Friday, May 18th
Reader’s Workshop
This week in Workshop we spent time reflecting on Reader’s Workshop this year. We spent time talking and writing about what kinds of books we enjoyed reading in Workshop. Then we set our Summer Reading Goals to help promote good reading this summer! Last we took time to reflect on what we liked about Workshop in our classroom. I have been continuing to do end of the year reading assessments with each child one-on-one.
Writer’s Workshop
In Workshop this week we began our study of the Fantasy Writing genre! Our students were exposed to some new mentor texts as well as given the opportunity to immerse themselves in fantasy books. We created a giant list of Fantasy features and are eagerly awaiting the chance to write our first fantasy pieces!
Math Workshop
This week we finished up Unit 12 in Math. We took a look at strategies for multiplication and division while also reviewing concepts of measurement, timelines, graphing and time. Our last Math benchmark will be on Thursday, May 24th.
Social Studies
This week we began our fifth and final unit on our Local Government. We spent time pre-assessing our students to see what they already knew about our local government. Then we talked about the Pledge of Allegiance and the meaning behind words like: justice, liberty, republic and allegiance. Last we watched a DVD showing the features of our “Local Government” and the impact the government has on so many different aspects of our day!
Important Dates & News
Thursday, May 24th: MVP Celebration @ 2:30-3:30 pm in Old Gym
Thursday, May 24th: PTA sponsored Ladies Night Out
Friday, May 25th: 3pm - Memorial Day Parade
Tuesday, May 29th: Neil Levin Cartooning Workshop
Friday, June 1st: Ice Cream Social
Friday, June 8th: Volunteers needed starting at 9am to help re-organize the Media Center for 2012-2013 school year
Monday, May 21, 2012
Friday, May 11, 2012
Friday, May 11th
Friday, May 11th
Just a friendly reminder, the items for our MVP Celebration are due no later than MONDAY. As of today, I only have all of the items from half of our parents. In order for this special event to be a success, I need to be able to get everything prepared ahead of time. This isn’t a project that I will be able to put together at the last minute. Thanks in advance for your cooperation!
Reader’s Workshop:
In Reader’s Workshop, we continued to take a closer look at glossaries and indices. Nonfiction reading partners examined these important nonfiction text features from different books and discussed what they noticed together as a class. Then readers took some time to reflect in their reading journals how these important nonfiction text features helped them with their nonfiction reading.
Writer’s Workshop:
This week we have been PUBLISHING our bird feature articles! Students wrapped up their editing and revising as they took one last look at their rough drafts. Your child’s article will be displayed in the hallway very soon! Students who finished publishing their magazine articles were given time to work on their own blank books about “Birds”. We discussed including a detailed cover, table of contents, dedication page, about the author page, glossary, index and a blurp on the back.
Math Workshop:
Our mathematicians have been reviewing the concepts of mathematics we have learned this year. We’ve taken a look at time and different ways to write time notations, including word phrases (a quarter to four, half past twelve, etc.). Students also worked on telling time and looking at elapsed time. Next, we reviewed our addition and subtraction strategies and talked about the different ways we have learned to add and subtract, as well as which strategy works best for different kinds of problems. We also plotted data on a time line and students had the opportunity to practice their multiplication, single and double addition facts through fun math games. These are great concepts to be reviewing at school and at home!
Word Study:
In Word Study this week we took a look at words with spelling patterns such as: -ack, -ake, -ail, -ant and used them to spell new words. Students then sorted words with similar consonant clusters. We ended the week by practicing some very important high frequency words with a friendly game of GO FISH!
Social Studies:
This week in Social Studies we continued to be very busy! We started working on our Career Choices and even completed our first resumes. It was pretty neat to see the list of credentials the kids came up with for their qualifications for different jobs! Ask your child what job they selected. We also spent time reviewing for our Local Economy test which we took on Friday.
Important Dates/News:
We are in NEED of erasers... No matter how many new pencils we sharpen, erasers are a hot item. If you can send in any "pink" bigger erasers (not pencil top), that would be awesome! Thank you!
