Wednesday, November 24th

 Hello Weckie Families! 

Let me begin by saying: Happy (early) Thanksgiving!! I have so much to be thankful for this year with this group of kids... I just love 'em!! We have really been doing awesome work this year while having fun and growing together. Our routines are down, partnerships are working like fine tuned machines and it is simply a delight to be apart of this classroom family! I hope that you take some time this weekend with your child to find out all of the things that they are thankful for. They have been loving all of the Thanksgiving projects the last week and getting a chance to express all that they are thankful for in their lives. I also hope you found the turkey recipe book comical but not in the least bit helpful! Please do NOT use those recipes ;-). But we sure did enjoy writing them. We happened to be working on them the day when the Cabinet team from the ESC came. It was pretty funny to hear the kids ask Mr. Gutman, Mr. Lonze, Mrs. Kochanski and Mrs. Moore all about turkey prep and what they might suggest the kids add or not add to their recipes! Lots of laughter for sure.

Readers' Workshop

We continue to work through a unit on solving tricky words. We have spent time doing slow checks, triple checks, breaking words up into familiar word parts, finding words within new words and more! Reading groups are picking up steam as all students are now a part of a reading group. Please make sure to keep the reading group books in your child's baggie that was provided so that books are not lost and are always available in their backpack for school instruction time. You may have also noticed word cards in their bag. If that's the case, those are high frequency words I will be working with them on in their group but are specific to their individual needs. You can use these to practice reading them, finding those words in their books, and then to practice writing and spelling them correctly! Their card pile will continue to grow as old words are mastered and new words are added!

Writers' Workshop/Science

Our Writers' Workshop is overlapping still with our science kits. We are becoming experts on plants and experts on writing lab reports! We currently have three lab reports in the works that answer the following three questions:

• What do plants need to grow?
• Can a seed grow without soil?
• What happens if you cut grass and alfalfa? Will they grow back?

In the next few weeks we will take our plant clippings that have been chilling in cups of water, growing roots, and plant them in soil as we attempt to create new plants from old plants! We call this process propagation!

Math Workshop

In Math we are deep in the work of subtraction. We have been learning many different strategies for solving subtraction. Strategies we have covered so far include:

• counting up
• counting back
• counting back through 10
• using doubles to subtract
• the -0 strategy for subtraction
• the -1 strategy for subtraction
• using fact families to subtract

The fantastic part here is that all and any strategy is encouraged and you'll see, each child tends to pick their favorite to use and help them to subtract. We also learned to play two new games, "Subtraction Top-It" and "Salute!". Both games help to work with subtraction skills and missing addends. Thank you to all who are completing the home links. I try to get them back to you in a timely manner so that you can see how your child is doing with our math concepts.

Parent - Teacher Conferences - Thursday, December 9th - 12:00- 

Now is the time to sign up on Skyward for PTC! Please know hat they will be virtual this year and a Zoom code will be sent the day prior so that you can attend your conference time from any location! I do believe the sign-up closes on December 1st, so please make sure to sign up ASAP.

Friday, November 12th

 

Good afternoon Weckie Families!

It has been another fantastic couple of weeks in Second Grade and it's hard to believe we are already two weeks in to November! We have really come together as a class family and it has been a pleasure to be here daily with your kids. I love seeing them work together in math stations, work in partnerships to read or solve a tricky math problem and brainstorm solutions in our Second Step SEL work for showing empathy and reading other people's feelings. As we move into this "thankful" time of year, we have SO much to be thankful for in 204.

Readers' Workshop

In Readers' Workshop we have moved onto a unit that focuses in on solving tricky words in our reading! There are so many different strategies that we teach to help all children learn to solve tricky words in the way that works best for them. We have been slowly working through the strategies of: breaking words apart, doing a slow check (stretching out each sound), and doing a triple check (does it look/sound/feel right) using the "Ice Cream" story from the book Frog and Toad All Year by Arnold Lobel. We have had time to practice these strategies in our own reading by marking places where we tried a strategy and then sharing our work with our partners to see if we tackled the tricky word correctly! We have also spent more time talking about the work of partnerships: the different ways you can read together, the different types of conversations you can have before reading a new book and the different kinds of conversations you can have during and after you read a book together.

Guided Reading groups have continued for students on who have qualified for an IRIP. Right now this encompasses about half of our class. Students who are not on these plans have been guided in the classroom for selecting just-right books and will begin receiving instruction on Monday as I work to finalize groupings. Individual reading assessments are important and time consuming. With all of the interruptions we have had this year with holidays and new school days, this has made taking time out for testing a bit trickier, but not impossible. Thank you for understanding! As books begin to come home, it is safe to simply keep them in your child's book bag and remove them each night to read. If something comes up on their designated date where I cannot pull them, it is likely I would pull them the next day as time allows.

