Gr 2 – Ms. Christothoulou
Weekly Family Letters
Homework Policy
Your child will take home and bring back his or her spelling log Monday through Thursday. Homework instructions can be found in the inside cover of the spelling log. Those instructions are consistent each week. Math homework will also be sent home Monday through Thursday in folders, with some exceptions. Math homework assignments will pertain to the work being done in class that day or the day before. Homework is to be completed at home, and parents are expected to oversee homework completion. Please check that the assignment has been finished and understood.
Homework should take around 20 minutes in addition to 20 minutes (or more) of reading. Please send in a note with your student if the homework was not completed because of a time conflict or if the assignment was not understood.
Reading daily is a very important and it is invaluable to establish a regular reading routine.Reading can be accomplished in many ways:
- An adult reading to a child
- A child reading to an adult or child
- A child reading independently
Reading calendars will be sent home in early October.
Philosophy, Expectations, Goals
STATEMENT OF PHILOSOPHY
Each child is unique and has special talents. Our job is to provide experiences for your children in an atmosphere in which these talents will be nurtured and new talents will be acquired and encouraged.
Children learn in different ways. Some students are more efficient learning visually, auditorily or kinesthetically. Children also exhibit different “intelligences” that need to be nurtured and strengthened. As their teachers, we need to provide options in classroom assignments and learning experiences that will encompass a variety of intelligences and learning styles.
A major goal of ours is to help children develop accountability for their learning by teaching and practicing time-management skills. Emphasis will be on quality of work rather than on quantity.
PROGRAM
Second grade will emphasize the following areas:
- Basic skills: skills all second graders need to master
- Higher-level thinking skills: analysis, synthesis, evaluation
- Enrichment: activities and projects
- Creativity: awareness of the world through different perspectives, different ways of solving problems
- Emphasis on the whole child: emotional, social and academic growth
EXPECTATIONS
We allow teachers to teach and students to learn by following the 3 R’s:
| Respect | Rights | Responsibility |
| Myself | To be safe | To be prepared |
| Others | To learn | To do my best |
| Teacher | To participate | |
| School and classroom materials |
COMMUNICATION
What makes a program work is the mutual respect and support we have for one another as teachers, students, and parents. We value one another from both a professional and a personal view. We value your insights and concerns. When problems occur we expect that:
- Students, parents, and teachers discuss concerns before they become major problems.
- If there are questions about homework, please contact us at school.
- If the homework assignment needs clarification, discontinue working on it and send a parent-signed note to us the next morning.
- If your child cannot complete homework because of an unusual occurrence, send a parent-signed note the next morning (i.e. the Mariners going to the World Series or out of town company). A parent note will excuse the child that day, but the work needs to be completed by the next day.
- We are also willing to set up a conference at your convenience to discuss concerns and your child’s progress
AFFECTIVE GOALS
- Make each child aware of his or her capabilities.
- Emphasize each student’s uniqueness.
- Communicate the need we all have for others; use a team effort approach.
- Develop self-confidence within each child, a positive feeling of his or her self-worth and that of others.
- Develop and nurture “happy” human beings.
COGNITIVE GOALS
- Have each child develop to his or her fullest potential at this point considering age, past and present performance, etc.
- Develop and improve basic skills (math/ language arts).
- Broaden creative skills (poetry, creative writing, art, music, drama).
- Develop decision-making and problem-solving skills.
- Expose the students to current events, broadening learning experiences.
- Develop divergent thinking skills and higher level thinking patterns (i.e. analysis, synthesis, evaluation).
- Strive for excellence and effort
Syllabus
The following outline is an overview of instruction for your child in second grade. We will use various strategies to meet the needs of our total group and the individual child. This is not intended to be an inclusive plan. We try to build on student interest and follow up on emergent topics by attending professional development workshops and working with colleagues.
Reading Pegasus (Kendall Hunt), multiple copy picture books, novel sets, and class and school library materials.
Skills/strategies practiced:
- Comprehension
- Fluency/expression/phrasing
- Predicting/checking
- Self-correction
- Vocabulary development
- Reading for meaning
- Main idea/detail
- Summarizing/sequencing
- Alphabetical order
- Story elements
- Finding facts/research
- Phonics
- Daily Oral Language/DOL-grammar
Assessments: Reading assessments are ongoing throughout the school year. The Developmental Reading Assessment is a tool that is used to measure growth from fall to spring.
