Students have been comparing and contrasting different versions of Cinderella stories from around the world. We are now digging deeper and comparing different books from the same series. You can practice this at home with books like The Magic Tree house or Ramona Quimby.
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We have been busy getting back into our routines after Winter Break and our snow days! Students are working on researching and writing biographies about famous people in history. Ask your student who they chose to learn about! We have some great online resources such as PebbleGo for students to use. Want to help at home? Head to the library and check out a book on your student's person. We will be compiling our research to create a flip book with the information from our biographies.
Students have been practicing comparing and contrasting two non-fiction texts. This is something that they can easily do at home with books, magazines, and even on Achieve3000. Ask your student about our reading challenge. Make sure that they are logging those minutes every day! Students are also practicing identifying the main idea in a text and finding the key details that support it. We practice this with Time for Kids in class. What are some ways that you can practice this at home? As we are approaching the middle of the year it is important that your child is choosing just right books. Ask your student or their teacher what reading level they are on so that you can continue to help your growing reader! Spend time talking and journaling with your student about what they are reading at home.
Students are practicing asking and answering questions about their reading. An easy way to practice this is to talk about the books that you are reading together at home. Try asking some questions such as: "Why do you think ____happened?" "What is the setting of the story?" "Who are the main characters?" "What is the problem and how is it solved?" "What lesson does the character learn in the story? Use details from the story to support your answer." "What happens in the story? Be sure to tell about the beginning, middle and end of the story." Make sure to ask your student's teacher if you have any questions or want any help! Students are learning about lessons and morals in fables and folktales. We are learning how to identify what the moral of a story is. Practice reading fables at home with your student and see if they can tell you what the moral of the story is! Students have also begun to write their own fairy tales. Get creative together and see if you can create a fairy tale on your own. Maybe you can come up with a new version of a favorite fairy tale on your own! Students are learning about author's purpose, or why an author has written a text. We're digging into whether the text informs the reader, teaches them something new, persuades the reader, changes their thinking, or entertains the reader, its something fun. This is an easy skill to practice at home. Grab a magazine and ask your student if they can tell you why the author wrote the article! In writing we have begun to talk about fact vs. opinion. Students are learning how to share their opinions in writing and will start to persuade other people based on their opinions. We have been practicing using the "OREO" model which has students state their opinion, give a reason why they feel this way, 3 examples to support their opinion, and then conclude by restating their opinion again. Students are learning about character traits. Character traits describe what a character says or does. We are practicing identifying different character traits of the main characters in stories. We are also working on finding evidence in our books that supports our thinking. Students are also beginning to learn about point of view. As second graders they need to be able to tell who is telling the story-is it a character or a narrator? They also should be able to identify the key words that are used that help them to know who is telling the story. For example if the story is told by a character then they might use words like I, me, or my. If the story is being told by a narrator then they would use words like he, she, they or them. We will begin to talk about comparing points of view between characters in the next few weeks. We will also start to compare different versions of the same story. As we get closer to March we will be diving into Cinderella stories from around the world. We will talk about the similarities and differences of these stories. Students are learning about the author's purpose. They're learning how to identify what the author wants them to know and why they wrote the non-fiction text. Students need to determine if the author's purpose is to inform them about something, to persuade someone, or to entertain. We have been focusing on informational texts and really working on deciding between informing and persuading for the author's purpose. When you read at home ask your student why they think they author wrote the book/article and what they author wants them to know or learn from it. We are also talking about main idea and key details. This can be VERY tricky. Students are learning how to decide if a detail is just a small piece of information or if it helps the reader to understand the main idea of the story. Students are also working on figuring out the main idea. We have students think about what the big picture is that they are thinking about while they read. We are working on gaining information from ALL texts! This takes a lot of practice and a keen eye. Students have been using both fiction and nonfiction texts to analyze the information in illustrations. We look closely at pictures and try to determine if a character feels good or bad, happy or sad, etc. and what is happening in the picture that tells us that. We have been practicing identifying text features! Students have learned about text features and how they help us to read informational texts. Now we are practicing identifying text features such as maps, graphs, diagrams, charts, and captions. Try and have your student point them out to you in a magazine or a newspaper! This month we are practicing taking the information the illustrations to better understand what we're reading. For example, students are given a picture or a cover of a book and need to be able to look at the details in that picture to gain information about what is happening. Example: 1. Who is pouring the tea? a. The girl b. The teddy bear c. The dragon 2. Where are the dragon and the girl sitting? a. In a house b. In the forest c. In a tropical jungle Alliteration Students have also been starting to learn about some figurative language. They've learned about alliterations so far. An alliteration is when words in a phrase or sentence begin with the same sound. We often think of tongue twisters when we talk about alliterations. EX: She sells sea shells by the sea shore. |
“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go.” Archives
March 2018
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