Class News

  • Class News

    Dear Families,

     

              Here is a quick update of what your children have been learning about in the past few weeks at school...

     

    Reading-Our current unit is called “Taking Charge of Reading”. The children have spent the first couple of weeks learning the routines and expectations during Reader’s Workshop. They have been reminded and are expected to use all of the strategies that they learned in 1st grade when reading.  We are starting the school year with a focus on working with increasingly difficult print. My goal is for each student to be reading with accuracy and fluency so that comprehension is the main focus of the work that they are doing. Therefore, in the next couple of weeks the children will learn several strategies for figuring out tricky (or unknown) words. Below are some of the strategies that your children will learn to do when they encounter a “tricky word”. You can encourage them to try these decoding strategies when they are reading with you at home.

     

    Tricky Word Toolbox

    1. Ask yourself “What word would make sense here?”
    2. Tap out the word.
    3. Break it into chunks. Each chunk needs to have a vowel!
    4. Play with the word in your mouth until it sounds right.
    5. Check the pictures.
    6. Skip the word, read on and think “What makes sense here?”.
    7. Look for suffixes (ex: ed, s, es, ing, est, er). Sound out the base word then add the suffix back on.
    8. Ask yourself: What looks right? What sounds right? What makes sense?
    9. Use the rules that we learn in FUNdations to figure out the word.

    In this unit the children will also learn several comprehension strategies. They will learn to stop and think about the text before, during and after they read as well as making predictions about the text as they read. I will also spend time assessing your children and finding their independent reading level. Until I assess your children’s independent reading level, they are going to continue to read the dot level that Mrs. Karo put them on. Once your child is assessed you will receive a note letting you know your child’s independent reading level or “dot” level.

     

    Writing- Second grade is a special year in children’s writing lives. They have two years of writing workshop under their belt and are able to write with greater independence. We will spend the month of September and part of October writing Small Moments. These are focused personal narratives (true stories from our lives that take place in the same setting). The children are learning strategies to generate and organize their ideas, as well as plan and write stories with a beginning, middle and end. Our current writing unit is called “Authors as Mentors”. In this unit the children are writing focused personal narratives and studying authors such as Kevin Henkes books for craft. We will look closely at several books written by Kevin Henkes as well as other authors, and try out some of the wonderful writing techniques that they use in our own writing.

     

    Word Work: Please see the attached letter regarding detailed information for Unit 1 Fundations. In this unit students will review some of the concepts, sounds and spelling rules taught in first grade. This will include: digraphs (sh,th,ch, ck and wh), blends, digraph blends, spelling of the /k/ sound and closed syllables.

     

    Reminder:

    -Children are expected to read for at least 15 mins. each night. This needs to be logged on their reading log. Reading logs only need to be handed in on Monday morning to be checked.

    -Book orders are due Friday, September 28th.