Week 2

Hello families,
We have had a great two weeks of school!

This week we continued to work on learning routines for reading workshop, writing workshop and phonics/word study. We began Unit 1 in our Everyday Math books. We started a new unit on Communities in Social Studies.

In reading workshop we read the book Those Darn Squirrels. We practiced retelling the story. We read the story in the way the book wanted to be read - it was a funny book! We acted out parts of the book. Lastly we discussed the author's message and found evidence in the book to support our claims.
I have just begun to do a few reading assessments to begin sorting students into reading groups.

In writing workshop we have spent this week "Revving up our writing muscles" and remembering what writers do during workshop. We practiced planning out a story and using a partner to help plan. We remembered what a small moment is - something that really happened to you or something you already did. We shared our writing and gave compliments after sharing. We wrote our stories in small steps using the words: first, next, then and last.

In phonics, we have been working on being "Second Grade Phonics Professors". We reviewed consonants, vowels - short and long, capitals, silent e, vowel teams, blends and digraphs.
Today we searched for words that end in silent e, then we went over how to check to see if a vowel is short or long.

The first unit in Math is all a review of what was taught in first grade. We worked on writing numbers on a number line, skip counting by 2's, 5's and 10's, and we played two math games. We played Bunny Hop and Number squeeze.

In Social Studies, we began learning that a community is a place where people live, work and play. We talked about who lives in a community and who community helpers are (fireman, police officers, librarian, postal worker, barber, waitress, teacher, etc). We made booklets and drew places we know in our community.

It has been a busy couple of weeks. Thank you for sending me your awesome boys and girls each day! I am so excited to see their faces every morning. It is truly a great group of students!

Upcoming events:
Sept. 11 - Second grade curriculum night
Sept. 17 - Half day of school for students - Teacher professional development day
Sept. 18 - Bingo and pizza with dads


Have a great weekend,
Mrs. Scheck