January News :-)

Hello Weckie Parents!! What a month of January we have been having!! Snow days, cold days, a field trip, oh my! There’s a lot of info in the blog below as well as some fun pictures from our trip to the Outdoor Center. A special thank you to the parents who helped chaperone as well as to our parents who surprised us with chocolate chip cookies and hot cocoa upon our return! A big thank you to: Mrs. Barber, Mrs. Fitrzyk, Mrs. Weedon, Mrs. Gilmore, Mrs. Smith and Mrs. Goldberg! Though we’ve had multiple disruptions this month, we have squeezed in a lot of learning! 

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Reader’s Workshop

In the past two weeks we were able to dig deeper into character traits.  We used books by Kevin Henkes and looked closely at the characters to examine the different traits they had throughout the stories.  We found that Chrysanthemum and Wemberly Worried had both similar traits and different.  We have also almost completed all reading assessments! Soon I will be realigning our reading groups, reading partners and reading levels to fit our reader’s newest text levels.  It’s such a rewarding time of year to see the progress being made among our students.  Students will be determining and recording a new reading goal for this quarter.  The goal bags will be coming home soon to help them work towards meeting these goals.  Please know that some of the children have the same goals and it is common for a person to need continued work in one area.  Finally, we wrapped up our week making connections to stories from students’ individual book bins.  Our goal is to begin making deeper connections vs. surface ones.  These connections can draw deeper meaning from the texts.

Writer’s Workshop

We’ve taken opportunities to continue reading good literature and examining the author’s craft used in creating it.  Students continued to implement these into their own writing.  In addition, we began pushing into our next writing unit which is personal narratives.  We looked at many examples of narratives to describe what it is we will be writing.  Basically we will be writing about our own personal experiences.  This unit starts by asking students to brainstorm lists of what we call seed ideas.  We explain that a good personal narrative is more like a small seed idea that’s taken from a larger watermelon story.  For example, instead of writing about an entire trip to Michigan Adventure, we could write about the experience of riding our first rollercoaster.  Ask your child about some of his/her seed ideas.  Maybe you could make additional suggestions.

Word Study

Students were involved in several contraction lessons.  This is a lesson we will expect students to apply into daily writing.  The main target of this was that when combining two words we use an apostrophe in the spot where we remove letters.  We also worked on word chunks (ail, ain and an) and digraphs (sh, ch).

Math

It felt good to complete all of the study preparation and testing including the Benchmark Assessment!  Overall, our students performed well on this BA.  We now are beginning unit 5 (geometry).  Please know that the unit order changed with the common core.  Students learned about points and line segments and are exploring polygons thus far.

Social Studies

In our local economy unit students continue learning about producers/consumers and goods/services.  With the help of a beautiful story called Erandi’s Braids we also taught about opportunity cost.  The song we learned to help us remember it is still stuck in my head!  Of course it’s a cross between this song and the Home on the Range, as it’s the tune of the song!

Science

Our plant unit is coming to an end!  Students have truly enjoyed the hands on learning included in this unit.  Our unit test will be this coming Thursday.  Your child should have brought home a study sheet on Friday.  Please know that the grades for this unit will be on the 3^rd quarter report card.

Our field trip this past week was also centered on science concepts for 2^nd graders.  Mr. Reilly from the outdoor center did a great job in setting the stage for our next weather unit.

Seven Habits

Our habit focus this month is “Win-win”.  We love this one in the classroom!!!  When two or more students are having an argument or struggling with an issue, I remind them to think of a solution where everyone wins.  Try it out at home!

Important Info and Dates:

Report cards are available for viewing on February 5^th.  Please take time to review your child’s successes and learning from this quarter.  I always suggest praise first and then make one goal for the next quarter.

Feb. 4th:  Dublin Staff  vs.  Commerce Staff volleyball game at 6:30pm (Walled Lake Northern) Come see Mrs. Weckstein play!!

Feb 5th:  Report Cards are available
Social Studies homework due
Feb. 14th: Valentine's Day Party
Pennies for Leukemia/Lymphoma Society due
Feb. 17th-21st: No school/Winter Break