April 30, 2010

Second Grade News and Views

Room # 16

Reading /Language Arts:

   We completed the last stories in our basal reader this week. We had an opportunity to review some important reading skills: reading multi syllable words within a sentence, using the context of a sentence to understand the meaning of difficult words, compare/contrast stories, and developing our own questions after reading our two stories. The children have become more fluent in their reading and more competent in their ability to read and understand the meaning of story using a variety of reading strategies.

   During the next four weeks, the second graders will have an opportunity to read longer chapter books. We will spend about four to five days reading and responding to these stories. The first chapter book that we will read is: Freckle Juice. I’ve attached the vocabulary of this book to this newsletter for your child’s review. This activity will be structured as follows: I will read a few chapters everyday to the class. The children will then have an opportunity to respond to activities that deal with each of the chapters. The other chapter books that we will read our: Chocolate Touch, Pizza Pie Slugger, Flat Stanley. I will send the vocabulary list prior to reading each story so that your child will have an opportunity to review familiar and new words.

    We are also going to use this opportunity to review words that the Second Grade Team  feel the children need to know. The children will receive a new spelling list every Monday to review and have a spelling test every Friday. These reading and language arts activities will take us to the end of May.

Math:

   We finished our math chapter on shapes, graphs, symmetry, and fractions. At times this has been a challenging chapter especially when we discussed and reviewed activities with “line of symmetry” and “fractions” (parts of a whole). Although we review at school, it would be worth while to also review these concepts at home. Our next math unit of study will deal with three digit addition and subtraction. It should be a fun challenge for the children because they already have a good background in math facts and regrouping.

Social Studies/Science:

   We completed our social studies unit on maps and will begin learning about plants, their parts, and how they grow. The children will have an opportunity to plant vegetable seeds in our school’s courtyard. Our hope is that the children will have an opportunity to watch their garden grow and eat some of the vegetables when they’re ready to be harvested.

Thought You’d Like To Know:

·       I wanted to thank all of the parents who volunteered in our  class throughout the year to work with our children during Literacy Centers and Guided Reading Groups. Your help has been invaluable and made it possible for me to work more effectively with the children in small reading groups.

Mrs. Aviva Sadkin

Second Grade Teacher