Labor Day Week...

WE HAD A FUN FIRST WEEK OF SCHOOL!
    Last week was a busy one with getting-to-know-you and review activities as well as a little bit of our new Reading Street program. Since this week is also a shorter one, we will be continuing the week one reading concepts through this week.
    I am really enjoying learning about your child! Thanks to all of you who have signed up to help in the class for learning stations or baggy books. I will be in touch with you soon as we work to establish a schedule. The Room Parent Meeting is this Friday after school. Thanks again for your support.

Yea! A New School Year 2012

 

    I am so excited to get started with new Second Grade friends this year! We will do some great getting-to-know-you activities the first few days centered around the book "One Smart Cookie." You will notice a"cookie" theme in our class, vocabulary, art and writing etc. It is a fun way to begin the year.
  Our first week of Reading Street begins August 28th and will go through September 7th as we get into the swing of things. As I told many of you in our meetings, I am posting the main concepts of what we will be working on.

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 different communities?
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.)
Short vowels and consonants	Short vowels and consonants: rock   list   desk   job   sad   chop  sack  tag  rib   mess   dust   drum
High Frequency Words (These reading words should be practiced and memorized.)	Story Words (These reading words are words from this week’s main selection.)
beautiful   country   friend   front   someone   somewhere	cousins   meadow   parents   promise
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.)
downy  founders  investigate  muttered  perch  rural  unanimous  urban	Aa, Dd, Oo,

 

It's hard to say goodbye to old friends, but you get the chance to make new ones.  I got my new class list yesterday and I am excited to meet my new Second Graders! I will be sharing our journey through Reading Street this year-it should be fun.

Last Spelling Test Thursday May 24th!!

awesome

penguin

tennis

ducky

soda

soccer

monkey

laundry

bear

pie

basketball

monster

football

super

American

Summer

Bonus:okapi chimpanzee. Cheetah. Tchaikovsky

Compound Words this week...some are a little bit funky, our class picked the spelling words!

playground

birthday

pancake

sweatshirt

pigpen

superman

spiderman

highway

pillowpet

doughnut

underwear

midnight

springtime

sunshine

flashlight

popcorn

Wow! Great design and architecture !

We have been studying life cycles of plants and animals in class, we had a cool ant farm thanks to Sam Sperry. We are currently trying to sprout some Mammoth Sunflower seeds and we just got a jar of Painted Lady caterpillars today. We are excited to learn more, and our spelling words tie in with our science studies. Here they are: life, cycle, caterpillar, pupa, chrysalis, butterfly, ladybug, antenna, nectar, scale, insect, animal, sunflower, seed, root, stem, flower and pollen. We also have some great bonus words: metamorphosis, proboscis, incubation. Cool stuff for spring!

Homonyms for Spelling!!

I'm sorry to have been slow to post our words, things have been a bit busy over here! We are trying to get pictures for our second grade dvd loaded, if any of you have pictures from Halloween, Christmas etc. will you please let me know? Thanks...here are our homonyms for this week's test.

sent cent
tale tail
see sea
two too
sale sail
here hear
made maid
blew blue
deer dear
son sun