Mrs. Muench's Second Grade 

Class News  2011-2012

Okay....about Spelling City!  Go onto spelling city and in the search box put in my full name, Susan Muench.  Once a new screen comes up, scroll down.  You will see many MBES teacher names...select mine.  When it comes to Susan Muench...scroll down and you SHOULD see the current Macmillan story and spelling words. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that all goes smoothly.

 I added a new site to Symbaloo..Toy Theater.  Lots of fun math practice games.

Reading Units of Study Across the Year 

Unit 1- Readers Build Good Habits- Spotlight on processes, building stamina, establishiing reading partners, and monitoring for meaning

Unit 2 -Readers Use Strategies to Figure Out Tricky Words and Understand Their stories- Spotlight on decoding, words in context, monitoring for menaing, creating mental images, and fluency

Unit 3- Readers Talk and Think About the Characters in Their  Books- Spotlight on character development, inferring, determining importance, accumulating text, monitoring for meaning

Unit 4- Readers Build Comprehension by Readiing with Fluency and Paying Attention to Story Elements- Spotlight on plot development, conflict/conflict resolution, summarizing, inferring, determining importance, accumulating text, and monitoring for meaning

Unit 5- Nonfiction Reading Strategies: Readers Can Get Information and Grow Ideas from Nonfiction Text- Spotlight on text structures, determining importance, inferring, synthesizing, main idea and summarizing

Unit 6- Readers Have Word Power, Build Their Vocabularies and Talk Well With Partners- Spotlight on decoding, words in context, questioning, raising the level of talk with partnerships

Unit 7- Readers Become Experts about the Series They Love- Spotlight on character development, accumulating text, synthesizing, predicting, and determining importance

Unit 8- Readers Read Nonfiction (within Social Studies and Science)- Spotlight on text structures, determining importance, synthesizing, main idea, and summarizing

Unit 9- Readers Make Plans for Their Summer Reading-Spotlight on reading growth across the year 

 Math Units of Study Across the Year

Weeks 1 - 5        Addition and Subtraction Strategies

Weeks 6 -9        Place Value Concepts, Counting and More

Weeks 10 - 16    Adding and Subtracting Two-Digit Numbers

Weeks 17 - 20    Patterns and Algebra

Weeks 21 - 22    Fraction Concepts and Time

Weeks 23 - 27    Length

Weeks 28 - 29    Capacity and Weight

Weeks 30 - 33     Number Patterns to 1,000 & Four Digit Numbers

Weeks 34 - 38     Adding and Subtracting Three-Digit Numbers

Writing Units of Study Across the Year

August/September           Launching the Writers Workshop

September/October        Small Moment Writing in Personal Narrative

November/December        Authors as Mentors

December/January           Thinking about Spelling, Conventions and the

                                        Sound of our Writing

January/February             Writing All About Books with Big Umbrella 

                                         Topics

February/March                Poetry:Viewing the World Through the Eyes

                                         of the Poet

March/April                      Craft of Revision

April/May/June                Realistic Fiction                               

*Make sure your child has a quiet, well-lit place to do homework.

*Make sure the materials your child needs, such as paper, pencils, and a dictionary, are available.

*Help your child with time management.  Establish a set time each day for doing homework. 

*Be positive about homework.  The attitude you express about homework will be the attitude your child acquires.

*When your child does homework, you do homework.  If your child is reading, you can read too. 

*When your child asks for help, provide guidance, not answers.

*When the teacher asks that you play a role in homework, do it.  It shows your child that the school and home are a team.

*If homework is meant to be done by your child alone, stay away.  Homework is a great way for kids to develop independent, lifelong learning skills.

*Stay informed.  Make sure you know the purpose of homework.

*Help your child figure out what is hard homework and what is easy homework.  Do the hard work first.  This will mean he will be most alert when facing the biggest challenges.

*Reward effort!

*Please remember to record your child's daily reading on the Recreational Reading Log.  The log will be used as a homework grade and will be submitted to the Recreational Reading Committee for Reading bucks.