Friday, December 18th

 Happy Friday Weckie Parents!

We have had a fantastic week of face to face learning here in Second Grade! All of the new protocols and procedures are beginning to sink in and we are getting into a pretty great routine. We are being careful and we are being safe. Every now and then I see a few eye rolls, but we all can agree that no one wants to get sick! 😄

Next week we have TWO days of in-person learning. Monday will be our "Holiday PJ Party" Day. Info came out this week about our afternoon of fun. Please remember to send your child to school on Monday in warm jammies. We will still have recess outside! They will also still need good shoes for PE class. In the afternoon on Monday we will be watching a movie and doing a special craft. The kids will also need a special afternoon snack that you can send in from home. Please keep it simple - a cookie, bag of chips, fruit snacks, etc. but it can be special too. Also please keep in mind we do have a few students with allergies and need the snacks coming into our room to remain peanut and tree nut free. Please no stuffed animals or blankets. We are trying to minimize things coming into the classrooms from home...

I moved our Holiday Party to Monday afternoon due to our FAPES schedule on Tuesday afternoon with PE and Art. Unfortunately due to the pandemic restrictions, we are unable to have visitors for our party on Monday. We will miss having you all here!! 

Readers' Workshop

In Reader's Workshop we have moved into a new reading unit that is all about growing our reading muscles! We have been working on building our reading stamina and learning new strategies to do so! These include: reading more and more books, focusing our attention when there are distractions around us, scooping up snap words and reading them faster and choosing how to read a book! Daily we have tried to do some quick partner reading as well, for just about 10 minutes.

Writers' Workshop

In Writers' Workshop we are wrapping up our Realistic Fiction Unit! The kids have been working hard to create their own series characters and books about their characters. We have spent time this week adding details, editing for spelling, punctuation and capital letters and we have created covers with illustrated title pages. We also spent time on a Meet the Author page. Look for these books to come home with your writer next week after our publishing celebration on Monday morning.

Phonics

In Phonics this week we have been continuing our work with spelling patterns in words (think: ee, ea, ai, oa...) and we have been looking for words with these patterns in our own writing and reading. We have practiced adding "r" onto some of these patterns as well as the r can change the sound the vowel team makes. 

Math Workshop

In Math we have been digging deeper with subtraction and all of the strategies we can use when solving subtraction problems. It has been great to hear the kids explain their thinking behind their strategies and see which strategies are more common! Strategies have included: counting up, counting back, counting back through friendly 10s, subtracting 0 and 1, and using number lines for any or all! Remember, the Home Links for Unit 3 came home awhile back when we took our pause with in-person learning the first time. You can use these at home any time to review lessons from Unit 3. We are through Lesson 3.9 right now. This will also help your child to return to school after break, if they have had time to review some of these skills.

Social Emotional Learning (SEL)

Our Social Emotional Learning (SEL) at Dublin is an important part of our learning in an elementary school. At Dublin we use the Second Step program and completed the first unit while we were virtual. This past week at Dublin we launched back our Monday Morning Meetings only instead of meeting with the whole school in the gym, we all gathered on Zoom. Mr. Drewno led an awesome review session on the beginning unit of Second Step goals - focusing on being welcome and being safe. As a class I have been working hard to catch students making good choices and rewarding them with Dublin Shamrocks. Shamrocks are awarded the first month for: being welcoming, being safe, being respectful and being responsible! I am happy to report that I have been filling out a TON of shamrocks! We will do a weekly drawing and send the rest home to be celebrated. 

This will be our last blog post for 2020... What a year!! I just wanted to extend a huge, heartfelt thank you for ALL that you have done at home this year to help your child to learn remote and to learn in person throughout all of 2020. I know this has been a tough year and that many of us have gone through unimaginable times during this pandemic. Please know that I appreciate you all and also look forward to better days ahead with everyone in 2021. Please have a safe, happy and healthy holiday season. Thank you for giving me this opportunity to work with your children this year. They are such an incredible bunch of learners. I look forward to the day when I can hug and squeeze them all!! Until then, I look forward to returning with the kids to school on Monday, January 4, 2021.  

Fondly, Mrs. Weckstein :-) 

Learning Update :-) Friday, Dec. 11

 Friday, December 11, 2020

Hello Weckie Families!!

I wanted to provide a good Friday update on ALLLLL we have been up to in 2nd Grade - both virtually and in person! What a great week of transition and learning we have had. We began the week on Zoom and ended the week in person. Thank you for all of your continued support at home with virtual learning, at home with packing your kids back up and in sending in encouraging words, cleaning supply donations and happy kids on Wednesday!

 We have really been working on new routines at school now that we are back in person. Staggering the kids coming in first thing, learning what to bring in to the classroom and put at tables vs. what goes in our mailboxes. We have been working on our cleanliness with reminders about good handwashing, using sanitizer and continually wiping down our learning spaces. In a typical day we wipe down our tables 3-4x a day! Our custodians are only doing a limited job of this, so the pressure is on for us to keep our space clean and safe.

Thank you for following district protocol with Covid exposure and Covid like symptoms. It is important that we are all working together on this and that we continually err on the side of caution so that we can work to keep everyone healthy and safe. Our learners are getting better each day with their mask routines, their abilities to social distance and their willingness to follow these new procedures. It is work, but work that is totally worth it! When in doubt, either reach out to me or to the office, and we can help you decide what's best to do!

