Week 9

In second grade we are learning to show respect for one another. Each morning, one student has the opportunity to share something special from his or her life. We have seen art and Lego projects, journals, photographs, and more! The other students are practicing listening attentively and asking follow up questions. 

  

Throughout the day we take “brain breaks” that give the students the opportunity to wiggle, move, get energized, or calm down as needed. Below the students are dancing and practicing yoga before beginning a new lesson.    

Reading

This week, the students practiced visualizing or making mental movies in their heads. The students are noticing that not seeing anything in their heads as they read, means they probably aren’t comprehending. Next week, the students will learn how to identify cause and effect relationships between characters’ actions and what happens next. We will also work on using context clues to figure out the meaning of unknown words.

Writing

The students brainstormed ideas and began writing new stories. The students are working towards achieving their first writing goal: I will choose a topic I know well, stick to that topic, and fill my story with interesting details.

This week, we began our Daily Oral Language (or D.O.L.) lessons. These are whole class lessons where the students work together to edit sentences, practice grammar and phonics, and edit full paragraphs. Many important grammar and writing rules will be introduced through these lessons. Currently, the students are focusing on capitalizing the beginning of sentences and all proper nouns (names), ending sentences with the correct punctuation, and fixing spelling errors based on the patterns we have studied this year.  The students enjoy these lessons because they get to be the “teacher” and help their peers. These lessons also integrate science and social studies topics!

Below the students are working on Daily Oral Language. You can see them counting up the mistakes in the paragraph. 

         

Spelling

This week, the students studied words that contain the long and short “u” sounds. Next week, the students will study words that end in a long vowel sound which is spelled using “y” or “vowel + y”. For example: Play and worry.

Below the students are practicing their spelling words by spelling each word, using it in a sentence, and giving its definition.

       

Vocabulary

Our next vocabulary unit covers the words beach, center, finally, idea, ocean, seashell, stack, tiny, wave and wonder.

Math

The students are practicing addition and subtraction strategies. They are learning that, when working from left to right, the numbers on either side of an equal sign need to equal one another. For example: 2 = _____ – 7 Problems like this are often confusing to the students at first and they try to work backwards (from right to left) and get 5 as their answer. We will continue practicing different ways to solve problems like this so that the students are able to see that 2 = 9 – 7 means the same as 9 – 7 = 2 and 2 = 2 ! Our next math unit will cover place value, adding money, telling time to the minute, graphing and reading graphs.

Project Based Learning

This week, the students were asked a new P.B.L. question- How do communities work together? We have begun answering this question by looking at the different types of communities- urban, suburban, and rural. We are also looking at how Charlotte fits into the U.S.A. and learning the names and locations of the other 50 states. I am impressed with how much the students already knew about our country!