Second Grade Newsletter- Week 1

We had another wonderful week with our sensational second graders! Our students are starting to apply newly-learned skillsets, positively collaborate with peers, and lovingly laugh along the way. We're so proud of the progress they're making and thoroughly enjoy watching their confidence continue to grow. Here’s a sneak peak of what we’ve been learning in ELAR and Math this week...

This week in ELAR, we’ve been busy growing as readers and writers! We wrapped up our review of main letter sounds, blends, and digraphs and introduced the trigraphs -tch and -dge. We learned that these three-letter teams are typically used immediately after a short vowel at the end of a one-syllable word. We also discovered that English words don’t usually end in i, u, v, or j—which helps explain why we need spellings like -dge!🙂

Our newest phonics concept was schwa, the most common vowel sound in English! We learned that this relaxed vowel sound occurs in unstressed syllables and can sound like a short u or short i. We practiced reading and writing words with schwa, including camel, problem, and sofa.

In reading and writing, we continued exploring story elements: characters, setting, plot, problem, and solution. Students are putting these pieces together in their own narratives and discovering what it means to be an author. We also learned about nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs and how these words help us build sentences and add details to our stories.

Our high-frequency words this week were last, left, next, got, run, stop, let, cut, walk, and talk. Please continue practicing both our new words and previously learned words at home. We’ll add 10 words each week, so keeping those earlier words in the mix is important! Thank you for helping your growing reader build confidence, one word at a time!

In Math this week, we mainly focused on number patterning as we concluded our first chapter involving place value. With endless connections across various math genres, these two themes will indefinitely return. Continued practice of these concepts will greatly benefit your student, simply put. Most importantly, I'm over the moon excited to see what types of creative and artistic expressions are brought to school tomorrow for our classroom Gallery Walk (I'm currently writing this blurb Thursday afternoon)! I'm of course referring to my infamous "Pattern Project" that our students were so eagerly excited to complete. I'm quite serious; they were PUMPED for this particular homework assignment (note to self). Seesaw, here I come...

Math Focus for Next Week: Next week in Math, we'll first review for Wednesday's Chapter #1 TEST! Then, midweek, we'll begin to Add FLUENTLY Within 1,000, with and without regrouping. We'll focus on different strategies and algorithms to best support this critical milestone in your second grader's mathematical journey. By providing a strong foundation in these skills, we've set the stage for future success! We'll practice various addition skills with our main emphasis on FLUENCY, which in turn will help the overall learning process run smoother as students begin to achieve mastery. By the week's end, your child should be able to explain what mental Math looks like by providing examples of such. We'll of course do all of the above-mentioned through a colorful lens of both direct and indirect creative approaches!

ELAR Focus for Next Week: Next week, we’ll take a closer look at character traits! We’ll explore external traits (what a character looks like) and internal traits (a character’s personality) and use clues from the text to support our thinking. We’ll also continue strengthening our reading fluency, building vocabulary, and bringing our narrative stories to life. Our young authors have so many ideas to share!

In phonics, our focus will be “magic e”! We’ll discover how a silent e at the end of a word can change a short vowel sound to a long vowel sound—turning cap into cape! We’ll also learn how to add the suffixes -ed and -ing to verbs and explore how these endings change a word’s meaning, such as jump, jumped, and jumping. We’ll put these new skills to work as we read, spell, and write!

What is Happening in Science/STEM?

The students have done a wonderful job learning the different landforms that are on the Earth’s surface. This week we will bring our landforms to life! Students will use the Engineering Design Process to imagine, plan, and begin the process of creating a blueprint of their chosen landform and label the landform’s physical features. Students will then build their landform model from air-dry clay. We cannot wait to see what our engineers create!

Academic Language We Are Using This Week:

landform, mountain, peak, hill, canyon, cliff, slope, plains, volcano, peninsula, island, plateau, cliff, cave, valley

List of Important Events

September 14th - Ms. Lehman's Library books DUE (every MONDAY)

September 15th- Mrs. Peters' Library books DUE (every TUESDAY)

September 15th- DOT Day! (Dress your kiddo in DOTS galore!)

September 16th - September birthdays celebrated at lunch

September 25th - Spirit Day

A huge Hilltop THANK YOU to our wonderful parent volunteers for serving as your grade-level Class Captains! Please be sure to join the 2nd Grade Group on the St. Luke’s App to stay connected and receive important updates and communication throughout the year.

Meredith Hinchey - meredithhinchey@gmail.com

Paige Shafer - paigeblakemore@yahoo.com