Your Weckie will be bringing home their yellow "Friday Packet" folder today! In there you will see work from our first math unit test as well as some fact review sheets we worked on for morning work this week. The unit 1 test gave us a great foundation for knowing what our kids know and what they still need to learn when reviewing first grade concepts. Please take time with this assessment at home to work through anything your child missed. The second unit test came home with your child a few weeks back when we took our pause in face to face learning. You can use that unit 2 test at home to continue to practice math skills with your child. The yellow slip on the front of the Friday packet needs to be signed and returned. Unless specified on your child's work that it needs to be fixed and returned, the rest of the work in the packet can remain at home.

Readers' Workshop

In Readers' Workshop we have been wrapping up an awesome unit on different reading strategies for tricky words. We have really taken time to slow down and break words apart to try to piece together the sounds. We have looked for familiar sight words in our reading to help us read more fluently. We have taken time to work with blends and digraphs to also use our knowledge about the sounds they make to help us when faced with words using these features. Students have had time this week to shop for new books for their book bins and are encouraged to shop for a mix of just-right books and books that interest them from our classroom library. Often times the just-right books may seem more simple to a student, but that means it's a good fit and a just-right book! Harder, "thicker" books at times look appealing to many but are often just too tricky for them to read. As the Weckies get more comfortable shopping in our classroom library, they'll learn more to often to stick with those just-right books to get the most out of their reading time. We have done some limited partner reading time in person, with partners meeting for just about 7-10 minutes. Remember, most kids already sit at the same table and most likely, next to, their reading partners. 

Writers' Workshop

In Writers' Workshop this week we have been working on their realistic fiction book series. Each child has created a character and a book or two or more about their character featuring real-life problems a child may face. Writers had time this week to do some editing and revising of their work. Our focus was on adding realistic details to our pieces and to "show" the story in their writing instead of just "telling" the story. Most of our students have shared one of their realistic fiction pieces on Flipgrid and it has been great to hear their entire stories. When I pull them to do conferences I most often just hear a little segment of their story. You should ask your child to show you their video on Flipgrid. You can find them by going to a post from last week on Google Classroom with the Flipgrid link.

Phonics

Our work in Phonics this week we have been digging deeper with vowel teams. This is when two vowels work together in a word (such as the "ea" in team). The saying we use is: When two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking. This helps readers and writers to understand in a vowel team, the vowel sound is typically long and typically the sound of the first vowel in the team. We spent time finding vowel teams in books and in our own writing to explore with. We took time to practice reading the teams and noticing similarities and differences. For instance the "oo" vowel team sounds different in moon and look. Last we reviewed earlier work with the "r" controlled vowel and looked at words that have a changed vowel sound when an "r" is added, such as the "a" sound in had vs. hard.

Math Workshop

In Math we are working on strategies for solving subtraction facts right now. We have reviewed strategies for -0 and -1. We have spent a lot of time practicing counting up and counting back with story problems. Subtraction will be one of those skills we will be working on all year! If your child still has their fact triangles at home, you can use these this weekend to review subtraction but please send them back to school for math next week!

Science

We continue to work on our New Plants unit in Science. This week we wrote the results and conclusions for our lab reports. We have spent time watching the grass and alfalfa grow together while also watching our wheat seed succeed in growing in a straw (for most of us). You can continue to watch the growth at home as these will not need to be sent back to school. We also watched an experiment this week that Mrs. Weckstein did with growing new plants from an old plant... these botanists were pretty amazed! :-)

Important Info:

Progress Profile Reports (aka our fall report cards) are now posted on Skyward Family Access. Once you log in to Family Access click on Report Cards and you will find this important document there. Please let me know if you need help accessing this.

Friday, November 13th

 

Hello Weckie Parents!!

What an amazing first week we are having here at school!! After many long months, it has been nice to hear the sound of laughter and learning in the hallways and class of Dublin once more. We have spent a TON of time this week going over many new procedures:

1. Arrival - Where to go, how to unload and what to unload

2. Supplies that stay vs Supplies that go home (Monday - Thursday the kids will only bring home their device and water bottle. Everything else should stay here!) We do not have the Chromebook Carts back in our classrooms to have the ability to lock up devices at this point. * On Friday we will send home their Friday folder loaded with goodies - things they have done, and possible supplies we would like kept home, just in case we go remote once more. They will also bring home their math journal and writing folder.  All things in their folders are labeled with explanations :-).  On Monday, they should return their yellow folder EMPTY. Please make sure to date and sign the front of the folder as the letter on front explains.

3. Lunch - Here's where it gets tricky! Each child has been assigned a number in our room and they sit by these same kids in our room, in the lunchroom, in FAPES, etc. On TUESDAYS we will be eating in our classroom. There is not an available space for us to eat. At least for the next few weeks (until we see if we can find a space for lunch) please send your child with a PEANUT AND TREE NUT FREE LUNCH. I am overly worried about bringing nuts- tree nut or peanut into our class room right now with allergies that some of our students have. Please be diligent about this - Please imagine if this was your child. Students who receive the free hot lunch will always be provided with a safe lunch, so this could be a great day to have your child order lunch if you are worried. Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday we eat lunch in one half of the lunchroom which has a safe peanut/tree nut free area but also allows for no dietary restrictions at other tables.

4. School not looking normal… Our kids are staying at their seats as much as possible. I try to offer brain breaks, mask breaks, snack outside (weather dependent) as much as we can between our learning. This has been REALLY hard for everyone. Please discuss with your child at home about remaining in their learning space with a mask on. Several times I have found that the kids take their masks off at their seats simply because they feel protected with their dividers up. Also many students have just needed reminders to stay seated. They are up and moving around simply to show a friend something or to talk - which makes learning and being safe, difficult. The bad news is that there is no division between children in their seats - the divider is simply on the table. We have to remain diligent if we want to remain safe, healthy and open. Thank you!!

