November Field Trips!

Natural History Museum

The second grade is going to the Natural History Museum to see the Spiders Alive! exhibit. Students will get to see live spiders and learn about their habitats, how they live in different environments and how scientists study them.  In addition to live spiders they will see videos, fossils, and models of a variety of spiders.  This will help students start researching and learning about animals in order to get ready for our non-fiction study!

Information:

When: Tuesday, November 24th

Cost: $2

Time: We will leave the school at 9am and return by 1:30.

Lunch: We will be eating lunch on the trip.  We will provide cheese sandwiches from the cafeteria for students.  If your child does not like cheese sandwiches please send them with a packaged lunch that is easy to carry. No Glass bottles please!

November Reader's Workshop

November / December / January Reader's Workshop

In this unit of reader's workshop, the second grade will be learning about the different types of Non-Fiction and the text features that support readers as they navigate their books and articles.

The types of Non-Fiction texts the second graders will explore are:

•   Procedural non-fiction: teaches you how to make or do something

                        recipes, board games, how-to's

•   Persuasive non-fiction: persuading someone to do something

                        reviews

•    Narrative non-fiction: "story-like" non-fiction

                        biographies, autobiographies

•   Informational/expository non-fiction:

                        all-about books

Students will explore several strategies for reading non-fiction well and will have the opportunity to read and explore topics that interest them.  After their initial exploration, students will be guided into reading informational books about animals.  Students will be expected to select an animal of their choice to research and will eventually publish their very own "All-About Book" and matching diorama.

Grade 2 Diorama

November Writing Workshop

November Writing 2015

    We have just wrapped up our first realistic fiction unit and have begun a second realistic fiction unit, giving students additional practice with the genre.  

We launched this unit by having students reread their first realistic fiction piece.  As they were reading, students focused on what was missing from their piece and thought about the skill(s) they wanted to continue to develop.  Each student set a personal goal for their new piece (i.e., “I will use dialogue at least 2 times on a page” or “I will include three-step tiny action on each page”).

As students work toward achieving their goal,  lessons will focus on continuing to develop elaboration techniques, as well as continuing to be conscientious about editing.  

One way you can support your 2^nd grade writer at home is by making sure that after they finish any writing in their homework, have them stop and edit their writing.  They should be looking for correct capitalization at the beginning of their sentences, “I”, and proper nouns (names of people and places).  Also, they should check their spelling and correct any mistakes that they notice.

November Word Study

Unit 4
In this unit, the students will be reviewing the suffixes: -s, -es, -ed,  and -ing. The students will practice recognizing, writing, and marking up these suffixes in various words. 

This is how you mark up a word with a suffix.
Underline the base word. 
Circle the suffix.

The students will learn that the suffix -ed has 3 different sounds: 

  /ed/ as in rented       /d/ as in banged          /t/ as in fished 

The students will learn the suffixes -er and -est and discuss the comparison endings. 

Lastly, the students will learn new vowel team sounds: 

Unit 4 Trick Words: their, animal, even, use, used, here  


Unit 5
In this unit, the students will be learning how to combine syllables to form multisyllabic words. The students will combine 2 closed syllables together to make one word such as: 
                                          bathtub 
*When reading a multisyllabic word, a very important strategy for the students to use is to scoop each syllable with their finger. 

The students will also be learning new suffix endings:               -ful,  -ment, -ness, -less, -able, -ish, and -en

* Remember that students must underline the baseboard and circle the suffix. 

Lastly, the students will be learning some more vowel team sounds. 

Unit 5 Trick Words: water, knew, know

November Read Aloud

In the month of November we are reading books that show a character change. The students are learning that sometimes our characters change from the beginning to the end of the book. They will also learn that when the character changes, they learn a big life lesson.

Good readers pay attention to what the character did (actions) and what the character said (dialogue) in the beginning of the book to get a big idea about the character and what type of person they are. 

We also pay attention to what the character did (actions) and what the character said (dialogue) throughout the book to get a big idea about the character and what type of person they are. (We notice that the character changed)

Then we speak about what lesson the character learned in the book and why they changed or what big event happened that caused this character to change.

Here are the books we will read: