Week 11

Reading

The students studied cause and effect relationships this week. They read the If You Give a Mouse a Cookie series and hunted for causes and their effects. Ask your child if they can sing our cause and effect song! The students can continue working on cause and effect when they read at home by asking themselves, “What made this happen?” and “What will happen because of this?” This week, we also worked on using context clues to determine the meaning of unknown words and we will continue practicing this skill next week.

Below the students each have a cause or effect card and they are trying to find their cause/effect partner! The students then had to decide which card came first. For example one card shows a person hitting a baseball and the other card shows a broken window!

Spelling

The students reviewed words that contain the short “a” and short “i” sounds. Often, second graders will say these words are easy to spell, so we are focusing on applying these patterns each time they come across them in their writing. Next week, the students will study words containing the short “e” and short “o” sounds, like in the words check and frost.

Vocabulary

Next week, the students will study the following words: Arrive, clear, enormous, exactly, float, midnight, rainbow, snowstorm, weekend, and whisper. 

Writing

Our writers have almost finished the first two units from our Writes Traits curriculum which focus on ideas and organization. They completed their writing piece this week and edited it so that it is easy to read, contains proper capitalization and punctuation, and has commas between words in a list. Below the writers and editors are working together to get each piece ready to be published!

Math

This week, we practiced shopping and making change. We discussed the importance of knowing how much money you have to spend, even in an electronic bank account, before you try to buy something. We also practiced collecting data and using it to create graphs. We will continue working on these skills next week.

Project Based Learning- Social Studies

We completed our communities unit this week by studying how people work together in communities to support one another. We read two stories about refugees who fled their rural communities to find safety in Israel and the United States. The students were fascinated by all the new things the refugees had to learn when they joined the new communities, like how to use indoor plumbing, cross a street at a traffic signal, and shop for food.

Next week, the students will learn about importing and exporting goods and services from one community to another. We will study how cities and suburbs rely on farms and how farms use the tools and machines designed in cities and suburbs!