Remember, everything in their yellow “everyday” folder stays home this weekend and beyond just the folder is returned (and if you have a book order), everything in their colored book bag is also meant to stay home, but please do not let them read the books in there, yet!

Last but not least - there is ONE chromebook charger cord that has been left behind. Every child has promised they have checked their bag and that it is not theirs. However, I know it must belong to someone and this is worrisome. Please make sure to label everything! Even a piece of tape with their name on the chromebook and charger is fine at this point.

Thank you for all of your donations of supplies and sanitizer this week!!! In four days we have gone through two tubs of 75 wipes… just in wiping down our learning spaces for breakfast, lunch in the room Tuesday, snack and at the end of the day! It is a lot! It has become our mission to keep our room clean. Custodial services only cover vacuuming and trash emptying each night within our room.

I promise there have been academics too -  but I wanted to get as much information out to you as I can right now about routines and procedures. Please stay safe this weekend and please stay healthy.

Your partner in safety and learning, Jen Weckstein

Friday, October 23rd

 Hello Weckie Families!!

Today completes our final full week of virtual learning on Zoom 😥😥. Next week brings big changes for all of our learners and our classroom family. While I did not apply to teach virtually, I also have not yet been told my grade-level and building placement... hopefully soon!! 

Monday through Wednesday next week will remain like normal virtual learning days on Zoom. The next several days after that will look very different. Thursday, October 29th, and the morning of Friday, October 30th will be spent with asynchronous learning. What does this mean? This means there will be NO Zoom on these days. Your child will still come onto their Google Classroom page and find a post of options of work tasks that they will need to complete on their own in our core subject areas. There may still be work needed posted to Seesaw as I will still be following along as I work to get my classroom at Dublin set up for a return to "in-person" learning. The tasks posted are not meant to replace a full day of learning and should not take your child hours to do!  You should be hearing from your "next" teacher around October 30th. We are hearing we will see class lists around October 29th. 

Looking ahead, the tentative schedule for the first week of November includes:

• Monday, November 2nd: We will meet on Zoom from 9-10am to do a closing type activity with our original class. The remainder of the day will be spent with asynchronous learning from our Google Classroom Page.
• Tuesday, November 3rd: No School for Election Day
• Wednesday, November 4th: (Kindergarten returns to In-Person Learning) Grades 1-5 Welcome on Zoom with your new 2nd Grade Teacher 9-10am.  Then the rest of the day will be spent with asynchronous learning from your new teacher - whether in person or virtual.
• Thursday, November 5th: In Person Learning/Virtual Our Path Learning resumes 9-4. If you are choosing in-person learning, last names A-L will attend school on this date. Last names M-Z will find asynchronous learning posted on your Google Classroom page. All Our Path Students will have a normal school day on Zoom.
• Friday, November 6th: In Person Learning resumes 9-3 for students with last names M-Z, while students with last names A-L will find asynchronous learning posted on your Google Classroom page. All Our Path students will have a normal day on Zoom.

This is the most up to date information we have been given about our return to learn. My hope of all hopes is to be placed back at Dublin, in 2nd grade with ALL of our children who are picking to return in-person. And just a reminder, if you are choosing to keep your child virtual, please know that I am just an email or call (room phone: 248.956.3864) away! I always say, "Once a Weckie, always a Weckie". I'm still going to want updates on how your child is doing, available for questions or help in any way and hope to get some Zooms going with your kids from home when we figure out our schedule and hopefully tie them into your lunch break time! 

This week we wrapped up many of our first units... Math, Writers' Workshop, Readers' Workshop and we are close in Phonics... Here's what we have been up to!

Phonics

This week in phonics we have really focused in on CAPITAL letters. We have been talking about: when to use capital letters, when to use lowercase letters, and adding specific details into our writing that uses capital letters. We have been focusing on the chart in our Writing Folders titled "What gets a capital letter?" This is HUGE for our second graders as they learn to write predominantly in lowercase letters with proper use of capitals along the way.

Readers' Workshop 

Our Readers' have been digging deeper discovering all of the lessons, big and small, that we can learn from reading fiction books. While it is obvious when reading non-fiction that we are learning about a specific topic, looking deeper in to our fiction texts for an author's message or lesson is a wonderful skill to sharpen for our young readers! We have read several Kevin Henkes books over the last two weeks and each book gave us an important lesson we could all relate to and learn from. Then we moved onto the Piggie and Elephant books by Mo Willems which are often set around one or both of the characters learning a lesson. We have had rich discussions about these lessons and the similarities between some books about the topic or the lesson learned.

Writers' Workshop

Our Writers' threw a celebration this week for their published writing pieces!! It was wonderful to hear them all sharing their work across several breakout rooms on Monday. Then each child posted their writing onto Flipgrid and read their work to us. We all got to leave comments to each other on their writing work. It was a great way to wrap-up our Small Moments Unit! The remainder of the week, we used Writing time like a free choice writing time where the kids could write about any topic, fiction or non-fiction. They seemed pretty eager to have a choice in what they wrote about this second half of the week!

*Breakout Groups to share and celebrate our writing!*

Math Workshop

This week in math we began our second unit! We spent time with addition strategies including - using what we know about double tens frames to help us add, using doubles facts and adding up to a friendly 10. We introduced two games this week that would be great additions to game night at your own house! We learned how to play "Spinning for Money" and "Fishing for 10s". Both can be found on Google Classroom posts from this week - Tuesday and Thursday!

