Well round three and more to come this week. I do enjoy my snow days but I worry about the inconsistent teaching and learning that is happening in classrooms all across the state. Please keep your children reading and practicing math facts, spelling words and playing online games. They have all made great strides and we want to make sure they stay at the top of their game.
We have begun Unit 6 in our math journals and we are learning to solve addition facts with three addends. Students will solve addition facts with triple digits the partial sums way. This unit will also introduce subtraction with two digit numbers. Stay tuned for more information. At this point, your children are solving subtraction problems using their number grids.
In Grammar, students have been introduced to the use of pronouns. When writing, your children are learning to substitute pronouns (they, them, it, she, he) for nouns in sentences after the noun has been introduced. Practice will continue this week and children will be held accountible for pronouns in their writing. At this time, students are writing paragraphs using graphic organizers to help plan ideas before writing. They are expected to: be NEAT, use CAPITALS and PERIODS, use ADJECTIVES and TRANSITIONAL WORDS. Ask your child to give you some examples of transitional words in their writing.
Double vowel teams are the focus in Fundations for the next couple of weeks. The double vowel or "D-syllable" type is combined with other syllables in words such as: replay, paycheck and sailboat. Homework assignments will give you words to practice each week. Words to study are: rain, pail, play, stay (all words that ryhme with these words).
We have finished the Plains region of our Native American studies. We move now to the Northwest region. On Tuesday, our second graders will be visited by a real Native American; Dan Krips. He is from the plains region and will bring a tepee and many authentic artifacts from the region. I will post pictures of his visit so be sure to ask your kiddos questions about this exciiting visit. (Please stay tuned for two more important Native American events coming up in the near future. One will be a field trip to the Peabody Museum to see their extensive Native America exhibits. This will be in February. Then in March, there will be a culminating home project that the children will share to show their learning of the Native American regions.)
Finally, encourage your children to keep reading daily and to read "good-fit" books. It is so important that they read an appropriate level text to build accuracy and fluency in reading. Also, make sure they are reading the same text many times to practice fluency. Killam School is building strong confident strategic readers in 2011!
