10/3/2015 0 Comments Bienvenidos ~ Welcome to 2nd GradeSecond Grade Second grade is a big year for comprehending text. Students shift from learning to read to learning from reading. For Spanish Immersion students this year is a big one for comprehending the Spanish language. They have the tools to decode in Spanish, they recognize many high frequency words and they are familiar with print and text structures. As soon as they build automaticity in reading, their mind is freed up to think about what they read and to start to make sense of it. Will their comprehension in Spanish be equal to that of their comprehension in English....? Not yet and probably not for a while, but with support in the classroom and continued practice reading illustrated Spanish texts the students will build their strengths in vocabulary acquisition and detecting clues from context. Both valuable skills to have in your first and second language! (And very helpful in acquiring a third.) Curriculum In our first month of school we have focused on routines in the classroom. I have stressed the value of effort over being first to finish, independence to make good learning choices and responsibility to take care of others. Some lessons have included: What to do when you are finished, How to study with a partner, How to use a 'one foot' voice when working with a small group and How to get started right away on a task. While we will continue to practice classroom routines and expectations we can now begin to delve deeper into the content. Our main goals in math for this month will be: telling time to the nearest five minutes, solving problems with coins and counting to 1,000 by 2s, 5s, 10s, and 100s. We will also explore the concept of equal groups and odd and even numbers. Another math routine we will begin is knowing math facts with numbers 1-20. We will use our studying skills to solve sums and differences quickly with mental math strategies. In reading we have already been practicing spelling patterns to help us decode new words. We have been building our stamina as readers both in reading aloud and reading silently. While we still have some work to do to build word recognition, expression and automaticity; we also take time to practice reading comprehension strategies. Right now we are practicing visualizing, which is creating a mental picture of what is happening in the text. We also increase our comprehension by identifying characters, setting and events that happen in the fictional stories we read. As you read at home with your child ask "What pictures you see in your head as you read or listen to this story?", "Who are the characters and the setting in this story?", "What happens in the beginning, middle and end?". Upcoming reading strategies this month are:
FALL We will be celebrating the fall season in many ways in the classroom. The week of October 12th (Columbus Day) the students have the field trip to the Cranberry Farm, Bog Hollow, on Thursday. During that week the students will have many hands on, cross curricular activities to learn about the science of plants, harvest season, math and writing- all involving cranberries. During the last week of October we will be celebrating the season with Sra. Grau's class with fall projects using leaves and pumpkins. Spanish Language Assistant Last but not least, we were thrilled this past week to welcome Silvia Muñiz Pérez, our new Spanish Language Assistant. I am sure the students shared this news with you, as I was out of the classroom to pick her up on Tuesday and she spent the day in our classroom on Thursday. Silvia is from Galicia, Spain and has a background in primary education. She will be working at both Clough and Memorial and comes to us through a program of the Spanish Consulate in Boston. We have collaborated with the Consulate and Education Advisor there from the start of the district's Spanish Immersion program. They have been extremely helpful in providing resources and personnel to support our SI program. I look forward to Silvia being a great addition to our classroom. She loved meeting the students and was impressed by their Spanish and the fact that our whole day was in Spanish. Towards the end of the day on Thursday she said to me, "You just speak to them all day only in Spanish??" She also enjoyed reading with the students and sharing about her culture and community in Spain. I look forward to having her share more about Europe with the students in conjunction with our social studies unit on the seven continents. Yours in education, Sra. Cardamone
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AuthorSra. Cardamone Archives
February 2019
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