Hi Parents and Students,
Thank you for your interest in what we've been doing in our fabulous 2nd grade class! Well, I don't know if the stocking stuffer prizes have kept the children any calmer, but it sure has been fun! Thank you to everyone who donated prizes for this activity. Next week, we will be having our Holiday Party on Friday at 10:30. All parents are welcome to join us for this event. I will also have a sign-out sheet available if you wish to check your child out of school early. There will be no need to go through the office on this day. Please continue to emphasize memorization of math facts with your child. Also, it is a great idea to continue to review areas in math that you know your child has struggled with. Our overall topics in math that we have covered so far have been number representation up to the thousands, comparing numbers up to the thousands, addition and subtraction with and without regrouping (up to three digit), using addition to check subtraction, telling time to the 5-minute increment, counting money to $20.00, making change to $10.00 (and buying multiple items), geometry (plane shapes), and graphing data including using a graph key. Check out below to see what we've been doing this week in all our subject areas...
Phonics/Grammar: We have been learning about words with multiple meanings (homonyms) and words with the same sound, but different spellings and meanings (homophones). We played a VERY COOL jeopardy game in class which emphasized these multiple meaning words. There is a new link located at the bottom of the blog for this site. I'm sure your child would love to play it with you! During phonics, we have also discussed various spelling rules for making words plural (1. just add -s 2. if a word ends in s, x, z, sh, ch, or th then add -es 3. if a word ends in -y, change the -y to -i and add -es 4. and irregular plurals).
Writing: We continue to work on narrative writing. The children should be comfortable with writing, at minimum, a five sentence paragraph fully developing the character, setting, plot and resolution in the narrative. We worked on editing and revising writing that we did last week. Please check your child's blue folder this week for the finished piece of writing. The grades that you see were given on the independent work that your child was able to do. There will be another opportunity for your child to show his/her writing skills next week.
Reading: We focused on identifying the main idea in text this week. We also worked on inferencing, or using text clues to find underlying meaning in passages. The children are really enjoying our chapter book, The BFG. It is a highly imaginative fiction narrative and is a wonderful story to read to spark our own creativity for writing!
Math: We began our geometry unit on plane shapes. We learned all about shape names, describing characteristics of shapes, and types of angles. Your child should be very familiar with the vocabulary related to this unit such as quadrilateral, parallelogram, trapezoid, pentagon, hexagon, angle, vertex, right angle, square corner, obtuse angle, and acute angle. This terminology will be seen on the CRCT as well as on our end of quarter benchmark exams to be given next week. This week, we also revisited the topic of looking for clue words to help us determine the operation to be used when solving word problems.
Class News and Reminders...
Thank you goes out to Mrs. Brooks and Mrs. Ketch for organizing our Holiday Party! Also, thank you to Mrs. Brooks for her time that she has donated every week reading AR books to the children and helping them take tests!
Remember we will be doing a chapter book exchange next Friday morning. If you have not yet sent in a new, wrapped, 2nd-3rd grade level book, you may do so anytime before December 18th.
Encourage your child to read at least 20 minutes a night. Every child has an AR goal that is determined based upon his/her reading initiative from the previous grading period (new students will get a goal next grading period, which begins on Jan. 5). Challenge your child to read books that are at the top of his/her level. Keep a close eye on the comprehension level of your child's test scores to determine if the chosen books are too difficult. We want to see an average comprehension of 85% or higher. I try to give AR updates at least every three weeks.
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