunity to edit once we conclude our unit on ideas.

Math

This week we completed our unit on numbers and routines and began Unit 2 on addition and subtraction facts. It was a hands on week as students built base ten block buildings, used dominoes to solve addition facts, and wrote addition stories! Please make sure you sign and return your child’s Unit 1 test. Number patterns were a large focus in Unit 1. Here’s a fun number pattern game to check out at home:

http://www.funbrain.com/cgi-bin/cracker.cgi?A1=s&A2=1&submit=Start+Game

Practice your base ten number skills here:
http://www.abcya.com/base_ten_fun.htm