Social Studies

This week in Social Studies we began wrapping up our unit on our local community by creating a circle book showing our readers how in their own small circle is their family/house, then the next circle (a little bit larger) shows your house in a neighborhood, then branching out further to your neighborhood in a city, then your city in a state and our state in a country! Please be sure to ask your child to see their books, they looked FANTASTIC!

*Community Book Share for Social Studies*

A few final words...

This will probably be my final news blog post with our current class list. My heart is SO happy for all that we have accomplished in our time together these last 10 weeks!! Our kids are truly becoming tech wizards and have amazed me with all that they have learned and even taught me about technology. My heart will be SO sad to say goodbye in the coming days... Even virtually we have all really developed quite the bond and relationship! Thank you from the bottom of my heart for ALL that you have done to help your child to be successful with our virtual learning. Whichever path you have chosen moving forward, please know I understand and support your decision.  I look forward to the day when I can see and meet each child in person and give them a giant squeeze!!  Jen Weckstein😀

Friday, October 16, 2020

 Happy Friday Weckie Families!!

It has been an outstanding week of learning and fun in our virtual classroom! Students have been uploading lots of their work on Seesaw and Mrs. Weckstein is approving things as fast as she can (a super problem to have).  Please make sure to drop in on your child's Seesaw page to leave compliments!

Phonics

In Phonics this week we have spent a TON of time with our 85 SNAP words. These are those words we want our students to be able to read and write in a SNAP. Each day we have focused on a different strategy students can use to help them learn and memorize these words. We have invented our own sayings and songs, practiced writing them different ways like rainbow writing and typing on Google docs. We even ended the week with a fun game of SNAP-O (think BINGO with SNAP words).  We will continue to encourage our students to use these words in their writing to help build their familiarity and to help build their correct spelling.

Readers' Workshop

We have continued our discussion around re-reading books to learn more! We found that when we re-read we can learn more about our characters and in particular their feelings. We talked about how after reading a story we can talk about how a character might change over the course of the story, but you really notice it when you go back and re-read because you already know the outcome. We also talked about how re-reading a book helps us to know how a character should sound so we can read fluently to sound like the characters! We spent time practicing our reading to sound fluent by looking for clues: punctuation, bold or italic print, dialogue (quotation marks) and what we already know about a character or the outcome of the story! The idea is to read with a smooth voice and use  BIG voice!

Writers' Workshop

In Writers' Workshop we are wrapping up our first unit on writing small moments! Students have been working this week to edit and revise their work. They have gone back to their writing to set goals for the future of their writing to see how they can improve and grow in their work! We have spent time talking about capital letters, compound words and how to fix up and fancy our writing! On Monday we will do a celebratory share of our published piece so please make sure your child has this handy and ready to go!

Math Workshop

In Math this week we have slowed down to wrap up our first unit. Students explored with Math Stations and games this week to review concepts like: number sense, skip counting patterns, basic addition, number grid work and more! We will not be giving the Unit 1 test now, however students may take this test once school resumes in person/on our path so that teachers can see what skills students have gained from the first unit and move forward with our learners.

Social Studies

In Social Studies this week we learned about human and natural features in a community. We watched a short video reviewing the concepts before we went outside exploring around Mrs. Weckstein's house and then students went out around their learning spaces. We created a t-chart with feature that we found outdoors and shared them in breakout groups once we returned!

Friday, October 9, 2020

 Hello Weckie Parents and Families!!

Thank you for taking the time to check out our News Blog! We have had another stellar week in our virtual second grade classroom. I love how eager the kids are to sign on in the morning, how excited they are to talk and share new ideas and how at the end of the day I have many that simply do not want to leave the Zoom! It's amazing what a tight group we have become, even virtually. Thank you for taking the time to help your children log in and out of various websites, learn to use new apps and focus during the day. I know that some days are easier than others and please remember, it's the same in person too!  We all just have those days... both good and rough!

This week we concluded our iReady Diagnostics in both reading and math. A few students still need to finish the math diagnostic, which we can easily work on next week. I will be reaching out soon with information on scoring. We are on hold right now waiting to hear from the District about cut scores for Reading and if that will stay the same as prior years or be adjusted this year. Then I will send out emails with all scoring information as well as information about how to decode your child's score and the data provided.

We ended our week with our first, Room 204 2020 Zoom Talent Show! Oh my goodness, what a stitch!! We saw talents from nearly everyone... it was a blast!! Be sure to ask your child about their talent that they shared today :-)... I also apologize if anyone tries balancing a spoon on their nose in the coming future at your home (my fancy talent).

Phonics

In Phonics this week we have been looking at bloopers in our own reading when we come upon tricky words with an "r" controlled vowel. This means the vowel falling before or after the letter "r" in a word. We have practiced ways we can try to solve these tricky words like reading a word a few different ways and picking the one that sounds right! Additionally we spent time working on our SNAP words. Remember, these are on a list in your child's writing folder. These are the words that by the end of second grade we want our students to be able to read fluently (in a snap) and spell correctly in their writing work. Please get creative at home with these words... flashcards, spelling the words with play-dough, writing them in shaving cream, writing them with different colored markers, finding them in books, anything we can do to help familiarize our students with these words will help them in the long run!

Readers' Workshop

Our Readers' have been digging deeper with the characters in their stories. We have spent a ton of time this week re-reading familiar books with beloved characters to learn more about the relationships between the characters and what they can teach us as readers. We have also spent time working in breakout groups with partners talking about our reading and sharing some books with each other. Partner time remains a popular choice amongst the kids as I often find I need to remind them to remain on task and on topic! 

