Mrs. Crooks's Second Grade Scoop
2015-2016 Volume 25
Table Talk
Reading
Unit: 5
Let's Make a Difference
Essential Question:
What does it mean to make a difference?
In this unit, Let’s Make a Difference, both the literary and informational texts will be connected as students develop an understanding of what it means to make a difference. Students will read biographies and legends about real life heroes as well as realistic fiction stories about characters who make a difference in their homes, schools, and communities.
Students will continue to develop and strengthen their understanding of literary standards RL 2.2, 2.5, informational standards RI 2.5, 2.6 and writing standard W 2.1 as they apply and their knowledge of these standards to more complex texts and tasks. Throughout this unit, students will recount key details about characters, setting, and plot in sequential order and explain how these details help them determine the central message, lesson, or moral of the story. Students will reinforce their knowledge and use of academic vocabulary words such as: retell, setting, characters, details, illustrator, author, rising action, major events, conflict, and solution as they recount stories. Students will also acknowledge different points of view of characters as they develop vocabulary such as voice, perspective, expression, and dialogue.
The targeted informational texts ask students to identify the main topic of the text or a specific paragraph or paragraphs.
Students ask and answer questions to discover the key details about a topic. Students will continue to know and use text features to locate key facts and information in texts.
This Week's Skills:
- thin or convergent questions -- are often factual and usually require one correct response; focus on understanding information and situations and may or may not lead to divergent questions.
- thick or divergent questions -- are inferential and may encourage creative thinking and problem solving; may involve brainstorming (listing of ideas), supposition (What ifs?), point of view (different perspectives), personal involvement (Would you..? Do you..?), and forced association (analogies).
- demonstrate an understanding of how story events move from the beginning to the end as they recount key details from the first half of the story and make predictions about what will happen next.
- recount the story from the points of view of different characters in the story.
- develop an understanding of cause and effect relationships as they relate to understanding the central message of the story.
Homework:
Students should be reading a least 20 minutes a night. They should be documenting the number of minutes they have read each night. They should also complete one appetizer, entre and dessert activity from the menu provided. menu of activities to choose from and complete. The log is due Friday, May 20th.
Spelling/Phonics
This Week's Skill:
This week we will be learning about consonant +le (i.e. lit/little and rip/ripple)
Homework:
Each night have your child choose one of the activities from the spelling menu. Your child/children may create a different activity to practice their words. Please remember to sign their spelling homework each night.
Test:
The spelling test will consist of 5 words and 3 high frequency words from this week's list. It will also include 2 words from previous skills. The students will then choose one word and use it in a meaningful sentence. This sentence will be graded for CAPSS.
Content (Social Studies)
Unit: North America
This Week's Skills:
- Continents and Oceans
- Physical and Human-Made Features
- Rural and Urban
- Climate and Vegetation
4th Quarter Graded Papers
Throughout the first 3 quarters of this school year, your child has come home with packets of their graded work that were to be reviewed, signed, and returned to school. In an effort to return graded work more promptly to all of you, we will discontinue sending work packets home. Instead, graded work will come home as it is graded so that it may be better used to support your student’s continued learning at home. Please be diligent in looking at your child’s work that is sent home, as some pieces of work will be marked sign and return. If work is not marked as sign and return, it can remain at home.
You will also see work coming home without grades on them at all. Instead these pieces of work will be marked for completion. Some of these pieces of work will have comments. It is our hope that these pieces will be reviewed at home and will better support students in their performance on graded pieces of work and assessments.
If you should have any questions about this change, please do not hesitate to ask your child’s homeroom teacher. Thank you for your continued support as we head into the final quarter of this school year.
Scholastic Book Order
Volunteer Training
Star Student
Every student has had an opportunity to be our star student. We will now choose a person each day to be our star student of the day.
June/July Birthday Celebration
Library
Important Dates
5/19 - MAP Testing (ELA)
5/23 - Last PTA meeting of the year (election of officers) 7 PM/Library
5/25 - MAP Testing (Math)
5/27 - Memorial Day Assembly (Wear read, white, and blue)
- 5/30 - School Closed (Memorial Day)
- 6/2 - June/July Birthday Celebration (3:00-3:30)
- 6/5 - Field Day
- 6/6 - Field Day (Rain Date)
- 6/13 Tentative Date for Grade 2 Talent Show and picnic
Contact Information
Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions. Here is my contact information:
Lynn Crooks: lcrooks@bcps.org
West Towson Phone: 410-887-3869
Assignment Book/ Take Home Folder: write a note in either
**I will try to get back to you as soon as possible, but sometimes I am unable to, so please allow me 24 hours to respond.