Friday, January 26th

Hello Weckie Families!!

What a great two weeks we have had in second grade! Thank you so much to everyone who came out for Parent-Teacher Conferences. I thoroughly enjoyed having time to talk with you about your child and their growth in second grade. It is important that our kids are seeing us working together as a team to help them have their best year yet!

Yesterday we went on our first field trip and had a wonderful time at the Walled Lake Schools Outdoor Education Center! Our students attended four different classes while we were there. They learned about different types of weather and severe weather, they learned about seeds and how plants store seeds after going on a hike in the fields, they learned about how animals hibernate and built hibernation shelters and then lastly they learned about the importance of the different parts of mammals. A special thank you to Olivia's Mom and Nolan's Dad for helping chaperone our field trip! Here are just a few pictures from our adventures yesterday:

Readers' Workshop:
We are in the midst of a great new unit in Workshop! We have been zooming in now on the series books that we have in our classroom. The great thing about series books is just how predictable they are for a reader about the main characters. We have several book series in our classroom, and the kids' counted over 40 different series ranging in all levels for all readers. We have been making predictions based on prior knowledge about series characters and recording character traits to share with partners about our findings.

In reading groups we have just launched all new groups... yay!  Each child should have a reading group schedule in their book bag. Depending on need/level, groups will meet 1-3 times a week. Please make sure your child's book bag is here on their given dates. I realize there are days when I may be out unexpectedly or we have things come up, like a field trip, and I'll do my best to meet with those groups promptly upon  return which can throw the schedule slightly off.

Writers' Workshop:
We continue to dig deeper with our study of letter writing in second grade! Students have been taking information from Readers' Workshop about series characters and series books to write letters of recommendation to family, friends and Dublin teachers. We have been focusing in on the parts that make a good letter: address of origin, date, greeting, body of the letter including indentations for paragraphs, three facts, three opinions, closing greeting and our name. Students have then been meeting with a Writing partner to check over their writing: looking to add more details, add punctuation or capital letters, check and revise spelling, etc. It has been fun for our class to write letters to teachers at Dublin and their classrooms. We have communicated with Mrs. Doyle's third grade class and Mrs. Nichols' fourth grade classrooms so far.

Language Workshop:
We are in the midst of an awesome study of the Otis series in Language Workshop. Loren Long's Otis features a strong character who is brave, kind and a team player. Throughout the books we have read so far, we have found Otis to be all of those characteristics and more. This week we focused on Otis and the Tornado, but we have also read Otis and An Otis Christmas. We have zoomed in on good vocabulary in the texts, made predictions based on our prior evidence and used the text to support this as well as did a close reading activity where we had to zoom in on different pages that show different character traits Otis exhibits and provide evidence from the text. Be sure to ask your child about Otis as he is a pretty fabulous role model. Funny enough, in case you didn't know, Otis is also a tractor.

Math Workshop:
Last week we took our Unit 4 Math Assessment. Many students showed lots of growth with the unit four concepts. Time is definitely a tricky concept for second graders but a valuable one to master as well! We also noticed that work with base ten blocks was tricky prior to the assessment and on the assessment as well. Thank you to everyone who has already sent their Unit 4 test back signed. Please make sure if you have not, that you do so ASAP.

Money, money, money... MONEY! Here it comes! It's time to learn about money! We have just begun our fourth unit in math and this unit focuses heavily on coins, dollars and making change.  We began the unit with a fun game called "Beat the Calculator" and then moved on into our work with coins. Students are given a practical situation of a fruit and vegetable market and have to use this store to make purchases using coins to pay for their items. Next week we will dig deeper and use our coins to learn how to make change when paying for something. If you can at home, please reinforce coin concepts with your child. Having your child help pay for items out can help as well! They need lots of practice to make this skill more fluent.

Last but not least this week, we made measurement monsters! That's right, measurement monsters! Each child was given construction paper, glue and scissors and asked to create a monster with eyes, legs, feet and a body. They then had to measure several of the different parts of their monster body in inches.