I am still continuing my work on DRA testing with individual readers. Please know this does take time on a normal basis and having the kids out of formal schooling with formal testing for so long has made this process just a tad bit longer! Each time a child completes a DRA with me this takes on average 15-20 minutes. So many of our students have really grown as readers' since their last formal assessment in January, that it is taking time to find their independent levels and thus they are needing 2, 3 or even 4 meetings with me and a new book. Multiply that with 25 kids and you get the idea. The positive is getting awesome data on their reading and information that I can use to set their "Just-Right" books on Literacy Footprints, organize reading partnerships with like ability students and form small groups for instruction.

Writers' Workshop

In Writers' Workshop everyone should be working on a small moment writing piece. This is where we get to write about a time we did something or experienced something new. The kids have been working on adding voice to their writing this week which has been a time to go back to old pieces and revise to make them better. We have been talking about ways authors can "make people move" in their writing and ways authors can "make people talk" in their writing. Often times we read books that are so clear in detail we can picture exactly what is happening. We are working on getting our writers' to create experiences in their writing that would create that same kind of feeling for their audience.

Math Workshop

Our work in Math this week has focused around number sense: being able to count by 2s, 5s, and 10s as well as knowing when a number is even or odd (and how you know it is even or odd). These are both skills that are very important in second grade! We will be spending a lot of time this year practicing these patterns and explaining the thought process behind our work. This can be tricky for kids as they want to say: I did it in my head OR I just knew the answer. Digging deeper with the thinking behind the math is critical to building our number sense. Please make sure you are checking Seesaw this week for a math journal post. I am still needing to see many students who need to turn in math journal pages 7 and 8 for me to review. Thank you!

Social Studies / SEL

Our community work has continued this week! We have continued our discussion about groups we are a part of in our community and did a writing piece where we had to tell the group we were involved with and how we helped in the group. Students had a chance to share their writing and illustrations in a breakout group. Then we created a mini-book all about our community. Students got to label their book with the community they call home, draw a picture of where they live, talk about where their family likes to shop, where they family likes to go for fun and what they like best in their community. Be sure to ask your children about their mini-books! Some may still need help stapling or clipping their book together.

Important Updates

There is information coming out about a parent meeting being held by the district on Tuesday, October 13th at 7pm about the Return to Learn Plan. I know this continues to be in the hearts and minds of many, including myself as a parent first and a teacher second. Please make sure to plan for 7pm on the 13th for a district meeting. Like many of you, I am hoping this will be our best source of information about plans for what school may look like, how class lists may change and what we can expect moving forward. They should also be taking questions from the parents (you will have to submit prior) and included a link to this form in the most recent email from Judy Evola. All information will be posted on the district website. At this time we are not sure what our class sizes will look like, who in person teachers will be verses who will remain virtual and it seems to be a constantly changing situation. Trust me, I wish I knew more. I have come to love these 25 kids and wish nothing more to just snap my fingers, return to normal days and see them in school on Monday with no threat of germs or illness!! Please know we will work together on this to make a plan that is best for your family in this very difficult time. I would also suggest keeping a close eye on the WLCSD website as well as email communications from Judy Evola. 

Friday, October 2nd

 Happy Friday Families!!

It has been another great week in our virtual learning environment! This week many of our students completed their iReady Diagnostic in Reading. I will be looking over the results and figuring out a way to send those home electronically in the next week! We are still under the impression that our cut scores from last year remain the same in second grade. Students with an iReady score falling below the cut score in Reading will be eligible to receive special intervention time with our reading specialist and will be placed onto an Individualized Reading Improvement Plan (IRIP). We will set up a time in the next few weeks to meet over Zoom if your child has qualified for this intervention.

Phonics

This week in Phonics we only had one lesson. We took a look on Thursday at the many sounds of -ear in words. Students were sent off to use books or any other source of print around their learning location to look for words with an “-ear” in them. Then we came back to the group and shared to see which sounded the same and which sounded different. We all agreed that it can be tricky to figure out what sound the -ear makes in new words!

Readers’ Workshop

In Readers’ Workshop this week we took a look back at a familiar book and did some work digging deeper. Re-reading a story can be so beneficial for digging deeper about a main character and noticing things about them you may not have noticed originally. Rereading also helps us to notice how the sequence of the story is constructed and how one page lends itself to the next page. Readers’ had time to re-read a familiar book and go back to notice if they found anything new or interesting the second time around!

Please remember that our Literacy Footprints website is up and running. Each child has their own custom book shelf on this awesome web page filled with books at their just-right reading level. As I continue to read with each child, I modify the levels of books that they are presented with on Literacy Footprints - it’s simply amazing! Next week I will begin assigning books for your child to read on here, usually 2-3 a week. There is a link daily to Literacy Footprints on our Class Bitmoji on our Google Classroom post. To login simply type for the class code: Dublin204 and then each child’s password is: 1234. This is a great site you can also bookmark for your child on their internet browser.  https://www.literacyfootprints.com/digital/login 

Writers’ Workshop

This week in Writers’ Workshop we celebrated our hard work these last few weeks in writing with a big share! We went to breakout sessions to share our writing, and then each child shared a writing piece for our class on Flipgrid! The kids had to make a video reading their piece and then could leave compliment videos back to their friends. Please make sure your child has uploaded a photo of their finished work to our Seesaw journal. A completed writing piece was posted as an activity last Friday but many are still missing this post. I want to be able to see their writing and monitor their progress as a writer. On Friday we wrapped up the week filling in our “Heart of a Writer” page with different things that are important to us so we can always return to this heart for writing idea inspiration!

