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"
Monday, September 21, 2009
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
They are starting to get it -
Sorry to be so slow in posting this week, "Life Happens!"
The first few weeks of school are partly for teaching routines: what we do, how we do it and when we do it. Some of the students are starting to get the routines. Yea! This is a good beginning. Some students are still struggling but if they keep trying they will not only get the routines but become great students.
Tuesday Sept. 8th, we made it through the whole day without having to move any students to lonely street (off by themselves) because of too much talking. I hope this is a trend.
Vocabulary
We are working on words from a book called, " Just Plain Fancy" by Patricia Palocco. It is about a peacock egg that got mixed up with the chicken eggs. The words we will focus on for vocabulary are:
peer
shun
exotic
gossiping
constantly
simplicity
The students mostly did very well on the last test.
We will take our time on this book and the test on these words will be next Friday, September 18th.
Spelling
This week we are continuing our study of Consonant Blends this time blends that have an "l". In consonant blends you say all the sounds of all the letters, you just blend them together.
Next week's spelling will be learning to spell words with onsets and rhimes - these are also called word families. The ones we will be working on are: -ack, -eck, -ick, -ock, -uck. Some of the words are: black, clock, truck, stick, and deck. We will learn a song called "The -ck, -ck, -ck Rap". It talks about the "Duck stuck in the muck." and "The black backpack hung on the rack."
Some of our challenge words come from our study of rocks.
Writing
We have been studying nouns, verbs and describing words. We learned that a sentence is a group of words that mean something. It has to make sense. The sentence must begin with a capital letter and end with punctuation. We also learned that a sentence must have a noun and a verb (Subject and Predicate). We took a simple sentence and added some details and it became an interesting sentence. (The dog ran.) (The fat little French Bulldog ran quickly through the grass.) The students also drew a treasure map of their house and yard and marked x'es where they had great or treasured memories. They then listed these treasured memories as ideas for their writings. They began a story about one of their treasured memories.
Math
We have started the learning process in the subjects of time, money, geometry, patterns, data and graphing and problem solving. The students have learned about the base ten number system that we use, open figures and polygons, rounding, estimating and measurement. The last two days they have been involved in figuring out if Bag X has _____ blocks are there enough for each student in the class to have one block. They have to answer questions like: Are there any leftovers? If so, how many? Are more blocks needed? If so, how many? They are always asked to show with numbers, pictures or words how they figured out their answers. "Good mathematicians always write about how they figured things out."
Misc.
The 5th grade buddies came and helped the students make giant sunflowers. Look for them in our hallway. We will be doing more sunflower activities. The students also have made a quilt about themselves. It is also in our hallway. And, our bulletin board has great stories the students have written about their summer vacation. The cover to the stories are glyphs about each student. This weeks keyword is: "sunflower."
Thanks to all who filled out the survey about using the blog. Fourteen responses would like an email linking you to the blog. Two wanted only emails with important information and two preferred printed notes. There was no response from only 3 parents. This weekend I will work on setting up the email list and send emails linking you to the blog. I will still send paper notes to those 5 who did not prefer this option. I'm hoping all will soon opt in to this great way to communicate. There will still be some notes from school especially for field trip. Look for one of these on Monday September 14th.
THANKS!
Thank you to all the parents who have signed on to volunteer in the classroom. Thanks also to Angie Brown for setting up the bolunteer schedule and calendar. It is a huge job to meet the needs of all these students and I truely appreciate all the help you give. Thanks also go to those parents who have sent in items for the classroom and for the token store. You are all awesome!
The first few weeks of school are partly for teaching routines: what we do, how we do it and when we do it. Some of the students are starting to get the routines. Yea! This is a good beginning. Some students are still struggling but if they keep trying they will not only get the routines but become great students.
Tuesday Sept. 8th, we made it through the whole day without having to move any students to lonely street (off by themselves) because of too much talking. I hope this is a trend.