Social Studies:
We are well on our way in our mapping unit in Social Studies. This week we created our own maps of White Lake and talked about how one goes about doing this and what the important features are to include on every map we make: title, key, main roads, major bodies of water, schools, parks and any other landforms. Next we talked about transportation in our community and the importance of transportation for moving goods, people and things in and out of our community and into other communities. Next week we will be learning about landforms in social studies.

Important Dates/Information:

• Friday, February 9th: 1/2 day of school - Professional Development for teachers. Students will be dismissed around noon.
• Wednesday, February 14th: Valentines' Day Party (more info to come soon). A note already came home asking for a gallon jug (cleaned and cut) as well as a list of all in our class for names on Valentines.
• Friday, February 16th: 1/2 day of school - Students will be dismissed around noon. Then we remain out of school for mid-winter break until Thursday, February 22nd when school resumes.

Happy 2018!

Hello Weckie Parents and Happy 2018!

We are excited to be back in school and continuing to learn and grow as a team! We have been pretty busy these first few days back in January and are excited to tell you all about it!

Prior to break we had an awesome ALL Second Grade Holiday Party. Thank you to all of the parent volunteers for your donations and time on the day of the event. We had so much fun celebrating with all of the second graders at Dublin.

All of our Gift of Reading books.. Excellent!

Sing Along Fun :-)

Party Activities

Nice catch!

Delicious treats

And fun crafts

Also before break two of our guided reading groups put on a little Readers' Theater Play for the students in our classroom, "Sleeping Beauty". Below you can click to watch the video of their performance. Please make sure you are following our classroom page on Twitter @WeAreTheWeckies so you can see performances like this, photographs and more news out of our classroom. Please click on the link below!

Readers' Theater 204 Presents:


This past week we also filled our Big Catch!!! Wahoo!!! In our classroom we have a board called "The Big Catch" and it holds several stuffed animal fish. Whenever we receive a compliment from another teacher OR do something spectacular in the room without being asked to, we earn a fish. It's been fun to challenge the Weckies to do their best and earn these fish. They are very excited about our class party Friday afternoon.

Readers' Workshop:
Lots has been happening in Workshop daily!! We have moved into a new unit where we are learning about facts and opinions in our reading. Students have been reading familiar mentor texts like Otis by Loren Long and The Bad Seed by Jory John. We have spent time picking through the books pulling out facts (and evidence that proves them true) and then formulating our opinions about the characters and stories based on our prior knowledge. We have talked a great deal about accepting other opinions even if they differ with your opinion and the saying: We can agree to disagree.  Readers' had time later this past week to take their own just-right books and pick out one character. They've been given the task of finding character traits (facts) about their character and then time to create their opinion of their character and story. It has been fun to hear what they have to say opinion wise!

Additionally in Workshop there has been a TON of testing going on!! On average, our DRA (Developmental Reading Assessment) takes 20-30 minutes per child with the length of time increasing one-on-one if they are independent at a level and need further testing. As a result, Guided Reading Groups have been temporarily on hold. I plan to wrap up testing Friday this week and you can look for new groups to resume next Tuesday! We will be sharing our findings and data at Parent Teacher Conferences for reading progress and growth.  I have been so PROUD of all that our students' have been learning to do and show in their reading.

In the room the testing has several implications... Partners are switched up for Partner Reading, Reading Groups are shuffling and students are learning to shop for new just-right books in different locations in the classroom library. This makes for a lot of excitement and a lot of review of our Readers' Workshop expectations and procedures for independent and partner reading time. 

Please make sure that your child is reading nightly at home regardless of when books come home. It is imperative that our kids are being exposed both at school and at home to quality reading materials.