A sneak peek from our Flip Grid Share (above) and our Breakout Session Share (below).

Math Workshop

In Math Workshop this week we have been working with combinations of 10. We introduced the game “Fishing for 10” and this is something you can be playing at home with your child! You will need a deck of numbered cards 0-10 (a couple copies of each number). Each player is dealt 5 cards and the rest remain face down in the middle. The objective is to use your cards to make combinations of 10. Just like “Go Fish” you ask each other for numbered cards you need to make 10 and when your partner does not have the card, you fish for a new card. The person with the most combinations of 10 wins!

We also spent time this week starting to discuss coins! Coins are tricky for second graders but something we need them to learn! Please make sure you have a coin baggie for them nearby with: 8 quarters, 12 dimes, 10 nickels and 20 pennies. We will use these throughout the year to work on coin practice. 

Second Step

This week in our Social Emotional Learning we spent time talking about “Self-Talk” and how we can use self-talk when faced with distractions during our learning. The kids had great ideas to share as we talked about ways to solve tricky situations when someone is distracting us from our learning. We were torn whether we have more distractions at school or at home right now with our learning! It’s definitely a great time to use self-talk to help keep ourselves on task and focused during the school day virtually. Self talk might look totally different in the classroom with the temptation to be distracted by our classmates.

Friday, September 25th

 Happy Friday Weckie Families!

We have successfully tackled another great week of virtual learning! I continue to be amazed at all our kids are learning to do virtually! This week they tried something new on Seesaw with the math open response and they did an INCREDIBLE job! Many were able to use the drawing tool, the photograph upload tool, the typing tool and even the microphone to record and explain their thinking - truly impressive! This week I also introduced Flipgrid as a fun app we can use to send video messages. With very little instruction I received a TON of emails from Flipgrid with posts to see from our Weckies who had self-taught themselves how to use the app!

Phonics Workshop

In Phonics this week we continued to dig deeper with the /er/ sound… think of the sound of a growling dog! We took a look last week at how words with -er, -ir and -ur vowel-consonant teams could also make the /er/ sound. This week we explored more with this sound in -or and -ar words. This was tricky! For example, in “dollar” the -ar makes an /er/ sound whereas in “art” the -ar makes an /ar/ sound. Kids explored with SNAP words as well this week. You should have received a hardcopy list of SNAP words on Thursday night in our supply pick-up. The writing folders have multiple charts in the prongs that will be great references for our children. SNAP words are words we want the kids to be able to read in a SNAP and spell correctly, also, in a SNAP. The more familiar they can be with these high frequency words, the stronger they can be as readers and writers. We will continue to use SNAP words throughout the weeks and please encourage your child to be creative in how they practice them! Ideas we shared included: using magnetic letters, using Scrabble tiles, using crayons to write the word big and tracing it many times with different colors, using the words in sentences, using the words on flash cards, etc.

Readers’ Workshop

In Readers’ Workshop this week and beyond I will continue working with each child through a reading assessment. It is important for me to listen to them read books that are just-right and instructional for them. Most of our students were last checked on in their reading last Winter, so much growth and many changes have occurred. This will help me to set their just-right reading books on our Literacy Footprints page specific to their needs. Please make sure you are encouraging your child to read on Literacy Footprints - there are a plethora of great books just-right for them on there! You can log on via our class Bitmoji! I will keep them posted when I need to meet specially to listen to your child read.

In Workshop this week our mini-lesson focus has been on: retelling to retain the story and revisiting stories to dig deeper into the text. These are huge topics that we will revisit and recover many times throughout the year! Being able to retell a story including main events from the beginning, middle and end is a great strategy for our readers’ to use to retain information from the text. Try practicing this at home as you read together this weekend! Ask them to retell you the details from the beginning, middle and end of their story. It’s important to learn to pick out the big ideas and not get lost in all of the smaller details of a story! Re-reading and revisiting familiar books is a great way for us to: learn something new from a familiar book, look at the different viewpoints of the characters in the story, dig deeper into the vocabulary used within a text or study the craft an author uses to tell their story!

Writers’ Workshop

In Writer’s Workshop we are still learning to write small moment stories. We spent time this week talking about what makes a small moment verses what makes a big moment. For instance, a small moment would be telling about eating out with your family at a cool restaurant while on vacation. The big moment would be telling about your whole 4 days on vacation. We want our writers’ to zoom in on one small moment in time and understand the concept of a small moment! Last we talked about how as a writer we can end our story in the moment! The idea is that as a writer we want to wrap up our story in the moment rather than ending by starting something totally different. Please make sure to visit our Seesaw page this weekend and have your child upload one piece of writing that they were working on this week.

Here are a few photos from a share time we had this week in Workshop! The kids LOVE to share their writing!

Math Workshop

Our biggest challenge in math this week was working with Number Grid Puzzles. The number grid puzzle was something we call, an “Open Response”. These tend to be challenging questions that take a familiar concept and challenge our learners by asking them to explain their thinking and any patterns they see in numbers used in the problem. This week we focused in on the hundreds grid and filling in just a piece of a grid while referencing the hundreds chart. On day 1 we talked about the problem and took time to play with it, posting our responses on Seesaw. Between day 1 and day 2, I found 5 responses that demonstrated a solid understanding and had those children share on day 2. Then after we talked about their strategies the kids had time to talk in a breakout group about how they would attack the second part of the problem as well as how they might revise their first answer(s). The fun of the Open Response is giving our learners a second chance to grapple with a problem and re-attempt to solve it with a little more background knowledge the second time around. I love to see them make their responses better on day 2. We also took time this week to talk about equivalent names for numbers, such as 2+2 being the same as 4. We learned a new “game” in loose terms called “Broken Calculator”. The kids had to create equations using addition or subtraction to represent a number but there was always one number they could not use. For example, having to give facts that equal 8 without using the number 8. We will continue to dig deeper on this strategy.

