Um, where is all the snow?!

We sure have been busy the past two weeks!  Not only did we complete our mid-year reading assessment, but we also managed to squeeze in a few grammar skills and a readers theater performance as well!

Our story for the last two weeks was called A Birthday Mystery.  We reviewed high-frequency words from the previous four weeks.  Robust vocabulary words were bewildered, evasive, mull, and startle.  I continue to be impressed each week and how well the students can incorporate these words into their everyday vocabulary.  It's so fun to hear them speak like little adults, and it makes them sound and feel so smart!  We finished up possessive nouns and also learned about pronouns.  Ask your second grader to do the pronoun chant for you and to give you some examples of pronouns.  We are also squeezing writing in whenever we get a chance, and our focus right now is on writing a paragraph using a topic sentence.  We are really working hard to keep our writing on topic and give as many details as we can to support the topic sentence.

Next week we will be back on track with a regular schedule.  We will begin lesson 16, which is a story called Mr. Putter and Tabby Write the Book.  This story is realistic fiction - see if your second grader can explain what that means.  Our focus skill will be setting.  We will expand on what the students learned in first grade - that setting means where the story takes place - by adding in a when component as well.  We will also be learning how to make our identification of a story's setting more specific than just "inside" or "outside."  We will no longer have high-frequency words as a skill or assessment each week.  Instead our quantity of robust vocabulary words will increase from four to six.  The words will now appear in the story each week, just as the high-frequency words  did in the past.  The students will continue to be exposed to the words on a daily basis through our vocabulary lessons and now through the reading of the story as well.  I suspect that there may be some difficulty transitioning to an increase in the number of words for the first week or two, but please be patient.  Your second grader will catch on soon!  The words for next week are cozy, enchanting, instead, thrilled, review, and celebrate.  Our grammar skill will be adjectives, which will be our focus for the next five weeks of language arts lessons.  We will continue to work on writing paragraphs using topic sentences.  Spelling words next week have the kn, wr, ph, and ough spelling patterns.  Words are:
knot, wrong, know, wreck, graph, wrap, tough, knife, phone, laugh, elephant, photograph, handwriting, knuckle, enough, letter, mother, answer, found, study
Challenge list:
Oops, I left this list at school.  Will update this weekend with the list.  Sorry!

Our specials schedule for next week will be:
Monday - art
Tuesday - music
Wednesday - gym
Thursday - library
Friday - music

Enjoy the weekend!