2nd Grade Newsletter

Everyone finished all of our beginning of the year testing, yay! This was a long and exhausting week, so a little extra relaxation is great (or maybe they will be bouncing off the walls because it was a lot of chromebook time to get them done). Students were sent home with their Amira test results on Thursday. I will send home MAP scores for all three test when I get the results which should be on Monday.

Here is a link to a sideline store which has all of the imaginable mountaineer gear, if you or someone you know is interested in buying some. You can pick the item you like and then choose the logo and design that goes on it.

This week, your child is learning about the schwa sound (this is really hard!!). Schwa is the most common vowel sound in the English language. It can be spelled with any of the 5 vowels. It typically sounds like /u/ or /i/. For example, the "o" makes a schwa sound in the word bacon.

This is one of the toughest weeks for second graders because it is not something they can just sound out because the schwa sound can be made by any of the 5 vowels. This means that it needs extra spelling practice!

On our spelling test, we have 10 words that follow the pattern that we are focusing on. These are our ten words for next week:

adopt

banana

bottom

collect

emblem

medal

tuna

complain

asleep

problem

Then, we have 5 "red" words. These are words that cannot be sounded out because they do not follow our learned spelling rules. Because they do not follow rules, they can be a bit trickier and take a lot more memorization, so they usually repeat for a couple of weeks before we get new ones. These are our 5 red words for next week:

after

few

many

other

our

Finally, they will dictate two sentences that I say out loud. I do not send these home for memorization because I want to see their skills in action!

If you have any questions about how something is being taught or why, just ask! My goal is to provide students with a toolbox full of tools to solve problems for the future.

For the start of our math unit, we will be sorting and graphing different things!

We are looking at how to get to 20 from different numbers, practicing counting on and counting back, counting by tens up to and past 100 (we talk about centuries), odd and even numbers, and the very first introduction of the analog clock and how it works!

Students have made their first prediction on what lives inside a cave that we have watched scientist explore. We will continue to learn about different animals' habitats and animal diversity to help us make more precise predictions.

Thursday, October 22nd - Quarter 1 Ends

Monday, October 26th - Individual Picture Retakes and Class Picture

Thursday, October 29th - Student Led Conferences

Thank you for those that signed up for snacks for the classroom! I will send an email out to you the week before to remind you of the month. I still have December, January, February, April, and May open if anyone else is able to sign up.

Scholastic code: WT3HQ