Social Studies

In Social Studies this week we launched our Second Step SEL program. We spent our first day talking about “respect” and what it can look like, sound like and feel like in a classroom. We spent our second lesson talking about “focusing our attention” and “listening” whether working at home or at school. These are great lessons to discuss at home with your child and I will continue to share the Second Step Home Links on our Google Classroom post for the corresponding day. There’s no need to turn them in, but instead please use them to have great discussions with your child at home about their social emotional learning!

iReady Launching Next Week

Next week we will begin our iReady Diagnostic Assessment in Reading. We will spend time Tuesday morning prepping for this and then giving it a try. Please know that we plan to go SLOW with this assessment. Researchers from the team at iReady recommend testing no longer than 15-20 mins a day to get the best effort and attention from our young learners. This means it will take us several days to take both reading and math assessments. Please encourage, motivate and praise your child for giving it their all! We need this valuable information to best guide our instruction this year and use this as a check point for their learning as we continue to grow. We will be working through iReady from 9:30-10am most days next week however Tuesday may take us longer, just until everyone gets into the routine of logging on. Students will continue to login with their WL Google ID and password. The only difference is that they will not type "@students.wlcsd.org" (for example, just their JL123456 username and L123wlcs password). All of these codes can be found on the Password Passports that were individually emailed out last week.

Friday, September 18th

 Friday, September 18, 2020

Hello Parents!!

We did it!! Now we can say we survived our first FIVE day week learning virtual!! Wow have we come a long way in three weeks… it’s pretty amazing how tech savvy our kids are going to be when our virtual learning concludes! I am just SO proud of them! They are resilient and we are DOING this!

This week we tried a lot of new firsts and had a lot of great success stories to share... Seesaw, Literacy Footprints, Scholastic News and more! Thank you to all of the parents who attended our first ever, “Virtual Curriculum Night” this past week. Our FAPEs (fine arts and physical education) teachers will be leading their own Curriculum Night this coming week on Tuesday, September 22nd in the evening. Mr. Drewno will be communicating with parents on the times/links for these informative sessions.

Supply Pick Up

We will be having a “Second Grade Supply Pick Up” next week in front of Dublin. Please plan to stop by Dublin on Thursday, September 24th between 4:30 and 6pm to pick up a plethora of supplies for your children to use at home with their online learning. We are also asking for a $7 one time donation per child to help cover the cost of our Scholastic News subscription. The kids this year will have access to hard copies of the magazines we will distribute as well as a digital access. These are awesome and educational to follow along with our Social Studies curriculum as well as other important things for second graders to learn about happening around them! Please plan to turn in a clearly labeled envelope with: your child’s first and last name on the front as well as their teacher’s last name. Please include $7 in cash in the envelope. Thank you for your support with this great subscription!

Phonics

In Phonics this week we dug deeper with bloopers in our spelling! We took time to look at sample writing bloopers and notice when the wrong vowel was used to make the “r” sound. We have now looked at words with: ar, er, ir and ur sounds in them. Students have been checking their own writing and items around the house for words with these sounds in them and generating awesome lists for each. In your child’s writing folder they will get next week there is a page with SNAP words listed for second grade as well as their own word wall on the back of the page. We will be using these pages frequently in phonics instruction moving forward!

Readers’ Workshop

In Readers’ Workshop this week we finished establishing our routines for workshop time and then spent time talking about going on “Reading Adventures!” We took a look at the front cover and table of contents inside new books to make predictions about the story ahead. We then took information from the storyline to predict what might happen next! I have begun doing our DRA testing (Developmental Reading Assessment) with several of our kids. This will take some time as we go back to their reading levels from last January and test for growth and progress so we can know exactly what just right books will work best for them! Information about Literacy Footprints will be coming home, a fantastic collection of digital stories our children will also have access to at home that are set to be at their “just-right” reading level and will continually change as we check in on their reading abilities this year!

Writers’ Workshop

Our writers have continued to dig deeper into writing a story about a time they went somewhere, did something or experienced a big feeling! Writing can be tricky for our young writers, especially to get them going. In the writing folders coming home next week we will be making a “Heart of a Writer” page which will help give them inspiration for future writing pieces. Please encourage them to come up with their own writing work and to work on their own to spell words correctly! We have talked this week about where stories should begin and end, how we can revise our writing to make sure it answers the questions of: how, what, where, when and why. Last we talked about how we can break tricky words down to learn how to spell them by looking at each part of the syllable in a word.

Math Workshop

In Math this week we have really been working on counting with numbers!! We have been reviewing counting by 1s, 2s, 5s and 10s. We have created number lines that we can use to help us count, add and subtract.  We have learned how to play “Number Line Squeeze” on Connect Ed to help us practice getting comfortable with number lines! Next we spent time reviewing the values of coins - pennies, nickels and dimes. The kids were asked to begin to gather a coin bag they could use at home to help them count coins in math. This includes: 8 quarters, 12 dimes, 10 nickels and 20 pennies. Please have them keep this handy with their math supplies. Last we took a look at number grids. We talked about the patterns we can find on a hundreds grid and how we can use this to help us count, add and subtract! We practiced writing our own number grids on scroll sheets. Last our students learned how to play “The Number Grid Game” on Connect Ed.

