New to second grade is Fundations. Fortunately the students did this program last year so they are the experts. This is a program that is funded by the Learning Alliance and is part of our "Moonshot Moment" to have at least 90% of third graders on grade level by the end of third grade. It teaches phonics, spelling rules, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. We start the day with drill sounds that includes doing all sounds - including digraphs, glued sounds, etc each morning. Students are so well trained that they can actually be the drill leader for the day. This also makes it easy for me to watch the children repeat back and see their mouths making the correct sounds. Next we read trick words - words that cannot be sounded out. We have a variety of activities that we do after that - building words, word of the day, composition, echo find letters and words, make it fun etc. It leaves no room for errors in spelling as the rules are directly taught. Sometimes when we are older we forget why we double the s in miss or why c or k comes at the beginning of a word - with fundations the rules are explicitly taught.
Students take turn being the drill leaders.
Students are taught the rules for spelling and how words are constructed.
We (teachers) have overwhelming support from our reading coach and the Learning Alliance. They are on hand to answer any questions that we may have as we begin this program.
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