Category Archives: Language Arts

Welcome to Week 3!

Hello Parents!

I hope you had a wonderful weekend! This week, we will begin differentiated homework in second grade. This means that each student in our class will still have the same expectation of homework (1 page of math and 1 page of language arts–reading comprehension this week), but the pages will look different.

In math this week, we are focusing on the following skills:

  • Different ways to write numbers
  • Different names for numbers
  • Problem-solving with tens and ones
  • Counting patterns up to 100

In grammar this week, we are focusing on the following skills (and this work will be done in Centers):

  • More practice with sorting nouns
  • More practice with common nouns and proper nouns
  • Alphabetical order

In writing this week, we are focusing on the following:

  • The elements of a complete sentence (subject & predicate)

I am looking forward to a great week!

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What Is A Sentence?

 

 

Good afternoon!

I’m sure you’ve noticed that your child has been taking home lots of writing! For the first two weeks of this school year, I wanted students to have the freedom to write a lot for a few reasons.

Related imageFirst, I wanted to test their endurance and see how long our class could work on silently drawing a picture and writing about a specific topic.

Next, I wanted to informally assess the students’ understanding of what elements form a complete sentence and how to put sentences together to make a paragraph. I’ve also been looking at spelling, grammar, syntax, and puncutation.

Finally, I wanted students to get used to the initial structure I have for Centers in our classroom. For the first several weeks, we will be working in Centers as a whole class, following a schedule of DEAR (Drop Everything and Read), Silent Picture-Drawing, Silent Writing, Group Word Work, and a Fun Center.

While some of our students are very comfortable with using telling sentences and asking sentences (statements and questions) to form interesting short paragraphs, many of us need some review and additional support around forming a complete sentence and using punctuation to separate our thoughts.

Here is a short video we watched in class today that reminds us of important parts of a complete sentence:

A Sentence Begins With A Capital Letter

Welcome back to school! I hope you enjoyed your fall break. Today we had some time to review sentence editing during our ELA block. Deciding where to add punctuation and capital letters when given two or three run-on sentences proved to be difficult for many scholars in our class. Below is a fun, short video I found to remind us what a complete sentence needs!

Time to Start Curriculum!

This week, our second grade team will be beginning to introduce our scholars to curriculum, while continuing to teach culture and routines for the remaining 10 Days of Culture. Reminder: We have our first English Language Arts test and our first Spelling test of the year this Friday, September 2nd! Below are some resources for what our scholars will be learning this week.

 

Phonics/Grammar Focus

  1. Phonics: short vowel sounds “a” and “i”
  2. Grammar: subjects and predicates
Spelling Words

  1. sad
  2. dig
  3. jam
  4. glad
  5. list
  6. win
  7. flat
  8. if
  9. fix
  10. rip
  11. kit
  12. mask
  13. as
  14. his
  15. sandwich
  16. picnic
 Target Vocabulary Words

straight: not curling, curving, or bending

collars: bands that animals wear around their necks

row: a number of things arranged in a line

floppy: hanging or moving in a loose, droopy way

stood: was in an upright position on one’s feet

drooled: let saliva drip from the mouth

curly: having a twisted, ring, or spiral shape

weighed: had a certain heaviness

Your scholar may complete activities to help them practice this week’s spelling words here: www.spellingcity.com/missmcwoodson/

The Signmaker’s Assistant

When we get return from Spring Break, we will our next weekly ELA test will be on Friday, March 25th, and the comprehension section of the test will ask questions about “The Signmaker’s Assistant” by Tedd Arnold. Find the story on YouTube here:

Have a wonderful Spring Break! See you bright and early on Monday, March 21st!

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The Basics of Step Up to Writing

In the year of my teaching residency, I co-taught in a first grade classroom, where I became familiar with teaching writing to young students using a program called “Step Up to Writing”, from where the “Stoplight Paragraph” method originates. With this method, students use colors as visual clues to help them construct a clear, well-written paragraph, with a topic and closing sentence, at least two “big ideas”, and supporting details. I have learned this this fun, colorful method can be used with all types of writing we learn in second grade: narrative (stories), expository (information), and persuasive (opinion).

  • GREEN: Go! Topic Sentence.
    • YELLOW: Slow down! Big idea.
      • RED: Stop! Give a supporting detail.
    • YELLOW: Slow down! Big idea.
      • RED: Stop! Give a supporting detail.
  • GREEN: Go back! Remind the reader of your main idea.

The video below may help parents to gain a better idea of what all of these words and colors mean!

Fact or Opinion

This week in English Language Arts, my class is learning about facts vs. opinions. I found some fun online resources that allows students to participate in an activity while learning what facts and opinions are. The students really got a kick out of some of the opinion statements in the second video.

Contractions

contractionsThis week in second grade, we will be practicing with contractions. Below are some videos that might help your child become more familiar with contractions. The first video features a first grade class performing a rap about contractions and the second video gives a lesson then provides the typed lyrics to the Kidz Bop version of the Bruno Mars song “Just the Way You Are” so that the number of contractions used can be counted by students.

See you tomorrow bright and early!

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