Time Flies When You’re Having Fun!

We have finished another active and awesome week in second grade! This week has been so jammed packed that I barely had time to take any pictures! 🙂 Please check your child’s backpack for their progress reports!

Reading
This week we hunted for facts in a nonfiction article about jellyfish, called Jellies. The students did an excellent job with this skill and we talked about the difference between facts and opinions. I am encouraging the students to add opinions into their reading responses. They can tell their favorite part of what they’ve read or they can talk about why they like a certain character. The students did a lot of work this week on contractions and played a contraction match up game. They wrote stories using their vocabulary words, and wrote instructions for how to feed a pet.

Here are some students writing stories using their vocabulary words:

Next week in reading, the students will take a mid-year phonics assessment so that I can measure their growth from the beginning of the year. The students will also take their second Journey’s unit assessment. Due to these two assessments, we will use next week to review the skills we have addressed this year. Some important skills we will review are: Determining the author’s purpose for writing, identifying character traits and motivations, writing complete sentences with subjects and predicates, and using nouns, verbs, and adjectives.

Writing
Has your child mentioned the animal essay they have been writing? As the final step in our writing unit on organization, the students got to pick an animal that they know a lot about and write an informational essay on that topic. The students began with an engaging introduction paragraph that grabbed the reader’s attention and let them know what they were going to share. Then they organized big ideas into paragraphs. The students’ paragraphs gave information about the appearance of the animal, its diet, and other interesting facts. The students will wrap up their essays with a conclusion paragraph that reminds the reader of the most important things they covered. Next week, the students and I will use these essays to determine their next writing goal, and the students will edit their work with their peers.

Spelling
This week the students focused on words with the digraphs “ch” and “th.” These diagraphs are in so many of the words we read! We tried to find a word containing both sounds and all we could come up with was “thatch.” Our test on these words will be on Monday due to the shortened week. Next week, we will work on words with the consonant blends, “bl” and “fr”, like in the words bleacher and frame.

Math
Both math classes are moving through Unit 6 on addition and subtraction strategies. One of the changes in this unit is that the students are required to solve different types of problems in one session. Before the students would have solved all comparison problems in one session, or all problems where there is a change in the numbers. Now that students will be working on a mix of problems in one session, it is important that they stop and read the problems twice. We say “Twice Is Nice!” By reading the problem more than one time the students have a better chance of determining what operation (addition or subtraction) the problem is asking them to do. The students will have many opportunities to use different strategies to solve addition and subtraction problems in this unit, and even write their own problems!

Spirit Day

This morning our awesome student council let us know that next Friday will be Sports Spirit Day! The students can dress in their favorite sportswear or show their support of the Patriots or the Seahawks! Have a great weekend!