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.