Peek at the Week 9/14-9/18

It was a nice (short) week! Even with the holiday on Monday and Grandparent's Day Friday, we still managed to cram a lot into just three days! 

At the beginning of the year (and really all throughout the year) I love introducing my students to new series and authors that I think they will enjoy as 2nd graders. Henry and Mudge always becomes a favorite and the kids are so sad to say goodbye to this fun series. We spent the past two weeks focusing on retelling the plot and analyzing characters. I like to start with simple texts at the beginning of the year so that we can really understand the comprehension skills.

I model the skill of retelling with a lot of whole group read alouds. The first week we practiced retelling together and I guided them through the process in whole group and small groups. This week we were ready to read the text and retell independently and with partners. They did a pretty good job for the beginning of the year! This is a tough skill which we will practice a lot throughout the year. The hardest part for them is writing only the most important parts rather than all of the little details. They write one sentence for each of the four most important parts of the story using the clue words "first, next, then, last." This is a great skill to practice while reading at home. 

We also started working on our phonics skill for the upcoming week, inflected endings (adding -ed and -ing to the end of a word). There are two rules that we will focus on this week: doubling the consonant and dropping the silent e. We have a poem that we will learn:

It was so nice to meet so many grandparents on Friday. We started the morning with a prayer service outside to honor 9/11 and we placed flags around the campus. The kids met up with their grandparents at 11 for mass then came by the classroom before they headed to lunch. I wish I could have spent more time with them. 

This week in:

ELA: 

Phonics: inflected endings -Ed and -ing. Dropping the silent "e" before adding ed or ing and doubling the consonant on a short VC word. 

Spelling words:

Sight words:

Comprehension skil: main idea and details. We will focus on identifying the main idea and details of a whole story and also of specific paragraphs within the text. Students need to be able to understand the difference between the main idea and just a detail. They should also be able to read a paragraph and identify the main ideas and the details that support the main idea. 

Vocab skill: alphabetize 

Grammar/conventions: Declarative and Interrogative sentences. 

Centers:

iPad app: itooch 

Computers: Highlightkids.com

Sentence pocket book

Inflected endings word hunt 

Religion:

Tomorrow during our religion period we are going to take time and pray for our friend Carson. Hopefully you have talked with your children about his surgery and answered many of their questions. We are going to spend the afternoon praying, reflecting, and making cards and a video message for him. I will deliver everything to him as soon as he is ready for visitors. Please continue praying for Carson and the Ugguccioni family. We have such an incredible community at St. James. I am so touched to hear of the outpouring of love you have showed their family this weekend. I know it means the world to them to have you all by their side.