Monday, May 14th: Items that are due:
-MVP person selection form
-2 different pictures of your child and their MVP (no computer printed copies please)
-A digital copy of those photographs emailed to my school email.
-$5.00 to cover the cost of the project and celebration
¬-Please also note that the MVP Celebration is strictly for 2nd graders and their MVP. Please make other arrangements for any younger siblings during this special event.
Monday, May 14th: 6:30-7:30pm - Meet n' Greet with Mr. Drewno (parents only)
Wednesday, May 16th: 9:30-10:30am - Meet n' Greet with Mr. Drewno (parents only)
Friday, May 18th: Field Day (We are on the field in the P.M.) - Email went out to use "Sign-Up Genius" to volunteer for a time - Second Grade needs to send in "Cookie Donations" - please no peanuts. Remember it is an all school lunch!
Thursday, May 24th: MVP Celebration @ 2:30-3:30 pm in Old Gym
Thursday, May 24th: PTA sponsored Ladies Night Out
Friday, May 25th: 3pm - Memorial Day Parade
Tuesday, May 29th: Neil Levin Cartooning Workshop
Friday, June 1st: Ice Cream Social
Friday, June 8th: Volunteers needed starting at 9am to help re-organize the Media Center for 2012-2013 school year
Here's an email I wanted to share with all of our 204 families! I plan on stopping by sometime tomorrow to see Chloe participate in her first Relay for Life. Aiming for later in the day!
Hi Mrs Weckstein
I wanted to thank for allowing Chloe to do her fundraising with her class! Relay for life is an event I started to be involved in since I was in 4th grade. Relay is something very close to my heart and I love seeing chloe and all of her friends supporting and involved with. I was told that some kids,families and teachers wanted to come to the day of the event and participate in the fun! Everyone is welcomed and invited to join all the involved teams. Their will be games, crafts, music and food for everyone to participate in for donations, all going to American cancer society. The event begins on Saturday may 12 at 10AM at Walled Lake's Geisler Middle School with a speech from Walled Lakes Mayor. Then the 24 hours of activities and games begin! Then at 9pm the ceremony of luminaria begins. Anyone who has decorated a bag can come see their bag along with the many others along the track. It's a very special and moving ceremony for everyone involved! Again thank you so much for supporting chloe in her first year in relay! I hope to see you and many of Chloe's class mates there!
Kylie Schiller
Team awkward turtle captin
Just a friendly reminder, the items for our MVP Celebration are due no later than MONDAY. As of today, I only have all of the items from half of our parents. In order for this special event to be a success, I need to be able to get everything prepared ahead of time. This isn’t a project that I will be able to put together at the last minute. Thanks in advance for your cooperation!
Reader’s Workshop:
In Reader’s Workshop, we continued to take a closer look at glossaries and indices. Nonfiction reading partners examined these important nonfiction text features from different books and discussed what they noticed together as a class. Then readers took some time to reflect in their reading journals how these important nonfiction text features helped them with their nonfiction reading.
Writer’s Workshop:
This week we have been PUBLISHING our bird feature articles! Students wrapped up their editing and revising as they took one last look at their rough drafts. Your child’s article will be displayed in the hallway very soon! Students who finished publishing their magazine articles were given time to work on their own blank books about “Birds”. We discussed including a detailed cover, table of contents, dedication page, about the author page, glossary, index and a blurp on the back.
Math Workshop:
Our mathematicians have been reviewing the concepts of mathematics we have learned this year. We’ve taken a look at time and different ways to write time notations, including word phrases (a quarter to four, half past twelve, etc.). Students also worked on telling time and looking at elapsed time. Next, we reviewed our addition and subtraction strategies and talked about the different ways we have learned to add and subtract, as well as which strategy works best for different kinds of problems. We also plotted data on a time line and students had the opportunity to practice their multiplication, single and double addition facts through fun math games. These are great concepts to be reviewing at school and at home!
Word Study:
In Word Study this week we took a look at words with spelling patterns such as: -ack, -ake, -ail, -ant and used them to spell new words. Students then sorted words with similar consonant clusters. We ended the week by practicing some very important high frequency words with a friendly game of GO FISH!
