Friday, September 26th

Fall was in the air this week though our room temperature felt a bit like winter most mornings.  I mentioned to the children that they may want to bring sweatshirts in their backpacks until the heat is turned on here. 

We continue to settle into our routines in all subject areas and I’m hopeful that you’re hearing about our learning first hand from your child.

Word Study

This week we studied our first lessons with long and short vowel sounds.  Your child should be able to tell you two ways to know when a word will likely use its long vowel sound.  We used word cards to make long vowel words.  Students also worked again with consonant blends.  As a teacher I appreciate that our word study program spirals back to concepts covered for review and to deepen understanding.  For many students in my class I have discussed with them the benefits our word study lessons will have on their reading and writing skills. 

Reader’s Workshop

I completed most of the DRA testing this week and will be analyzing the data this coming week.  I’ve found that most students maintained their reading comprehension and word decoding skills, but have fallen with fluency.  Fortunately, this is often easily remedied with practice, practice, practice.  It is important for children to read “just right” or appropriately leveled books when reading to increase fluency.  In fact fluency building happens when reading texts that are familiar to the reader.  Please encourage daily reading at home.  Research shows that the number one way to increase reading is simply time spent reading regularly.  We kicked off our workshop this week learning about 3 types of classroom readers…the “Wow” reader, “So-so” reader and the “Oops” reader.  We created charts for our classroom to remind us what these readers look like.  Of course we are all striving to become “Wow” readers where we stay on task, are involved with our books, are quiet, use our known strategies, find comfy spots quickly etc.

Writer’s Workshop

Our class enjoyed several wonderfully written stories this week, which we explored for the author’s craft.  We spent time looking at Cynthia Rylant’s writing using repetitive text, lists, and circle backs (where the other comes back to  a particular phrase/ part of the story).  Students attempted using some of these crafts in their writings.   We also looked at Kevin Henkes’ stories again for similar crafts.  I was amazed to hear some of the pieces written this week during our workshop time.  Students enjoy  the sharing component of our workshop too!

Math Workshop

Our unit 1 (review of beginning math concepts) finished up this week.  Students seem more comfortable with coin counting, time telling and skip counting than they were our first week of school.   Most days I am able to check journal pages completed, but  I will take these home over the next week and complete any that I missed.  Once these are sent home it will be beneficial for you to review these with your child and have him/her redo any pages with which s/he struggled.  You’ll notice that it’s not always the concept that is misunderstood, but the directions (something we will be working on throughout the year asking students to slow down and process before jumping in too fast).  We completed the unit 1 review assessment Thursday.  This is only a unit review and not the benchmark test I referred to during curriculum night.  Remember that when the benchmark test is coming up, a study guide will be sent home.   

Social Studies

Students began our unit on Communities this week. We spent time brainstorming places we can work, live and play in a community. We read the book On the Town to look into all of the places and workers a person finds within a community. We generated a huge list of the workers and places in our community. Next week we will be learning about groups in our communities and create a map of our own neighborhoods for homework!

Important Dates/Reminders

-I am still missing several student faces for our face project. Please make sure these are turned in ASAP.

-In Friday packs this first week in October, please pay attention for papers with a “B” for beginning on them. These need to be reviewed, fixed and returned in a timely manner.

Friday, September 13th

Hello Weckie Families!

What a most awesome 8 days we have had so far in Second Grade!! The energy level in the room is contagious and these kids are ready for some learning and some fun!! Thank you to everyone who made it out to either the: Meet and Greet, Welcome Back Picnic or Curriculum Night. It was great to meet so many of you and fun to reconnect with familiar families as well! We have been busy, busy, busy in 204 as you have probably heard!

Reader's Workshop:
This week we launched our Reader's Workshop. We spent time talking about our favorite books as we all shared our own favorites. We have created a display in our classroom library of these books and have been enjoying the chance to read our classmates favorites. Then we talked about our favorite reading memories. Look for your child's favorite reading memory in this week's first Friday Packet! We ended the week talking about "Comfy Reading Spots" and what makes an area a good reading spot for comfort and for noise/distractions. Please look for homework to come home on this topic!

Writer's Workshop:
In Writer's Workshop this week we began a fun writing project called a "Summer Sandwich". The Weckies each created a rough draft first of: how their summer began (lettuce page), something they did with their family (meat page), something they did with friends (cheese page) and how their summer ended (bread page). They spent a great deal of time creating each page with neat handwriting and colored illustrations. Look for these books on the big picnic blanket bulletin board out in our hallway next week!

Word Study:
We began our word study lessons this week by learning first about consonant clusters. We created words that began with two or more consonants in what we call a "cluster". This helped us to review consonants and vowels from first grade. Then we did an activity that helped us to notice the difference between long vowels and short vowels ('a' in apple compared to 'e' in egg). Periodically lists of words will come home for each month that are a great thing to review at home with your child, and in particular the patterns or parts to the words. The list that just came home showed us how to break a word into chunks when looking at familiar endings.

Math Workshop:
In Math this week we took time to do lots of neat things! Our mathematicians learned about their math tool kits and all of the different tools they will use this year (calculator, ruler, deck of Everyday Math cards), tape measure, hundreds grid, pretend money, pattern block template and more!) We worked on Number Grids this week and created a giant number scroll with partners. Each group was responsible for one hundred boxes and together we created a grid that counts from 1 to 1,500! As the week went on we took a look at equivalent names for numbers as we learned to play a game called "Broken Calculator". We also worked with time this week - both on a calendar and on a clock. We reviewed the hour hand (short) and the minute hand (long) and practiced on our own smaller clocks. Math games introduced tihs week included: Addition Top-It, The Number Grid Game, and Clock Concentration.

Look for Math Homelinks to begin next week! :-) If you were not at Curriculum Night, please be advised that we spent a great deal of time talking about our new re-aligned math curriculum. To better match the Common Core State Standards and research about student learning, the district has re-organized our lessons. This means we are no longer going 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, etc. in math but rather, jumping around. This week we covered 1.8, 1.9, 1.2 and 1.3. You will notice too that Homelinks may appear to come hom out of order. Please look for more info on this in the coming weeks!

Important Classroom News:

• Please make sure to pack your child a hearty and healthy snack. Lunch at 1:20pm is late and the kids are hungry! We have snack midway through the morning and healthy snacks will help them to last this long morning period.
• If you were not at Curriculum Night, you can sign up for a Parent-Teacher Conference time on the bulletin board outside of the Office.
• If you were not at Curriculum Night, materials came home about 2nd grade curriculum and classroom routines. There was information about classroom volunteers. Please make sure to send these forms back in a timely manner if you would like to help in the room as I am going to start getting volunteers in towards the end of next week and you must have a "Criminal Background Check" form on file before coming in to help!
• Additionally, we are short MANY volunteers for classroom parties. If you are able to help with either our: Halloween Party, Valentine's Day Party or End of the Year Picnic, please email me at JenniferPhillips@wlcsd.org immediately. I'm worried about our lack of participation! Additionally we also need two parents to work our Market Days month (one day on a Friday afternoon in a month to be told soon) so that our class can have important funding towards our Field Trips this year.

Thanks for everything you have done in making these first two weeks so fantastic! It's going to be an awesome year to be a Weckie, for sure!

:-) Mrs. Weckstein