Week Three

Happy September! I am excited to report that our class is off to a great start to the school year. We have planned out our hopes and dreams for the year and decided what we need to do to reach our goals. The students have jumped into the math, reading, and spelling curriculum with great focus and a desire to meet these new challenges! 

Reading

The students began their first unit in our Journey’s Reading series this week by reading a fiction story called Henry and Mudge. The students worked at literacy centers to practice putting words in alphabetical order and to identify the subject and predicate of sentences. In second grade, the students are able to alphabetize words all the way up to and past the third letter of the word. For example, putting words in order like blank, blanket, blend, and blonde.  We played some fun games this week that helped us learn that the subject of a sentence is the “who or the what” (the noun in the sentence) and the predicate is the action in the sentence (the verb.) For example, in the sentence “The students worked and played all day”, the subject is the students and the predicate is worked and played all day. Next week, the students will study the vocabulary words from this lesson: Curly, straight, floppy, drooled, weighed, stood, collars, and row. All of these vocabulary words come from the story Henry and Mudge. Next week we will also work on the comprehension skill of sequencing or putting story events in order. I am almost done with the beginning of the year reading assessments! If your child does not know their current reading level today they will work with me to determine their level early next week!

Here are some of the students practicing alphabetizing by looking up at the alphabet on the wall to put their words in order!

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Spelling

The students took their first spelling test today on words containing short and long “a” sounds. Throughout the week at school we practice our words by sorting them based on their sounds and the way they look. Next week the students will learn how to spell their words by doing an activity called “Look, say, cover, spell, check.” This is a great way to practice spelling words at home! All the students need to do is look at a word, say it out loud, cover it up with their hand, spell the word, and remove their hand to check the word. All of our words next week will contain the long or short “e” sounds. For example: bed, reason, and asleep.  

Here are the students sorting their spelling words into short “a” and long “a” and quizzing each other on the words. 

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Writing

Next week the students will begin our Write Traits curriculum. Using this curriculum, the students will create ideas for writing, organize their work, develop stronger word choices, build sentence fluency, and practice writing conventions. Our first unit focuses on choosing good story ideas from the students’ own lives that they can fill with vivid details. Your family’s activities during this three day weekend could be the topic of your child’s story!

Math

The students worked on telling time to the closest minute this week. This is a tricky skill that students can practice anytime they see a clock! We also worked on money and number grid puzzles. The number grid puzzles have students think of the number that is one less or one more than a given number, as well as what is ten more or ten less than that number. For example: What is one more than 55? One less? Now, what number is ten more than 55? Ten less? This is another skill you can practice with your child by giving them any one, two, or three digit number and asking them the previous questions. We will continue to study these skills next week as well as place value, calendars, and and greater than, less than, and equal to.

We began our speed drills this week, and all students started with the easy subtraction drill. The speed drills require the students to complete 25 math facts in a minute. This helps the students build math fact fluency that will greatly help them as our math curriculum gets more challenging. The next level of speed drill is difficult addition which contains facts like 8 + 7 = 15 and 12 + 7 = 19. 

The students had a great time playing math games this week like “Addition top-it”, the money exchange game, and the penny plate game. All of these games require the students to be problem solvers and think about addition and subtraction strategies! Here are some of our mathematicians playing the games:

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I hope you have a wonderful and safe three day weekend! I’ll see you on Tuesday!