January
2nd Grade News
100th day of school is coming! Friday January 22nd.
Brrrr......It's Cold Outside!
Reminder: Send in $5 for your child's shirt for the space music program
Reminder: MLK day is Monday January 18th. There will be no school.
Grammar with Ms. Kyser
It may be cold outside, but we're turning up the heat in grammar!
This month your child will identify adjectives (describing words) in series of words and in a sentence. They will also create their own sentences with adjectives.
How can you help at home? Play this quick game. Find an object in the room/car that you're in. Use 3-4 adjectives to describe it. Have your child guess the object. Then switch roles. Ex: red, juicy, healthy...it's an apple!
We'll also learn irregular plurals (words that you can't just add s to the end to make plural). Examples of irregular plurals are wishes, buses, mice, geese, and children. We'll play several games with this at school that are simple and can be played at home. In fact, once we play one of our games at school your child will be able to earn a special reward for playing the game at home! Finally, we'll end the month by exploring pronouns (words that take the place of nouns).
Writing, Spelling, and Social Studies with Mrs. Smith
Social Studies
Civil Rights – Martin Luther King, Jr. and Jackie Robinson. We will discuss their contribution to the civil rights movement as well as segregation, integration, boycotts, racism, etc. Students will also be able to cite examples of how Martin Luther King Jr. and Jackie Robinson demonstrated the positive citizenship traits of honesty, dependability, liberty, trustworthiness, honor, civility, good sportsmanship, patience, and compassion.
Writing
Our writing focus is opinion writing. Students will learn to state an opinion and then support that opinion with reasons and examples. They will continue to practice informational and narrative writing as well. What we learn during social studies will be used as writing topics. I will start assigning writing homework once a month. Students will write a personal narrative and turn it in on Friday. I will read it and write notes or ask questions, and students will revise and edit and turn it in. This process will take about two weeks…more info on the way.
Reading with Mrs. Valanty
Unit 3: Back to Fiction!
With a new year we are beginning a new unit in reading! We have spent the past six weeks focusing on the close reading of nonfiction texts. We are going to continue the practice of close reading but we are moving into fiction texts and text passages!
As part of our new unit, we will be taking a closer look at characters! We will be learning how to infer how characters are feeling, talk about characters’ personality traits, discuss how characters overcome challenges, predict characters’ actions, examine how characters change throughout a story, and infer what a character has learned from an experience.
A large part of your child’s participation in our small groups will be referring back to the text to answer text dependent questions as well as asking and answering questions about a text. Your child will be doing this in both verbal and written form.
Close Reading
As I was researching, I came upon this definition of close reading that I thought may better clarify what close reading is and why it’s such an important skill.
Close reading is “focused, sustained reading and rereading of a text for the purpose of understanding key points, gathering evidence, and building knowledge.”
I tell my students that in both fiction and nonfiction, we want to read like detectives and write like reporters!
Making Inferences
Questions to support your reader at home:
1. What is your character feeling right now? What in the text makes you think that?
2. What words would you choose to describe your character’s personality?
3. Are there any characters who disagree with what your character is saying or doing?
4. How has your character changed during the story? What words did the author use to show this change?
5. What do you think your character has learned? What makes you think that?
Math with Mrs. Reif
- Measuring the length of an object by selecting the appropriate tool.
- Measure items in inches and centimeters
- Finding the difference in length between two items that have been measured
- Estimating length of an object and then actually measuring it
- use addition and subtraction within 100 to solve word problems involving units of length
Keep an eye on the homework each week because this will directly reflect what your child will be assessed on for the week. I will send reminders when summative assessments are approaching.