Second Grade Overview

Reading made fun and easy

* Use the five finger rule. If five or more words on a page are unfamiliar to your child, the book is too difficult.

* Read easier text to practice fluency and expression.

* Take turns reading pages with your child. When you read, you are demonstrating good reading behaviors.

* Ask your child questions as you read together to check for comprehension.

* Make frequent trips to your local library to get new books to practice reading. Students are more likely to read, when the books are about something they enjoy.

Reading Tips for Parents of Second Graders

Lots of great ideas and strategies to use with your 2nd grader at home.

http://www.readingrockets.org/article/7836

How well do you know your basic facts?

Strategies for Solving Basic Facts

In Second Grade we want our students to begin to master their basic facts. Here are some strategies that we teach in class that you can also use at home. If we are all using the same vocabulary things should fall into place nicely.

Adding Zero:

when you add zero you add nothing.

Adding One - Count up

Adding one means say the larger number, then jump up one number, or count up one number.

Example: 6 + 1 = say 6 then 7

Adding Two – Count up Two

Adding two means say the larger number, then jump up or count up twice.

Example: 9 + 2 = say 9 then 10 then 11

Turn Around Facts.

The answer will be the same regardless of the order you add the two numbers. Order doesn’t matter.

Example: 9 + 2 = 2 + 9

Adding 10

Adding ten means jumping up ten (think of a hundred’s chart). The ones digit stays the same but the ten’s digit increases by one. Using a hundreds board to teach this works well to build understanding. Have students actually count up the ten and write down the result. Then check with them the pattern and explain why it works every time.

Example: 5 + 10 = 15 or 10 + 7 = 17

Adding 9

Remind students of the jump of ten 5 + 10 = 15. A student would say (in their head) “5 plus 10 = fifteen”

The five and fifteen are naming the same number of ones.

With the nines – a student must count down one in the ones.

Example: A student would say “5 + 9 = fourteen”.

Work with lots of examples until the idea is understood:

5 + 10 = fifteen 5 + 9 = fourteen 7 + 10 = 17 7 + 9 = sixteen

Adding 8

This works exactly the same only a child must think 2 less. Using the examples above students would say; 5 + 10 = 15 so 5 +8 = 13, 7 + 10 = 17 so 7 + 8 = 15 (2 less

Double Numbers

When you add a double you are counting by that number once.

For example: 4 + 4 = think of 4, 8 … counting by fours

Practice skip counting by each number in turn:

Doubles occur everywhere in life. For example: an egg carton is 6 + 6, two hands are 5 + 5, 16 pack of crayons has 8 + 8

Doubles plus 1 or 2

To use the near doubles strategy a student first has to master the doubles. Then, if the double is known, they use that and count up or down one to find the near double.

Example: 4 + 4 = 8, 5 + 4 = 9 (count up one) or: 4 + 4 = 8 so 4 + 3 = 7 (count down one)

Working with Words

We will be working with the fifty “onset” letters and clusters that are used to generate our pattern words each week. They will be useful to you as the children study their word wall words each week. We use them on Monday to brainstorm as many words as we can that use the two/three patterns and that list stays posted on the board for the children to refer to during our daily practice. We then practice putting prefixes and suffixes on to those pattern words. These onset letters may be useful to you as your child practices the words at home. Please let me know if there are any questions.

Here are some commonly used prefixes and suffixes that can be used with weekly word wall word practice.

prefixes suffixes

un -ed

pre -ing

re -ly

de -ful

im -able/ible

in -er

dis -ish

non -ion/tion

ex -less

-est

-ment

-ness

-ous