December!!!

I can't believe December is upon us, time is flying by this school year! Now that all those half days are behind us, we can get back into the flow of our regular school day.  I hope that everyone enjoyed the Thanksgiving Holiday.  It was great to have the opportunity to sit and chat with each of you about your child's education during conferences.

This week in Literacy we read several different pieces of expository text.  We really focused on identifying the main topic and key details from these pieces.  We have worked on this skill 2 weeks in a row know and are getting much better at it.  Skills we revisited this week include suffix endings.  We also looked at words that can have multiple meanings, the kids where really good at knowing and identifying these words.

In writing we began our memoirs.  We had mini lessons on how to show feelings and adding details to these stories.  I modeled by writing a story that my husband told me.  Many 2nd graders have a hard time adding details, they just want to get to the point and finish.  This is something we will work on all year.

Subtraction is the operation we are currently working on in math.  Just like with addition we will build upon skills.  Students will learn several methods to subtract double digit numbers.  Be patient we eventually get to the regrouping method which we were all taught.  Several students still need practice with simple subtraction facts, if you have flash cards at home please practice with your child.

We finished up our map skills unit in Social Studies this week.  Next week we will start a holiday  inspired unit.

If you don't know already I'm a huge EAGLES fan and here is a picture of your holiday/ eagles inspired door.

Have a great weekend and GO BIRDS!!!

Beginning, Middle, End

In Literacy this week we focused on the skill of identifying the beginning, middle and end of a story. Our stories this week all had to do with animals and how they survive.  Each story was realistic fiction, we discussed how to identify this genre.  We had mini lessons on nouns and prefixes as well this week.  Prefixes are added to the beginning of words to change their meaning.  We have also been focusing on how to write a response to something we have read.  I have modeled how to restate the question as part of their response.  Many students are applying this on their own, others still need a more help with this skill.  Please make sure you child is practicing reading at home.  I have started to send home book bags with several students, these book bags are to help your child practice reading more fluently.  The books that I choose are appropriate reading levels for them.  Not every child has received a book bag, I'm working on that.

In writing we have continued to work on our Personal Narratives.  This week our mini lesson included using transitional words like first, next, last.  Next week we will hopefully finish up our first personal narrative and start a new narrative.  If something funny or exciting happens over the weekend remind your child that this experience might be a good story to write. 

In math students are plugging along with addition strategies.  This week we broke numbers up into tens and one and learn how to use the compensation strategy.  Today student took another timed assessment and I'm thrilled with how much they have improved.  Their hard work is paying off.

This week we finished our unit on urban, suburban, and rural communities.  Next week we will start learning some map skills. 

Have a wonderful weekend!

BATS,BATS,BATS

This week we jumped into researching!  I modeled for students how to find important information in in non-fiction text.  We used a can, have, are graphic organizer to record our information.  We gathered information from 3 different books about bats.  The kids really enjoyed learning about bats. After gathering our facts we worked on writing a simple report on bats.  Students had to write a topic sentence, include 3 bat facts and a closing sentence in their reports.  I modeled how to do this and students applied to their report.  The reports will be hanging in our classroom.

In math we are continuing to learn lots of strategies for addition, however we are starting to work with double digits.  For some students this is a challenge.  All students need to be able to count by 10's starting from any number.  For example 34, 44, 54, 64.  If you child struggles with this please practice this at home.

In writing we are starting to work on personal narratives.  We read a story called The Leaving Morning, it is a story about a family moving.  This example was a great model.  We brainstormed events from our own lives that we could use as topics for our own personal narratives.  We will have many mini lessons over the next few weeks as we work on personal narratives.

This week in Social Studies we explored features of Urban, Rural, and Suburban communities. We will finish this unit up next week.