It feels like fall

Let's talk about independent reading at home. Each student should be reading for 15 - 20 minutes each night. This reading should be reading aloud to a parent or if needed to an older sibling. This one nightly activity will help increase your child's reading ability more than anything else you can do.

Our school district uses the Fountas and Pinnell "Guided Reading Levels". It is a way to rate books as to their difficulty. They are rated from A to Z with A being the easiest. During 2nd grade students should be reading on levels H to M. The goal is to have all 2nd graders reading on an L or M level by the end of the year. ( Right now our class has students reading on levels from A to N.) I have given you two links to lists of leveled books.

We talk about reading on three different levels. First is the child's Independent Reading Level. That is the level at which they can read independently with very few mistakes or struggles. At school I teach them the 5 finger rule, which means that a good way to see if a book is a "just right book" is to read one page - if you struggle with or miss 5 words or more it is too difficult for you. This is how easy their home reading books should be.

The second reading level is their Instructional Reading Level. This is the level at which I work with them as I am instructing them on learning to improve their reading.

The third level is their Frustrational Reading Level. This is the level at which the child gets frustrated because the text is too difficult for them. Too often this is the level at which children are trying to read at home. This causes them to become frustrated with reading and even say that they "hate reading."

Please help your child read at their Independent level when reading at home.

To help your child reach this goal you need to set a specific time and place where they read each day. When they have difficulty with reading you can help them best not by telling them the word but by reminding them of two or three clues they are being taught in class that will help them decode or figure out the word on their own. Some of these clues are: What would make sense in the story? Look at the picture. Does that give you a clue what the word might be? What sound does it start with? Are there any little words you know in the bigger word? Think again, what would make sense in the story that starts with that sound? Only give about 3 prompts then if they really can't figure it out tell them the word.

Vocabulary

Today we read a cute story called "Mice Make Trouble" by Becky Bloom. It is about a little boy who uses his sister's magical colored pencils and draws 6 wierd mice and a hedgehog on the wall. These creatures come alive and behave very badly. Our vocabulary words for the week are:
assortment
civilized
contributed
inappropriate
concoct
orderly

The children are to be listening for these words at home, either in their family conversation or in the media. They will be tested on these words on Friday.

Spelling

We will be working with Magic Silent e for the next 4 weeks. This is an extremely important concept for children to learn to help them be good spellers. This week we are working on silent e words that have a long a sound. Today I found that many of the children are having difficulty hearing and knowing the difference between the short and long sounds of the vowels. This is something you can work on at home. Of course the long vowels say their names a, e, i, o, u. The short sounds are the a as in apple, e as in elephant, i as in igloo, o as in octopus and u as in umbrella.

Today they were to sort their spelling words into columns of short vowels, long vowels and other. Tomorrow they will take words such as pal and change it to pale, can becomes cane, mad becomes made, hat becomes hate, cap becomes cape etc. You could ask them to spell made and mad and see if they know how to properly use the magic silent e.

Math

The children have learned to play "Collect 25 cents" and many went on to play "Collect 50 cents" and "Collect One Dollar."

They have also learned to play "+1 or +2 Bingo." This is helping them learn that in adding a great strategy is to count on if you are adding 1, 2 or 3 but if you are adding more than 3 there is a better strategy to use for that fact. They should be memorizing their doubles facts. 1+1, 2+2, 3+3, 4+4 etc. up to at least 11 + 11. Many can go further than that and it would be great if they learned doubles up to 20 + 20.

Tomorrow we will be having our first pocket day where they determine how many pockets are in the classroom. We are moving into comparison of numbers and more about combinations of numbers that will equal 10. They have played "Tens Go Fish" and "Concentrating on Tens". They will also start looking for more that two numbers to make ten.

Writing

They are finishing up a writing project based on the book "Quick As A Cricket." They are also learning about choosing a good, clear topic to write about.

Handwriting

We have some students with very good handwriting and some with very poor handwriting. Please encourage your child to really try to do their best work at all times. Doing your work well is more important than doing it fast and poorly.

I hope you all have a great week. The keyword for this week is: "Cooler Weather"