Vocabulary
We are working on words from a book called, " Just Plain Fancy" by Patricia Palocco. It is about a peacock egg that got mixed up with the chicken eggs. The words we will focus on for vocabulary are:
peer
shun
exotic
gossiping
constantly
simplicity
The students mostly did very well on the last test.
We will take our time on this book and the test on these words will be next Friday, September 18th.
Spelling
This week we are continuing our study of Consonant Blends this time blends that have an "l". In consonant blends you say all the sounds of all the letters, you just blend them together.
Next week's spelling will be learning to spell words with onsets and rhimes - these are also called word families. The ones we will be working on are: -ack, -eck, -ick, -ock, -uck. Some of the words are: black, clock, truck, stick, and deck. We will learn a song called "The -ck, -ck, -ck Rap". It talks about the "Duck stuck in the muck." and "The black backpack hung on the rack."
Some of our challenge words come from our study of rocks.
Writing
We have been studying nouns, verbs and describing words. We learned that a sentence is a group of words that mean something. It has to make sense. The sentence must begin with a capital letter and end with punctuation. We also learned that a sentence must have a noun and a verb (Subject and Predicate). We took a simple sentence and added some details and it became an interesting sentence. (The dog ran.) (The fat little French Bulldog ran quickly through the grass.) The students also drew a treasure map of their house and yard and marked x'es where they had great or treasured memories. They then listed these treasured memories as ideas for their writings. They began a story about one of their treasured memories.
Math
We have started the learning process in the subjects of time, money, geometry, patterns, data and graphing and problem solving. The students have learned about the base ten number system that we use, open figures and polygons, rounding, estimating and measurement. The last two days they have been involved in figuring out if Bag X has _____ blocks are there enough for each student in the class to have one block. They have to answer questions like: Are there any leftovers? If so, how many? Are more blocks needed? If so, how many? They are always asked to show with numbers, pictures or words how they figured out their answers. "Good mathematicians always write about how they figured things out."
Misc.
The 5th grade buddies came and helped the students make giant sunflowers. Look for them in our hallway. We will be doing more sunflower activities. The students also have made a quilt about themselves. It is also in our hallway. And, our bulletin board has great stories the students have written about their summer vacation. The cover to the stories are glyphs about each student. This weeks keyword is: "sunflower."
Thanks to all who filled out the survey about using the blog. Fourteen responses would like an email linking you to the blog. Two wanted only emails with important information and two preferred printed notes. There was no response from only 3 parents. This weekend I will work on setting up the email list and send emails linking you to the blog. I will still send paper notes to those 5 who did not prefer this option. I'm hoping all will soon opt in to this great way to communicate. There will still be some notes from school especially for field trip. Look for one of these on Monday September 14th.
THANKS!
Thank you to all the parents who have signed on to volunteer in the classroom. Thanks also to Angie Brown for setting up the bolunteer schedule and calendar. It is a huge job to meet the needs of all these students and I truely appreciate all the help you give. Thanks also go to those parents who have sent in items for the classroom and for the token store. You are all awesome!
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Vocabulary for the week
The vocabulary words for the week are:
coincidence
recite
bitter
murmmer
loyal
sensitive
The children will be given a sentence and a choice of two of these words. They will need to choose the word that makes the sentence make sense. There will only be 6 questions. This first will give them a feel for what to expect in the future.
We have been talking about the words all week. They have especially been excited to tell us about things that happened that were coincidences. Try to use the vocabulary words in your house during the week. They get to put a mark by the word if they hear it or see it.
coincidence
recite
bitter
murmmer
loyal
sensitive
The children will be given a sentence and a choice of two of these words. They will need to choose the word that makes the sentence make sense. There will only be 6 questions. This first will give them a feel for what to expect in the future.
We have been talking about the words all week. They have especially been excited to tell us about things that happened that were coincidences. Try to use the vocabulary words in your house during the week. They get to put a mark by the word if they hear it or see it.
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