Second Grade Interim Work
Week of March 23
Observation Experience:
Go outside, experience, observe and write about something in nature. First, students can write a sentence or two on their own, and then a parent will check the spelling, and then they can do a rewrite. They should also draw a picture to accompany it. (The students have been doing this. They can do this exercise daily.)
This would be good to continue and they could try writing their entries in cursive. If you send me one or two of their entries via email, I will compile them and send them out for each student to read.
Here’s one of mine to share with your child: There is a gray hive not far off the ground. It is hanging in a bush. The hive is quiet and inactive. Little green buds are just coming out on the bush.
Calendar:
We started making individual calendars. We began with this month, March. They had to make the grid also. They should make a new calendar page for March, as well as ones for February and April. Have them think about upcoming things and remember things from last month, find them on a calendar and label them. They should do a seasonal drawing to accompany each of the calendar pages.
If this went smoothly enough, they could expand out into May and back to January. In class, we played around with Roman numerals in the calendar; they might like coming back to that.
Language Arts:
Make lists of “things” they see in nature and “movements” they see in nature. This exercise is the beginning of the study of grammatical parts of speech. After they finish the list, they can try to put it in alphabetical order.
These lists could become a little dictionary of words they could use for their nature journals. They could keep adding words and put them in alphabetical order and practice “looking up” words that are in their list.
Practice writing the days of the week and months of the year in both print and cursive.
Practice orally and in writing the weekly spelling list:
ran, read (indicate both forms), red, ride, right, rough, round, run, said, same, saw, school
Word Sorts: Give them the first word and see what words they can come up with using the same letters. hands (as,an,and,has,had,sad,sand,hand) strap (as,at,rat,pat,sat,sap,rap,tap,trap,traps) chimps (is,his,hip,sip,ship,chip,chimp)
Math:
Practice the 2,3,4, and 5 times tables as both multiplication and division. They should practice “skip-counting” the numbers and then answer questions orally.
They could make their own “flash cards” of these times tables.
Practice addition and subtraction with three-digit numbers, including borrowing and carrying.
Practice counting coins. They could add up a small pile and also practice different ways to get to a particular sum (i.e. What different combinations of coins would get to 63 cents?)
Reading:
Continue reading from books of choice.
Children in the early stage of reading should also practice the accompanying text from our play.
Ask your child to find a particular word in the text and to spell it aloud.
Children who are ready can read the newsletter from High & Mighty and discuss it with you.