Additionally, the kids brought home information this week about our Digital Literacy Library that they can now begin using at home. Literacy Footprints is a wealth of online books that have been set to the just-right reading level of your child. I have taken feedback from first grade as well as their most recent iReady reading data to make these book assignments. Please know that some may seem simple and this is to continually help build confidence and reading fluency. As I work with them in groups and see growth, these levels will continue to be adjusted. This is a great way to continue reading just-right books at home with your child and also to see what they are reading and how they are reading! Each child received their log-in information as well as a class username in their folders this week. Please hang onto this information for home!

Writers' Workshop/Science

Our Writers' Workshop and Science are intertwined these days! Our writing unit is all about learning to write non-fiction in the form of lab reports and our Science Kits work perfect for exploration through a lab report! So far we have generated two lab reports. One asks the question: What does a plant need to grow? The second lab report asks: Can a seed grow without soil? And the third lab report is upcoming, so I hate to ruin the surprise just yet! We have been growing Brassica in a mini-greenhouse, wheat seeds in straws (yes, you read that right) and now grass and alfalfa together in mini pots. Our scientists are absolutely LOVING this combined unit! We have been learning to generate questions, write hypotheses, and list off materials needing and write the procedures we have followed for our experiments. We have been taking detailed observations as well as all of our plants begin to sprout and grow!

Math Workshop

In Math we are ALLLLL about fact families! We have spent a great deal of time looking at fact families and using fact triangles as well as dominoes to practice these families. Fact Family triangle cards have come home in the 3.3 Homelink for you to keep at home and use to practice addition and subtraction. You simply add the two bottom numbers to equal the top number, or subtract one bottom number from the top to get the other bottom number. So a triangle with 3, 4 and 7 shows the fact family of: 3 + 4 = 7,  4 + 3 = 7, 7 - 3 = 4 and 7 - 4 = 3. Please keep these fact triangles at home.

Unit 2 Assessments came home this week with all students. There was SO much great learning and growth shown on these unit check ins! The Unit 2 Assessment specifically covered topics we learned about in the unit. The Unit 2 Cumulative Assessment covered topics we have been learning and building on since Kindergarten, many are foundational math skills. 

Phonics

In Phonics we have been spending a TON of time working on SNAP words the last two weeks! Magnetic letters, letter tiles, Magna-Doodles, and whiteboards have been some of the tools we have used to practice SNAP words from first grade and SNAP words from second grade. We have played fun games like Bingo twice with the SNAP words from iReady as well as countless games of "Sparkle" where we work together as a team to learn to spell these words. It has been a challenge of mine to get the kids to use the tools we give them: word wall and SNAP word books when doing their writing so that they can practice spelling words correctly that are given to them!

Friday, October 29th - Happy Halloween!

 Hello Weckie Families - Happy Early Halloween!!

What an awesome couple of weeks we have had in our classroom. I am absolutely LOVING this group of kids, and our small class size! We have been busy establishing routines, learning about our friends with weekly Main Moose presentations, talking about SEL as we watch the Dublin Monday Morning Meeting (we even led the meeting the last two weeks with Mrs. Weckstein) and doing some fun Halloween projects building our anticipation up to our class party!

Readers' Workshop

In Readers' Workshop we have wrapped up our first unit about "Growing Stronger" as readers and have been reviewing story elements and setting reading goals for our next unit. We have dug deeper on partnerships when reading and talked about the different types of conversations we can have with partners before, in the middle, and after we read books together. We have talked a great deal about the reasons we re-read books and how that can help us to build our comprehension as well as make new noticings about a text! Reading groups are in motion with about half of our class as we strive to fill some gaps for our readers to all be on pace together! Readers who are reading at or above grade level will begin groups in the next coming week or two!

Writers' Workshop

In Writers' Workshop we have also wrapped up our personal narratives unit! Boy have our writers been BUSY! They will be bringing home ALL sorts of writing on Monday/Tuesday next week. Please be sure to take some time to sit down and listen to their writing. My own second grader son brought his writing home this week and it was so much fun to sit and listen to him read his stories about all of the adventures we went on this past summer. It was also amazing to see how much he has grown as a writer! I sure hope you find the same thing when you sit and listen to your child's work. We will do a mini celebration on Monday in Writers' Workshop before we bring it all home! Our next unit ties in with our Science Kits as we are learning to write non-fiction including Lab Reports!

Math Workshop

This week we finished up with the Unit 2 lessons in math and took the Unit 2 Assessment and Cumulative Assessment. The Unit 2 Assessment looks to see how your child is doing with mastery of the new skills taught in Unit 2 and the Cumulative actually encompasses learning that has been done in the first two units of our Everyday Math program. I send these tests home at the end of each unit so that you can see your child's progress as well as reinforce any misconceptions at home. Look for the Unit 2 tests to come home next week! Thank you to all who have been completing the Home Links. These offer a quick review of a concept we tackle each day in Math and can be really helpful for students who might be struggling to get the extra practice.

