What's Happening in 2A?: This week at a glance...

Monday, October 31, 2011

This week at a glance...

WOW!! Can you believe it's already Halloween? I've been LOVING the warm falls days since I really do not like winter!!! I enjoyed meeting with everyone last week for conferences.   Thank you for coming in and for continuing to work with your child.

Today is our Halloween party. We are carving pumpkins at the end of the day. Thanks to the parent volunteers for helping and also to those that donated pumpkins. I really appreciate your help!!!!!

Tomorrow we are heading to UNI to see the play The Frog Prince. We are leaving promptly at 9:30 so please make sure your child is here on time. The school is providing a snack and lunch so do not send any food to school with your child. We are taking Hawkeye Stages busses and we will provide movies.   Please do not send movies or any other electronics to school. We will eat our lunch at the UNI dome and then head to Gallagher-Bluedorn for the play. We will return to school right before dismissal.

In literacy news, we continue to truck along with our new reading series. These last few weeks the students have learned 2 comprehension strategies: determine important information and determine author's purpose. These were also introduced to contractions and dictionaries.   We are not doing word study this week due to the short week last week and the field trip this week. Just a reminder that Book-it is due tomorrow so if your child has read 400 minutes please sign and return the pizza paper with your child. A new recording sheet will come home tomorrow.

We finished up our 2nd math test last week and this week we began a quick review of place value and money. We are shopping for fruits and veggies today in math. It is important that your child can identify and count coins - please practice this at home if needed. I also hope that all students will achieve fact power this year and won't need to rely completely on fingers or number grids. Please practice basic facts with your child as well.

We are going to wrap up our butterfly unit in the next week or so. All of our butterfly friends went from larva to pupae to adults. This was really exciting for 2A students!!!

I hope everyone has a super week. Happy Halloween!!!!

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Comprehension Skills and Strategies

Distinguish Fact and Opinion: Your child learned that facts are statements that can be proved. Opinions are what someone believes. The words I believe, I think, and in my view are clues that someone is expressing an opinion. Most students are able to state a fact; however, opinions are more challenging. Please practice this at home.

Sequence Events: Sequence is the order in which event take place. Clue words such as first, next, then, and last help readers know when events occur. When your child is summarizing have them sequence the events using the clue words.

Make Inferences: This is a strategy that readers use to understand what they are reading. When making an inference, readers need to fill in information that the author did not include. Readers must combine what they know with details from the text.
Pictures and words (text clues) + background knowledge (what we know) = an inference

Summarize: A summary is a paragraph or a statement in your own words that gives the most important ideas from the text that was read. Step 1: find the main ideas from the selection. Step 2: shorten and combine those ideas.

Categorize and Classify: We can categorize and classify objects, evens, ideas, and characters by how they are alike and how they fit into groups. When students are reading they can find types of things that are similar and group them into the same category.

Monitor Comprehension: Students must ALWAYS monitor their comprehension while they are reading. If they don't understand what was read they need to reread it. When readers are confused they can use "fix-up" strategies. Here is a list of those strategies:
*reread more slowly
*look up words
*read on
*use picture clues
*summarize
*ask for help