Week of January 18
Dear Parents and Caregivers,
Monday, 1/18 is Dr. King Jr.’s birthday observance. There will be no school.
The unit 5 open response and written assessment takes place on Wednesday, 1/20 and Thursday, 1/21 respectively. Please view the information below in the math section to guide your child’s study at home.
The social studies and science quizzes will be administered Tuesday, 1/26 and Wednesday, 1/27 respectively. Study guides will be given to students next week.
Language Arts:
Independent Reading (35-40 minutes at the beginning of each day)
Teachers administer the DIBELS and the Reading 3D Mid-year Benchmark tests each day during this time.
Differentiated Instruction:
- Administer the Mid-year Benchmark for Reading 3D.
- Writing Conferences
- Guided Reading
Spelling Words for the Week: away, brother, couldn’t, funny, great, into, knew, listen, please, went
Day 1:
Independent Reading
Morning meeting/morning message
Poetry Unit
What is a poem?
Interactive Read Aloud:
- Students listen to a poem entitled “Things” read by Eloise Greenfield.
- Teachers and students read together “Things”.
- Teachers and students discuss how our expression and patterns are different after listening to the author read the poem.
- Teachers introduce the genre of poetry by creating a chart entitled “What is a poem?” based upon the students’ thinking.
Writing:
- Revisit “Things” by Eloise Greenfield and ask students to write a short essay about why they like the poem.
Day 2:
Independent Reading
Morning meeting/morning message
Poetry Unit
Interactive Read Aloud:
- Teachers and students read Love That Dog by Sharon Creech.
- Classes take a Museum Poetry Walk reading selected poems from our read-aloud.
- Teachers revisit the “What is a poem?” chart and revise the chart based upon what was learned during the museum walk.
- Teachers introduce the concept of recipes/ingredients for cooking to guide the students to understand that there are ingredients in our recipe for writing a poem.
The first ingredients are: Use the eyes of a poet to look at the world closely and carefully, and use the eyes of a poet to look at ordinary things in fresh, new ways.
Writing:
- Students to select a favorite poem and write a short essay about why they like the poem.
Day 3:
Independent Reading
Morning meeting/morning message
Real Men Read Program
- Assigned Mentors will read, discuss and analyze children’s literature in the second grade classes once every month. Each month a copy of the selected text will be provided to each student. After each unit, the students will bring their copy to add to their home library. We are extremely excited about Real Men Read and look forward to sharing valuable children’s literature with your family.
Writing: Poetry inspired by common objects
- Students explore (seashells, mirrors, pecans, artichokes, and precious rocks) and note characteristics of the objects in order to write a poem.
Day 4:
Independent Reading
Morning meeting/morning message
Poetry Unit
Interactive Read Aloud:
Small Poems by Valerie Worth
- Introduce students to the idea of patterns in poetry. Discuss how “line breaks” make up a poetic form, that poetry has music, and the music of poetry comes from how words are put on a page.
- Model to students how some poems would look written as prose. Then show students the poems the way they were originally written.
- Using word cards and pocket charts, let students experiment with making a poem with line breaks and patterns.
Writing:
- Students write short poems based upon notes from the objects they explored previously.
Math:
Unit 5 Review
- Writing the fact family for any given domino (e.g. 2, 3 the fact family is 2+3=5, 3+2=5, 5-2=3, 5-3=2)
- Counting in the thousands (2,123; 2,124; 2,125…)
- Ordering numbers in the 100s and 1,000s (from least to greatest)
- Drawing line segments
- Drawing a line segment that is parallel to a given line
- Drawing a line segment that is not parallel to a given line
- Identifying polygons such as hexagon, rhombus, square, rectangle, triangle, trapezoid
- Identifying 3-D shapes such as cone, cylinder, sphere, pyramid, rectangular prism
- Identifying shapes that have lines of symmetry
- Understanding attributes
Math Open Response- For this task, students use triangle pattern blocks to make polygons and figures that are not polygons and to describe why some figures are not polygons.
Unit 5 Written Assessment
6.1 Addition of Three or More Numbers
Objective: To review strategies for solving addition problems, with emphasis on problems having three addends
- Mental Math and Reflexes/Math Message
- Math Message Follow-Up (Whole-Class Activity)
- Adding Three Numbers in Any Order (Whole-Class Discussion)
Differentiated Instruction:
- Playing Three Addends (Partner Activity)
Science:
Graphing The Weights of the Objects (2 days)
- Students review the information on the data table from the previous lesson.
- Students make bar graphs that show the weights of the six objects.
- Students read about how animals are weighed at the zoo.
Social Studies:
Integrated with Language Arts
- Interactive Read Aloud: Happy Birthday Dr. King by Jean Marzollo
Read and discuss Dr. King’s contributions to society.
- Chart key concepts to assist students to understand the civil rights movement.
- Interactive Read Aloud: The Story of Ruby Bridges by Robert Coles. Read and discuss Ruby’s experiences with desegregation, how she struggled and overcame adversities.
- Word study: elementary school, ordered, marshals, anxious, irritable, mobs, persuade
Thank you for your support.
Anh Tuan Hoang, LuAnn Lawson