Social Studies

In Social Studies we continued our look into communities by talking all about the different places we can go in a community and all of the community helpers who help make a community a good place to visit and live! We brainstormed a list of community places and people while listening to the story “On the Town” by Judith Caseley. We also spent time this week talking about Constitution Day! We talked about the importance of this document and then brainstormed our own ideas for our classroom constitution (we will call it our Classroom Promise). 

Seesaw Assignment Check-In

Please check in with your child’s Seesaw account this weekend logged in as the student. Many are missing assignments being posted. They need to upload a picture of:

• My First Writers’ Workshop Story

• Known Words list

• Number Scroll page(s)

Please make sure to do this in a timely manner! Thank you!

Friday, September 11th

And that’s a wrap on Week 2 of our Virtual Learning! I have to tell you just how PROUD we are of our second graders across our grade level this year. Our kids have been working SO incredibly hard… they are brave, they are resilient, they are inspirational and they are simply the best! We have watched them learn how to navigate our Google Classroom page, ConnectEd for Everyday Math, Epic Books and Seesaw! Daily we are challenging ourselves and working our brains harder than ever… and it is really showing! Thank you for all of your help on the homefront, we are in this together!

Readers’ Workshop

This week in Readers’ Workshop we have begun establishing more of a routine around the format of our workshop. We begin with a mini-lesson that lasts about 10-15 minutes, and then have the kids move into Independent Reading time. We have talked a great deal the last two weeks about “Smart” or “Comfy” reading spots and we have encouraged your children to get creative so that they are able to do their best work as a reader. Daily during this independent reading time we will be putting the kids in breakout rooms alone simply so that they are not distracted by everyone on the screen and so that we can then pop into the breakout room and hear your child read. It will help when we get more of a system down for conferring and small guided reading groups that your child will know which days they need to read close by to their computer and which days they can move a little further away. More info coming soon!

This week we also shared many of our favorite books from the summer. It was fun to hear the kids so excited talking about books!

Writers’ Workshop

This week in the Writers' Workshop we launched our first unit of study. We have shown our writers’ the first two videos in the unit from our virtual units of study. The first lesson talked about how we plan for writing a story. The co-teacher in the video suggested ways that our writers’ could do some systematic planning before actually writing their stories. I modeled my own example with the kids about a trip we took this summer to the Boulder Ridge Zoo, and in particular, all about our experience in the interactive birdhouse! Our young writers then went to breakout groups to share with friends their ideas for their writing today before we got writing. Lastly they moved into their own breakout rooms to work on their story plans and begin their draft! Our second session was focused on looking at second grade writing examples to help inspire ourselves as writers! We dug deeper with what we noticed about the writing that we CAN already do as new 2nd graders! Our writers were excited to see samples of second grade writing. I have put an example of writing paper that your child can use in our Google Classroom under the “Helpful Parent Links” topic in the classwork section.

Phonics

This week we began our first phonics unit! We began with looking at words that we called “Bloopers” because they were spelled comically, or how a second grader might spell them! We looked specifically at the “bossy r” and how we use the letter “r” in our words. Kids were sent off to find examples of “r” words in their own writing and around their learning spaces. Next we played with five SNAP words this week. These are words we would encourage your children to know “snappy” for lack of better terms!! Words that they are able to spell easily, recognize quickly and read fluently. The SNAP words we played with this week included: under, over, their, were and want. Our final lesson has us investigating deeper with the -ar, -er and -or endings in words.

Math Workshop

In Math this week we spent more time practicing logging into ConnectEd, the online component of our Everyday Math program. We explored further with the E Toolkit as well as the Everyday Math Games! The kids really enjoyed playing the games and exploring with the tools in the virtual “Toolkit”. Then we began our first lesson talking about how “Numbers are all around”. We took time to look at our class number line and talked about all that we have learned from K and 1st grade about number lines. We brainstormed ways we can use number lines and I pointed out the number line in their math journal cover. Next week we will be creating our own number lines and learn how to play “Number Line Squeeze”. There is a printable number line in our Google Classroom Page in the “Helpful Parent Links” section for Math Unit 1 Documents. Please feel free to print this to have for math next week on Tuesday! If you are unable, we will show the kids how they can also make their own number line on a piece of paper. Also in the Math Unit 1 Documents you will find information about our Unit 1 Homelinks (Parent Letter for Unit 1) as well as HomeLinks that we will use in the coming weeks

Social Studies

This week we launched our first social studies unit - Our Local Community. We started simply by looking at our own community, our virtual classroom. We listened to an awesome and very new book called “Our Class is a Family”. We talked about how we became a family when the school year began, a class family, and how even Dublin is like our giant school family! We then brainstormed in breakout groups what we want to see in our learning community this year with: how our learning community would look, how our learning community would sound and how our learning community would feel. The kids had some stellar ideas to share about this and we created a giant web! I get the feeling we will add to this web as we learn more about our virtual community and how we work best together!

Important Dates

*Curriculum Night: Our K-2 Curriculum Night is at 6:30pm on Monday, September 14th! You will simply be joining us in our classroom Zoom (minus the kids) at 6:30pm. We will watch a short video from Mr. Drewno and then use the remainder of time to talk about our 2nd grade curriculum this year, classroom routines and answer any lingering questions you may have about the year ahead!

*Date Change: There is a date on the WLCSD calendar that has not been updated! Our half day of school on September 23rd has been moved to a half day of school on September 25th to accommodate the middle school and high school block schedule. We will have a full day the 23rd, half day the 25th. This contradicts the district calendar online but has officially been changed.