Enduring Understandings - important ideas that students should carry with them years beyond the instruction received this year.

• Different strategies and skills are required to understand a variety of materials.
• People apply critical thinking skills when reading, writing, speaking, listening, and viewing.
• People access, read, evaluate, and use a variety of resources to get information.

Essential Questions

• What does it mean to "understand," why do we need to understand what we read or hear, and what strategies and skills can we use to understand a variety of materials?
• What is critical thinking, why is important, and how can we use critical thinking skills?
• Why do I need a variety of resources? How do I access information and use it responsibly? How do I evaluate resources?
• How can I access information from a variety of resources, evaluate it, and use it responsibly?

Standards
Must be Mastered by End of Year Must be Introduced Other Standards & E-skills

Phonemic Awareness:

Identify and make oral rhyming words

    Use knowledge of blending and segmenting, manipulating one or two syllable words

    Identify presence of word endings

Phonics:

See Correct Letter Formation from August

Recognize and use letter-sound relationships including dipthongs, common vowel patterns, and common word endings to decode new or unknown words

    Recognize alliteration

Fluency:

Read grade level materials attending to punctuation, phrasing, and intonation

    Adjust reading pace in response to difficulty of text

Vocabulary:

    Understand and generate vocabulary specific to content

    Use context clues to understand word meanings

        At the end of quarter one, students will be able to read 100 of these sight words. Other words will be learned from phonics, spelling and vocabulary programs to total the expected 1000+ words

Comprehension:

Understand genre (narrative, poetry, expository)

Read and follow simple directions

Draw inferences

    Use a variety of strategies to make meaning of texts:  visualization, graphic organizers, text structure, mental images, questioning

Research

I        Interpret information from simple diagrams, charts, and graphs.

Writing: Writes for a Variety of Purposes  2^nd Grade Writing Rubric
    Write lists, poems, descriptive sentences extending to a paragraph
    Identify and use the writing process
    Write descriptive sentences extending to a paragraph
        Understand that intended audience and purpose influence writing
        Identify traits of quality writing by examining published authors and peers’ writing
        Given a prompt, write descriptive paragraphs using a writing process approach 

Writing: Conventions, Mechanics, and Grammar
    Uses upper/lower case letters
    Appropriate spacing
    Uses end punctuation
    Writes in complete sentences
    Uses correct subject/verb agreement

    Knows subject, noun, verb sentence parts
    Spells K, 1^st and 50 2^nd Grade words correctly  D11 Spelling List
    Uses phonemic awareness and appropriate strategies to spell
    CVC, CVCe regular plurals
    Writes legibly

Resources

Sight Word Powerpoint:  Basic sight word recognition is essential for reading fluency and comprehension. This PowerPoint Slides will be a quick way to practice 220 essential high-frequency words with your child. Sit down and challenge your student by asking him/her how many words he/she knows. If they do not know these words yet, it will be a fun way to start.

Sight Word Powerpoint with Sentences:  This presentation includes the 220 essential high-frequency words and an example of those words used in context. This will be a great way for children to practice sight word recognition within the context of a basic sentence.

Audio Sight Word PowerPoint Slides Slides:  The following link will allow your child to work with smaller amounts of the 220 sight words children need to master by the end of third grade.  The links are divided into groups of 20 (11 lists in all).  Start with List 1 and work through List 11.  When you feel your child has mastered all 220 words (with 90%) accuracy, try out the PowerPoint Slides presentations found in slots 1 and 2. The PowerPoint Slides Slides in slots 1 and 2, however, do not have audio support. 
Sight Words Part 1   Sight Words Part 2    Sight Words Part 3    Sight Words Part 4    Sight Words Part 5
Sight Words Part 6    Sight Words Part 7    Sight Words Part 8    Sight Words Part 9    Sight Words Part 10
Sight Words Part 11

The King of Soundsound:  This challenging reading activity provides access to all 44 phonemes (sounds) that our language provides. By reading this story and practicing it with your child, you will ensure that your child is exposed to the multifaceted sounds our language makes. At the end of this story, you will also find several phonogram poems that will improve your child's fluency. Read these with your child and have a blast!

Phonogram Powerpoints:  A phonogram is a word part that contains a group of letters that are often found together (ight, ell, ought, ook, oop, ump, uss). It is important for children to recognize phonograms as part of their phonics training. These powerpoints will provide easy access to over 200 different phonograms you can practice with your child. The more phonograms they can pronounce, the more words they will be prepared to read and sound out.

Lessons