3rd Quarter Has Come to an End!

This week was busy.  We tried hard to squeeze in a lot of last-minute things before the quarter ended on Friday.

On Monday we introduced new spelling words and vocabulary words.  We added the "ou" hunk and chunk to our Phonics Dance board.  The morning class read Strega Nona and the afternoon class read Kitten's First Full Moon.  We used these stories to talk about plot.  We identified the problems in the stories, the steps that each character took to attempt solving the problem, and then finally the solution to the problem.  We introduced our unit on verbs.  We learned a verb chant - ask your second grader to do it for you (they love it!) and read To Root, To Toot, To Parachute: What is a Verb? 

On Tuesday we added the "ow" hunk and chunk to our Phonics Dance board.  We also began cursive!  We learned lowercase c and o.  We answered questions about our vocabulary words and watched a hilarious video (available on my Weebly site) that Miss Murphy made explaining each of our vocabulary words.  We read A Chair for My Mother and practiced using the story to answer some oral comprehension questions about what we read.  We wrote verb poems about ourselves, and we began story planning for a St. Patrick's Day story titled "My Lucky Leprechaun."

On Wednesday we learned more cursive letters.  We learned lowercase a and d.  We answered R.A.P. questions using our vocabulary words.  The morning class partner read A Chair for My Mother and the afternoon class read it on the Smartboard.  We worked on our leprechaun stories.  We also began a program called B.A.B.E.S. that we will be participating in for the next six weeks on Wednesdays.  This is a life skills program that teaches second graders about topics such as self-esteem, coping skills, and the dangers of drugs and alcohol using puppets.

On Thursday we took our spelling test.  We learned lowercase g and q in cursive.  We finished up our vocabulary packets by telling stories using all of our words, and we watched Miss Murphy's video again.  We took our vocabulary test.  Vocabulary tests will, more often than not, be moved to Thursdays now so that we can squeeze in blogging on Fridays.  We re-read A Chair for My Mother and reviewed the plot elements - problem and solution.  We worked on our leprechaun stories.

On Friday we blogged again.  We took our comprehension test and finished up our leprechaun stories.  Some of us got to start on our Star of the Week letters to Emerson and Cassidey.  Others will begin them on Monday.

Next week we will be reading a story called Serious Farm, which is one of my favorite stories that we read all year.  Vocabulary words will be extremely, barely, admit, serious, hilarious, and witty.  We will continue with problem and solution, as well as verbs.  Next week our focus will be on subject-verb agreement.  Spelling words will have the r-controlled vowel sound spelled or, ore, and our.  Words are:
store, fork, pour, score, your, chore, short, more, four, sore, ignore, important, factory, explore, fourteen, saw, left, don't, few, while
Challenge list:
ignore, important, factory, explore, fourteen, morning, support, normal, tornado, stories, shortest, afford, stormy, pour, hornet, saw, left, don't, few, while

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

Enjoy the warm weekend!