December Newsletter
Second Grade
Odd and Ends
The second grade team enjoyed spending time with parents during conference week. We hope that you found your conference with your child’s teacher to be informative and useful. You have also received their first report card with letter grades and if you have any further questions or concerns please don't hesitate to ask.
Please keep in mind that the students do go outside everyday unless it is raining or snowing. As the temperatures drop, please send them to school with the appropriate outerwear so they can enjoy the fresh air.
The second grade team wishes all of you a joy-filled winter break. Enjoy the time with your children. We appreciate your time and effort to support your child in second grade.
We always appreciate it when tissues are donated to our classrooms.
Math
This month in Unit 5 we will continue to learn and use a variety of efficient strategies for solving word problems. At home you can provide ‘real world’ situations by taking all the change out of your purse/pocket (as we’ve now added quarters to the coins we should be able to count and correctly) and have your child identify the total value.
Make it more challenging by having them model the total amount in other ways, perhaps more efficient ones and/or adding a 2nd step by asking if they could buy a desired item with the amount and then explain why that is or is not possible. The more they practice applying what they learn at school, the stronger they will become at problem solving and applying mental math skills.
It is very important for students to be able to communicate how a strategy is used to solve a given problem. Using "notice and note" when solving word problems helps to guide the process in which to solve and explain. Daily classroom routines such as Number Talks provide effective strategies for increasing computational fluency.
FCPS Family Home Connection Newsletter for Unit 5
Language Arts
December continues with reading informational (non-fiction) texts. We need students to be able to identify and use a variety of text features (photos, captions, diagrams, charts, glossary…) and be able to explain how they enhance their understanding. We will continue to use the Fab 4 strategies that we learned in first quarter (predicting, clarifying, questioning, summarizing) in all of our reading to help deepen understanding of a variety of topics.
Foundational skills will focus on the following:
- High frequency words
- Antonyms and synonyms
- Identifying medial consonant clusters
- Building on syllable types
- Continue onsets and rimes -obe, -oke, -ore, -ope