Second grade is in full swing! The kids are doing a great job with routines and are eager to learn. Here is a brief overview of what we’ll be studying throughout the month:
Reading: This month we will focus on the comprehension strategies of making predictions and making connections to text. We will learn how these strategies help us to understand what we read. We will practice these skills as a whole class and in small groups.
Word Study/Spelling: Our regular spelling lists will begin in October. During the month we will focus on words with open- and closed-syllables. Closed-syllable words have one vowel and end in a consonant (such as crab, truck, and stick). Open-syllable words have one vowel that occurs at the end of the syllable (such as fly and me). We will also study words that end in silent e (such as bike and rose). Finally, we will study words with the long a digraph (such as eight, train, stay, and obey.) Remember that it is our expectation that students are learning and using the spelling patterns, but we will not be having weekly spelling tests. Instead, we will assess spelling strategies several times a year and use these assessments to drive our instruction.
Writing: You may remember hearing about the writing process when your child was a first grader. We will continue using this process during writing this year. During September, students worked in the prewriting stage, coming up with ideas for their writing. We continued in the prewriting stage by using those ideas to orally tell our stories and to sketch out our stories in quick drawings. We are currently in the drafting stage – the actual writing of our stories! During this time, we will use our pictures and oral telling of our stories to help us create sentences. These sentences will focus on WHO, DID WHAT, WHEN, WHERE, WHY, and HOW. While writing these personal narratives, we focus on including details about the characters, setting, problem and solution. Our next steps will include making our writing better through editing, revising and publishing.
Math: We are in the middle of a short unit (3-5 days) on measurement and shapes. We are working with rulers and measuring lines in centimeters, looking at shapes and finding the perimeter of shapes. After we test on that we will start Unit 3, Solving Story Problems. We will take this unit slowly as we look at different types of story problems and different ways to solve them. Stay tuned for information on how we will begin to differentiate learning by forming math groups for our targeted math time.
Social Studies/Science/Health: During the month of October we will begin our first science units: Work Like a Scientist and Technology and Our World. Throughout these units we will learn that scientists ask questions about the world around them and that they find answers by investigating through many methods. We will also learn that engineers use a process to design new technology to meet human needs and that technology affects our everyday life.
As always, feel free to contact us with questions or concerns!
Second Grade Teachers