Sweet Second Week of School!

   Oh, we have been busy diving in to our new reading program this week! The children (and I!) are both learning a lot and I am very pleased with their progress. We still took time to finish up our "smart cookies" from the first week and they will be going home with some great words to remember on the back.
   We will be starting a new unit of study this week about "Exploring Space with an Astronaut." Some of our Amazing Words with this unit are really cool, like: ascend, descend, orbit and universe. I'm looking forward to an out-of-this-world week!

Second Grade Weekly Study Skills

Unit 1, Week 2 (Exploring Space with an Astronaut)

Below are the skills and vocabulary we will be working on for the next 5 days.  (*Please note: our literacy lessons are based on 5-day plans that may or may not align with a M-F schedule. In an effort to teach the entire grade level core, we will send home the “weekly study skills” on the day that we begin a new 5-day instructional sequence.)  You can support your child’s literacy skills by reviewing, discussing, and practicing the skills and concepts below:

Big Idea/Big Question (This is the theme of our unit in class.)	Question of the Week (This is the theme/question for this week’s instruction in class.)
Exploration:  What can we learn from exploring new places and things?	What can we learn by exploring space?
Phonics Skills (These are the letters and sounds we are learning in class.)	Spelling Patterns and associated Words (These patterns connect to our phonics skills we are learning this week.)
Long vowels:  vowel_e   (VCe)	Long vowels:  vowel_e blaze   fine   huge   late   mice   nose   page   race   rice   size   space   vote
High Frequency Words (These reading words should be practiced and memorized.)	Story Words (These reading words are words from this week’s main selection.)
everywhere   live (/liv/)   machines   move   woman   work   world	astronaut   experiment   gravity   shuttle   telescope
Oral Vocabulary (Try using these words in your conversations at home.)	Handwriting Practice (Students can practice the writing of these letters in manuscript this week.)
ascend   descend   enormous   journey   launch   meteorite   orbit   universe	Gg, Cc