Testing, Targets, and Centers

We have had quite a week in second grade!
We finished both the reading and math MAP on Tuesday and Thursday morning. Due to the new format, some students need more time to finish. There were some very lengthy reading passages!  Make-up times will be scheduled for next week.

Working on the reading MAP section.


Our targets for the beginning of our first trimester have been posted.  We refer to these targets often. My goal is for the students to understand exactly what we are learning and how the independent class work and activities help us to meet these targets.

Math Targets

Reading Targets

Writing Targets

Today (Thursday) the children wrote a letter to me telling what they thought made them special.  I was amazed!  What a talented group of children!  These letters allowed us to work on 2 of our targets: adding commas in the greeting and closing of a letter, and writing a personal narrative.

During our literacy time this week we had an opportunity to practice our centers.  We worked on managing our time, cleaning up and moving to the next center at the signal, and working quietly and independently.  Centers include work work (spelling and vocabulary), listening to reading, reading with a partner, writing, poetry, reading comprehension, and meeting with me.Next week you can expect to begin seeing this work coming home.

Working on writing a personal narrative or a realistic fiction story.

Working on word work.

Reading with a partner.
(They love to sit under my desk!)

Reading with partners.

Working on word work.

  To correlate with our report card I will mark work on the targets with the letters E (extends), M (meets), B (below), W (well below).

Please click on the link below to see a copy of the second grade report card, as well as an explanation of the above marks.

http://www.district96.k12.il.us/about/curr_frameworks/2012-12ReportCards/Gr2ReptCard12_13.pdf

My goal is to keep you informed by regularly updating you with the performance of your child on our learning targets.  Please rest assured if a student receives a B or W I continue to work closely with them. In addition, I will send home additional practice to work on at home.



I hope you have heard about our newest read-aloud book, The Chocolate Touch. We are using this for a variety of comprehension skills: predicting, visualizing, and answering and asking questions to show understanding.  I have included a picture of our Asking Questions chart.  When reading at home with your child, please have them come up with questions about the book they are reading.  These questions should be able to be answered by going back into the text.  Questions can relate to the characters, setting, or plot.

Asking Questions chart.

Just a reminder, you can follow our class on Twitter.  I have made the account private, so I will need to approve your following.  You can find us @MrsYutakis.

Have a wonderful weekend!