Spelling lists will be individualized this year. The students will use their words to work on various skills. In addition to the personalized list we will have a whole class word list that we will also work on. The words will be from a unit of study, special spelling rules, or phonetic patterns.
Writing Lucy Calkins Writer’s Workshop (Units of Study for Primary Writing)
Writer’s Workshop will begin with a whole group mini lesson around a specific skill or discussion of a mentor text. Next the students will write independently for varying lengths of time. While students write, we will be conferencing with each student to guide them depending on individual needs. The Workshop concludes with a whole group meeting. During this time we share and discuss concepts from the mini lesson and from the independent writing time.
Units of study include:
- Launching/Small Moments (Personal Narratives)
- Craft of Revision
- Non-fiction: All About/How to Books
- Authors as Mentors
- Fiction
- Poetry
- Realistic Fiction
Assessments: Writing will be assessed on a continual basis.
Handwriting Our handwriting curriculum is called Handwriting Without Tears. We spend a little time each week formally teaching handwriting skills. Skills will be reinforced throughout the day and week.
Mathematics Everyday Mathematics, University of Chicago School of Mathematics Project
Units to be covered in second grade are:
- Numbers and Routines
- Addition and Subtraction Facts
- Place Value, Money, and Time
- Addition and Subtraction
- 3-D and 2-D Shapes
- Whole-Number Operations and Number Stories
- Patterns and Rules
- Fractions
- Measurement
- Decimals and Place Value
- Whole-Number Operations Revisited
- Year-End Reviews and Extensions
Assessments: On going records are kept of students’ work, teacher comments, and unit assessments.
Communication: Listening, speaking, and observing. Children will participate in all activities and will also have opportunities to give small presentations, reports, read-alouds, and to share their own work.
Science
Inquiry based with hands on investigations.
Balancing and Weighing (September-December)
This module introduces children to the relationship between balance and weight. A wide variety of ways to balance objects will be explored. Activities include making mobiles and balancing objects on a beam. Students learn to use an equal arm balance to compare the weight of objects and weigh objects. Further investigations enable students to solve problems by applying what they’ve learned about weighing. Finally, students apply what they have learned about balance and weights to problem solve situations that utilize dried foods.
Liquids (January-April)
Students will look at the unique characteristics of liquids, compare liquids, and investigate how they interact with solids and with one another. Theses hands on experiences not only are interesting and exciting but also create a strong foundation for future understanding of the complex properties of liquids and their interactions.
Soils (April-June)
Students will investigate many properties of soils and the importance of soil to plant growth. They use sieves and settling tubes to separate the various parts of soil samples. They investigate how water moves through soils, how soils dry out, and how soils changes in organic materials placed in the cup. Students start plants from seeds and observe how the roots grow into the soil. In a culminating activity, students grow plants in different soils and observe the different results.
Social Studies Two Storypath units: Communities and Rain Forest
- Forest Explorers
- Neighborhood
- Community
- Cultures
- Special celebrations
- Geography
Second Grade Spelling
Invented Spelling
Writing is a major part of all curricular areas. In class, students are encouraged to invent their own spelling by listening to the sounds that they hear in each word. Most of the students are familiar with this “guess and go” process which allows them to more freely express thoughts and ideas. At this point, allowing their ideas to flow freely is more important than the correct spelling of every word, especially when writing rough drafts, making observations, journal writing and note taking. Each day we are looking for spelling improvements, particularly in the grade level words. In order to address this need for accurate spelling, organized spelling test will be given weekly
Organized Spelling
The purpose of the spelling program in our classrooms is to enable all students to consistently spell correctly in their writing. Spelling is an individualized system where children work from the core second and third grade spelling lists from the Spell Well curriculum. Each Monday, children receive 10 words that were misspelled on their master lists (or missed words from a previous test). They copy them into their spelling logs and take the log home with them. They complete homework assignments in the spelling log.
A part of spelling lists will occasionally be the same for all second grade students. For example, if we are focusing on homophones/homonyms or antonyms.
Daily Schedule
9:20 Morning warm-up/DEAR (Drop Everything and Read)
9:40 Literacy
10:50 Specialist: computer lab, library, or PE
11:20 Recess—lunch
11:55 Science/Social Studies
1:00 Writer’s workshop
Monday: Art with Ms. Pleasure 12:45
Friday: Music with Mrs. Sur 1:15
1:45 Recess
2:00 Snack and read aloud
2:15 Math
3:15 Clean-up/pack-up
3:25 Dismissal