Social Studies:
This week in Social Studies we continued to be very busy! We started working on our Career Choices and even completed our first resumes. It was pretty neat to see the list of credentials the kids came up with for their qualifications for different jobs! Ask your child what job they selected. We also spent time reviewing for our Local Economy test which we took on Friday.
Important Dates/News:
We are in NEED of erasers... No matter how many new pencils we sharpen, erasers are a hot item. If you can send in any "pink" bigger erasers (not pencil top), that would be awesome! Thank you!
Monday, May 14th: Items that are due:
-MVP person selection form
-2 different pictures of your child and their MVP (no computer printed copies please)
-A digital copy of those photographs emailed to my school email.
-$5.00 to cover the cost of the project and celebration
¬-Please also note that the MVP Celebration is strictly for 2nd graders and their MVP. Please make other arrangements for any younger siblings during this special event.
Monday, May 14th: 6:30-7:30pm - Meet n' Greet with Mr. Drewno (parents only)
Wednesday, May 16th: 9:30-10:30am - Meet n' Greet with Mr. Drewno (parents only)
Friday, May 18th: Field Day (We are on the field in the P.M.) - Email went out to use "Sign-Up Genius" to volunteer for a time - Second Grade needs to send in "Cookie Donations" - please no peanuts. Remember it is an all school lunch!
Thursday, May 24th: MVP Celebration @ 2:30-3:30 pm in Old Gym
Thursday, May 24th: PTA sponsored Ladies Night Out
Friday, May 25th: 3pm - Memorial Day Parade
Tuesday, May 29th: Neil Levin Cartooning Workshop
Friday, June 1st: Ice Cream Social
Friday, June 8th: Volunteers needed starting at 9am to help re-organize the Media Center for 2012-2013 school year
Here's an email I wanted to share with all of our 204 families! I plan on stopping by sometime tomorrow to see Chloe participate in her first Relay for Life. Aiming for later in the day!
Hi Mrs Weckstein
I wanted to thank for allowing Chloe to do her fundraising with her class! Relay for life is an event I started to be involved in since I was in 4th grade. Relay is something very close to my heart and I love seeing chloe and all of her friends supporting and involved with. I was told that some kids,families and teachers wanted to come to the day of the event and participate in the fun! Everyone is welcomed and invited to join all the involved teams. Their will be games, crafts, music and food for everyone to participate in for donations, all going to American cancer society. The event begins on Saturday may 12 at 10AM at Walled Lake's Geisler Middle School with a speech from Walled Lakes Mayor. Then the 24 hours of activities and games begin! Then at 9pm the ceremony of luminaria begins. Anyone who has decorated a bag can come see their bag along with the many others along the track. It's a very special and moving ceremony for everyone involved! Again thank you so much for supporting chloe in her first year in relay! I hope to see you and many of Chloe's class mates there!
Kylie Schiller
Team awkward turtle captin
Sunday, May 6, 2012
Friday, May 4th
It’s been another fantastic week in Second Grade. I have noticed that many of the second graders are making their way into school on their own and I am excited to see them build their independence. They are ready to take care of morning routines on their own. Just a reminder from last week’s blog post, I would appreciate not having parents unpacking their child in the morning. It is their job to bring the necessary items into the room, unpack their homework and snack and then proceed with their Morning Work. If I have to ask you to leave, it is not because you are not welcome in our room, it is because they need to be prepared for the morning on their own and are old enough to do so. Similar discussions are happening in both Kindergarten and First Grade at Dublin.
Reader’s Workshop:
This week in Workshop we spent time working with Non-Fiction Reading Strategies. We brainstormed a giant list of questions we can ask when approaching new nonfiction as well as strategies we can use when reading a nonfiction text as they are all so very different! Next we took two days to zoom in on different “Table of Contents”. We compared several different examples from familiar texts as well as examples from our own texts. We found each Table of Contents to be unique to the book. We did a journal entry about how a Table of Contents can help us as a reader. Next we just began looking at the Glossary in nonfiction text and will also spend time zooming in on the features of a Glossary and its different uses.
