Week Seven
L’Shanah Tova!
Reading
This week we started reading a chapter book called Roxie and the Hooligans. This is a great read aloud book for second graders because it tackles themes like perseverance, handling difficult situations with peers, and problem solving! We used the book to discuss cause and effect relationships. This is a tricky comprehension skill for second graders and we will continue working next week to identify the cause (what happened first) and the effect (what came as a result) of events in our stories. This week the students also read The Diary of a Spider and hunted for cause/effect in the If You Give a Mouse a Cookie series. The students continued to work on reading words containing short and long vowel sounds. This week we introduced two new types of sentences: Commands and exclamations (or sentences containing strong feelings!) We will continue to work on this skill more next week as well.
Next week, the students will read a fiction story called Teacher’s Pet. We will learn how to use descriptive words in stories to visualize, or “make a movie” in our minds. The students will also study singular and plural nouns. Our vocabulary words will be: Share, noticed, suddenly, bursting, noises, wonderful, quiet, and sprinkled.
Spelling
This week the students studied words containing the long and short “u” sound. The long “u” sound, like in the word June, is much harder to hear than other long vowel sounds and the students will need to continue practicing how to read and spell words with this sound throughout the year. Next week, the students will study where the long “a” sound is spelled with an “ay” like in the word play, and words where the long “e” or “i” sounds are spelled with a “y” like in the words goodbye and sleepy.
Writing
The students completed their descriptive writing pieces about a mystery food this week. Next week, they are going to use the same amount of awesome details to write stories from their own lives!
Math
The students worked on solving addition and subtraction problems and worked on fact families. A fact family is made up of three numbers that can be added and subtracted like this:
4 + 7 = 11
7 + 4 = 11
11 – 7 = 4
11 – 4 = 7
If you can solve one of these problems, then that information can help you solve the rest!
This students also worked on solving addition and subtraction word problems, “In and Out” tables where a rule has to be applied to each side (like +10 or -3), and we used pan balances and spring scales to find the weights of various items! You can help your child notice how much things weigh by hunting for ounces and grams on food packaging! Next week, we will continue working on these skills and study place value into the thousands.
Scroll Down to see Rosh Hashanah fun: Tefillah, apples and honey, and a Shofar Factory!