weekly update

 We had a great first week back from break! There are so many great things going on in second grade!

Writing:

We started off the new year right by writing some goals and resolutions, and then we started writing Valentines! It may seem early, but the second graders will write a Valentine card for every single student in our class before February 14! This is one of my favorite projects because it is writing for a specific authentic audience and is an amazing community builder. We will be writing and decorating them all in class. If your second grader stays on target for the number of Valentines per week they shouldn't have to do a thing at home and that is my goal!

We would love it if you wanted to support us with Valentine stickers to decorate our cards though. Amazon has rolls of the best Valentine stickers! Here are some examples: donuts, animals, glitter hearts, sports hearts, monsters, foods, unicorns, construction trucks, red hearts, and multicolor hearts. There are endless kinds of stickers and the second graders would be happy with any! If you want to donate decorations you can send them in any time!

Since we won't just be writing Valentines for the entire month, the second graders also wrote a pre-test for opinion writing. This next unit is all about persuasive reviews of books and also involves letter writing! We will be practicing addressing envelopes and writing letters to the people (and sometimes pets) we live with.

Math:

We have started our next unit in math as well. We took a screener and that is coming home along with the unit overview. I don't usually send the screeners home, but I think it's a good snapshot of some of the skills your second grader will be working on in this unit. If they made mistakes it would be great to go over with your student. We went over it in class so you might see their thinking on there as well. This next unit has us working with higher numbers so we spent some time in class counting things: popsicle sticks, dominoes, cubes, tiles, and markers. The second graders quickly learned that making groups of 10 is a fast, easy, and accurate way to count. This experience will help them as they work on adding and subtracting numbers in the hundreds.

Reading:

We reviewed syllable types and talked about what to do when you get to tricky words. Our next reading unit is Tackling Longer Words & Longer Books. This is the time of year when second graders start transitioning into chapter books. Not everyone is ready yet and that's ok, but this is the unit where we encourage the second graders to challenge themselves. We will have a discussion about their reading stamina and then spend a lot of time on how to be supportive reading partners. As the second graders coach each other through tricky words and tricky parts of books they are developing their own reading problem solving skills as well as communication skills. This reading unit is one of big growth!

Phonics:

We have a safari coming up in phonics! The second graders have been learning all about how some animals use camouflage to blend in, just like some letters are silent or make sounds that aren't usually theirs and so can be easily overlooked. We call them "camouflaged consonants" and we have been on the lookout for these letters hiding in plain sight in words like giraffe (soft c), gnat (silent g), silence (soft c), know (silent k), and so many more. Ask your second grader for some more examples of camouflaged consonants. On Friday the 17th we will be taking a safari through the school to see if we can spot any of these camouflaged consonants so get your camo outfits and safari gear together for then : )

Homework:

The double-sided page of math is due next Friday

Important Dates:

Tuesday 1-14 Skating Party

Friday 1-17 Safari Day and Early Release

Thursday 2-6 Family Math Night