Writer’s Workshop:
Our Writer’s have been busy, busy, BUSY this week in Workshop! We began the week finishing up our rough drafts of our magazine feature articles. Each child was given extra time on Monday to work on their “good lead” as this has been a central focus of writing this year in second grade. Then for the next three days we took a step away from our research reports to do a writing assessment called the Developmental Writing Assessment. The DWA asks each child to compose a piece through the Writing Process in its’ entirety. Our children were given the prompt: A Time I Got Hurt. First our Writers’ had to pick an example to share (a small moment in time) and then they had a time slot to fill in a story board with detailed illustrations and labels for the beginning-middle-end of their piece. Next they had another time slot to compose a draft of their story. On the third day we spent time using an Editing and Revising Checklist to fine tune our pieces. As we do the DWA in both September and in May, we are excited to see the growth our children have made as writers this year! These pieces are scored.
Math Workshop:
Multiplication is the name of the game! This week we have spent a considerate amount of time working on Multiplication Strategies. We completed a products table for all numbers, 0-10 multiplied by 0-10 and talked for a great while about the patterns we see in the Products Table. Next we cut out fact triangles to use to practice memorizing our multiplication and division facts. (Yes, we actually do this in second grade!) Students played games with a partner with the fact triangles and had a chance make a set at home this week in their Homelinks. Please make sure you have actually done this and your child is practicing with them. More will be coming home next week! As the week moved on we also took a look at the division problems we can solve easily using multiplication. To end the week we practiced all four multiplications strategies we have learned in anticipation for a Unit 11 Test.
 |
| These are the FOUR strategies we have been reviewing for multiplication. Four students demonstrated the: repeated addition, arrays, equal groups and number line strategies. |
Word Study:
In Word Study this week we took a look at beginning and ending consonant clusters as we played a Dominoes game. Later into the week we worked on recognizing words with the –ou, -ow and –aw vowel sounds. To review this concept we played games of “Crazy Eights”. Last we took a look at the sound of “a” in words that have an a-e pattern, -ay or –ai and completed a blind sort.
Social Studies:
This week in Social Studies we did all sorts of things! We continued working on our Career Choices and even completed our first resumes. It was pretty neat to see the list of credentials the kids came up with for their qualifications for different jobs! We also spent time preparing for and hosting our Market Day! Market Day was a great way for us to review major Social Studies Vocab (goods, services, producers, consumers, opportunity cost, scarcity and resources). After setting up our shops our kids spent time being the business owner, being the consumers and learning how to barter and trade! Did I mention, it was also a great way for them to practice counting coins and making change? In addition to Market Day this week, we did a special treat! We made a sandwich using bread and butter… We used this example to discuss once more, all of the economics vocabulary from above. We also added on human resources, natural resources and capital resources!
Important Dates/News:
Tuesday, May 8th: PTA Meeting @ 7:00pm
Friday, May 11th: Mom’s and Muffins @ 8:30am, Dublin Spring Clean-Up 4-6pm
Friday, May 18th : Field Day
Monday, May 14th: Items that are due:
-MVP person selection form
-2 different pictures of your child and their MVP (no computer printed copies please)
-A digital copy of those photographs emailed to my school email.
-$5.00 to cover the cost of the project and celebration
-Please also note that the MVP Celebration is strictly for 2nd graders and their MVP. Please make other arrangements for any younger siblings during this special event.
Friday, May 18th : Field Day
Thursday, May 24th: MVP Celebration @ 2:30-3:30 pm in Old Gym
Thursday, May 3, 2012
New iPhone App :-)
Yes, you read that right! Today during our Market Day I tried a new app on my phone... there seems to be a minor glitch with a few of the photos, but I wanted to share what's here so far! It's called "Zapd" and seems pretty neat!
Enjoy!! :-) Mrs. W.
Click here to see our first Zapd!
Enjoy!! :-) Mrs. W.
Click here to see our first Zapd!
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