We are having a great time in Blackberry, continuing community and making great academic strides!
In our first literacy group, students have learned to read and spell words with: digraphs, blends and the glued sounds: all, am, an, ang, ing, ong, ung, ank, ink, onk, unk. This month the concept of a base word and a suffix was introduced! R controlled vowels (also known as “Bossy R”) were also introduced. Students have learned the “bonus letter” rule for spelling words such as: wall, off, and toss. In second literacy, we’re doing ild, ind, and ire, closed syllable exceptions. We’ve also done -ost and -old. All students have begun readers’ theatre, which helps withfluency and expression. Our first performance is about the 3 Billy Goats Gruff. Our goals are to build confidence in reading out loud and using your talking voice when reading out loud (projection and articulation). Blackberrians have responded positively to readers’ theatre; they say it’s their favorite and they want the challenge of a longer production. We have been reading a variety of decodable fiction and nonfiction texts as a group. Continue having your child read aloud to you daily for at least ten minutes.
In first grade math, students have been building their number fluency and flexible thinking. They are learning strategies such as: counting on, making pairs of ten, double facts, and double facts plus or minus 1. This month students made their own double flap cards and practiced writing their own fact families. Students also practiced writing story problems that matched an equation. We also learned the math terms “sum” and “digit.” We are continuously practicing our skip counting by 2s, 5s, and 10s. In second grade math, we’ve wrapped up our work with data collection and graphing. We are working on different ways numbers can be composed and decomposed, also known as fact families. We also learned to play a new math game with a deck of cards, so if you have a deck of cards at home, please ask your 2nd grade Blackberrian to show you how.
In October, in science class in Blackberry, we have taken deeper dives into fish and mammals. We have studied these animals closely—what makes them different and what makes them similar—and we will start investigating their environments as we continue our work as scientists. In cultural studies, we’ve discussed cultural appropriation and what that might look like, and how we address it. We are also continuing our unit on economics. We’ve talked about the concepts of consumers, producers, and scarcity. Our end goal is to create a market where we can be producers, consumers, and we can provide services. We will send more information to you about this as it comes!
Best,
Leslie
P.S We were able to perform our readers theater for our buddies and some Temescalians and it was so beautiful to watch all the readers shine!
