​Grade 2 Academic Update – October 2017

     Reading

Students will begin to work in their guided reading groups. In these groups, students are reading books that are at their instructional level. They work on individual reading goals and strategies. Guided reading groups continue throughout the year but are fluid, so students may be moving in and out of groups based on their needs. Most groups will focus on the comprehension strategy of retelling a story. Once your child has read a book, they should be able to easily retell the story.  We know we will see growth with all the students! 

     Writing

Our main focus for the month of October in writing will be ideas, organization and conventions. Students should start using a question hook to begin their stories.  It should answer the questions – who, where and when the story takes place.  We will continue to use transitional words (first, next, then, after, finally, etc.). Using these words will give their writing a more natural flow and help to keep their thoughts organized. We are also focusing on conventions of writing – punctuation and capital letters and spelling high frequency words correctly!

Later in the month we will be working on a descriptive writing piece. The students will make blow monsters in art and draw a background of where their monster lives. They will write about what their monster is like, where it lives, what it eats, etc.  This piece will focus on editing, conferencing with a teacher and rewriting the piece without the errors.  This is a new concept for the students. 

       Book Study

       We will be reading Stellaluna and I Need My Monster this month and using those texts to introduce new vocabulary.  We will also do a variety of activities using these texts including a bat life cycle and descriptive writing/art. 

      Word Work

      Students will be introduced to 4 or 5 new words each week.  They can be seen in the homework.  Please continue to work with your child as these words should be read automatically and spelled correctly in their writing.  Some of the words this month focus on the silent “e” rule and making nouns plural. 

      Grammar/Phonics

      We have been doing some work with nouns – what they are and how to make them plural.  We have learned to add “s” to most nouns and “es” when the word ends in ch, sh, x, z and s.  We will review the digraphs – ch, sh, th, wh.  Students should know that when they see these letters together it makes one sound.  Also, we will review all the short vowels and the silent “e” rule to make a vowel long. 

      Math

We are starting our unit of Numbers up to 50. Students will practice skip counting in a variety of ways (by 2’s starting at 10, by 10’s starting at 6, by 5’s forward to 50 and back from 50, etc.). We will also look at odd/even and comparing/ordering numbers to 50. 

We will also be doing a lot of work with the hundreds chart – 1 more/1 less/10 more/10 less and patterns within the chart. ​ 

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