Writers' Workshop
In Writers' Workshop we have connected our new writing unit to our new reading unit! Students are learning how to write friendly letters that contain information about books that they are reading - both facts and opinions. We have said our letters sound like movie previews as they tell someone a little bit about the story but leave the ending for the person to find out on their own. We have been talking about all of the components that make a friendly letter good quality including: date, address, greeting, body of letter, 2-3 facts and 2-3 opinions, questions, closer and signature. We actually wrote our first letter about The Bad Seed book and sent it to Mrs. Doyle in third grade. Her students were so excited to get mail and to read our book! They replied with a letter about the book, My Teacher is a Monster and loaned us their copy of their book.  We are finding that letter writing can be a fun and motivational way to get kids to write more about their reading in second grade!

Math Workshop
We have just completed our math work in Unit Four this week! In this unit we have:

• practiced telling time on clocks (hour, minute, to the closest five minute)
• learned about A.M. and P.M. and talked about which activities in our day are morning, afternoon and evening type activities
• worked with base-ten blocks to explore place value (ones, tens, hundreds)
• learned to break (decompose) numbers apart (654 is 600 + 50 + 4)
• worked with base-ten blocks to make exchanges in addition 
• learned to measure using both metric and the U.S. Standard forms of measurement (specifically: centimeters, inches and feet)

Measuring with a real foot ;-)

Exchange Game with base-ten blocks

Thank you for continuing to return Home Links and completed Math Journal pages in a timely manner! It has been great to see such excitement around math lately with the kids getting to measure in school and at home.

Social Studies

In Social Studies we have begun our second unit - The Geography of our Community. We have begun working on our map skills. While many of us depend on our phones and devices in cars to get us from point A to point B, it is still important for our students to have basic map skills (like when you are at the mall, lost in the halls of Dublin, or trying to find your terminal at the airport). We have looked at a few different maps and focused in on finding the key, the title, and deciphering where things are located on the map using the cardinal directions (north, south, east and west) and also learning to use location words (below, next to, near by, in front of, behind, above, to the left of, to the right of, etc.) 

Soon we will dig deeper with the map of White Lake and begin to notice all of the features our community offers including several schools, roads, parks, lakes and more!

If you have any pocket type maps at home that you would like to share, please put your child's name on them and send them in! We will do our best to look and use them carefully.

iReady Diagnostic

The time has come for us to take our second iReady Diagnostic of the school year. This week we will take the reading portion and in the next few weeks we will take the math portion. We spent time this week reviewing the different parts of iReady - what we see on the screen, how to choose the best answer, reminders to do our best and to take our time. Be sure to check in with your child and ask how this is going for them. We use the laptops in our classroom and let the kids work wherever they are most comfortable. Remember, each child has their own test and the questions will vary based on what they answer correctly or incorrectly. Look for more info soon on your child's progress on this one of many tools we use to check in on student learning and growth.

Important Reminders and Dates

Outdoor Recess

Outdoor Recess is a funny thing in Michigan in January. Our children will go outside every day as long as the playground is not icy. If it is raining we will be indoors. To remain indoors on cold days, we need a windchill below zero. Otherwise, you should plan for your child to go out daily. While you might not see a lot of snow, the playground is wet and muddy. Snow gear helps protect your child and their clothes. An extra pair of sock in their backpacks is also a great idea. I would suggest checking your child's winter gear nightly as many things need to be washed and dried out. Thank you!

Monday, January 15th Martin Luther King Jr. Day - No School. The WLCSD Martin Luther King Jr. event will begin at 6pm at Walled Lake Northern High School

Thursday, January 18th Parent - Teacher Conferences beginning at 12 noon running through 8pm. Please sign up on Skyward if you have not already. There are still many time slots available and I would love to meet with everyone. Please remember we will begin dismissal around 11am on that Thursday.

Friday, January 19th Student Council Sponsored Spirit Wear Day - it's Tropical Day at Dublin! Be sure to send your child in their best tropical attire. Remember, we will still have outdoor recess that day and will need your child to have warm clothes to wear outdoors.

Friday, January 19th PTA Sponsored Family BINGO Night at Dublin: Come join the Weckstein's and play BINGO! Wouldn't it be fun if we had our own table full of Weckies? Hope to see you there!