Science

Our Science Kits have arrived and we are off and rolling with our "New Plants" unit! We spent some time the first day creating a t-chart of what we know/what we want to know about plants. Then we got right into our first lab report as we worked to answer the question: What does a plant need to grow? We generated our own hypothesis about this and then got to work planting Brassica seeds in cups and placing them in our classroom greenhouse. Each child has a plant that they will get to observe over the next few weeks as it sprouts and grows to become a tall flowering plant. Check out the pics below of our growth so far!

An update from Mrs. Wardall in the Media Center: 

Hello! Our Second Graders have been learning to login to computers and google classroom, ology science website, ABCs on shelves, Pebble Go (research website), click/drag and scrolling, finding books including short chapter books and early non-fiction finding the "right" book, code.org --Coming up: Typingquest, more Pebble Go, introduction to Dewey and nonfiction, fairy tales, using a bookmark in a chapter book!

A few words from Mrs. Weckstein:

A HUGE thank you to Erin Roosen for all of her help in making our Halloween Party so spectacular! I keep my fingers and toes crossed that we will be able to have in person volunteers by the time we get to our Holiday Party in December. I promise to take lots of pictures and share them all :-). 

Clarification has been made about Classroom Volunteers... and it's kind of tricky. We can have one parent a day help directly in our classroom. Working with small groups of kids or lending an extra set of hands to our task at hand. Parents who want to help with copy projects still have to sign up through the Sign-Up Genius link Ms. Bigi shares weekly in the Dublin Times, and then let me know when you're coming and I'll have our 2nd grade stuff ready for you! I'm sorry this has been so confusing...

And remember, no school on November 2nd for Election Day! Picture Retakes are on November 5th at Dublin. 

Have a safe and fantastic weekend - And if you feel the need to cut the sugar off around 9pm Sunday night, the 12 hours until they come to school Monday should be helpful ;-). Only kidding... sort of!

Friday, October 15th

 Hello Weckie Families!!

What amazing work we have been accomplishing in second grade!! As a group we have really been busy learning, laughing and exploring all sorts of new things. We are in a pretty great routine now with our expectations for the day and I am seeing all sorts of growth already in our young learners. We have needed to stop many times this week to talk about distracting behaviors. We spent some time Thursday morning writing in our Thinking and Learning Journals answering the prompt: What can I do to help myself focus when distractions happen around me? We then had an awesome circle discussion where we took time to talk about how we can find different ways to ignore distractions (such as: picking a spot away from distractions, using the "Quiet Sign" or even asking an adult for help) rather than feed into the distractions. Our schoolwide SEL goal this week has revolved around being a good listener and we talked about how being a good listener relates directly to this because if you are a good listener, you are also ignoring distractions around you. This might be a great time to discuss this at home with your child too!

Readers' Workshop

In Readers' Workshop we are wrapping up our first unit of study, "Growing Second Grade Readers". We have been learning all about different strategies we can use when approaching books that are new and unfamiliar to us! Some mini-lesson topics have included:

• I can understand my book better by pausing and retelling parts.
• I can use post it notes in my reading to mark important places to talk about with my partner.
• I can use everything I know to figure out a tricky word.
• I can cross check to solve tricky words/I have strategies for figuring out tricky words.
• Different ways to read with a partner (and how to read with a partner)
• I can try to figure out what new words mean using the text to help me.
• I can notice how an author makes readers react.
• Readers must notice how whole books click together.
• Authors have an intent in teaching us a lesson in a book.

I will be launching reading groups next week with many of our students! Please look for colored book bags to come home with many, but not all of our children in the next week. If your child does not bring home a book to read just yet, please know that I will work with them soon, but they have scored high above our iReady cut score and they are already progressing where they need to be and/or beyond! The great thing about workshop is that the kids pick the books they want based on their abilities... so it makes for a just right fit for all levels of readers!

 

Writers' Workshop

In Writers' Workshop we continue to craft small moment stories. These are stories that are a personal narrative told about something a child did in a moment of time (i.e. going on a scary ride at the state fair, getting a tooth pulled at the dentist, the excitement of Christmas morning). I have to tell you, we have some incredible writers!! I have never copied as much writing paper as I have this year, and their folders are getting mighty thick with great stories. In Writing the last week or so we have been focusing on Author's Craft. We have been looking at things our favorite authors do to enhance their writing. Examples like: speech bubbles, rule of 3, sound word, bold words/small words, labels, etc. have all been good examples I have been encouraging our writers to use. In conferences we have been doing editing and revising to fix up the stories with me!

Phonics

In our Phonics instruction we have spent a lot of time working with vowel teams (ee, ea, ai, oa, oo, etc) and learning that when two vowels are put together, they usually make a long vowel sound of the first vowel in the pair. We say: When two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking! So in the word "rain", you hear the long vowel sound of the a in the ai vowel team. We have also spent time working on the silent 'e' and all of his magical powers! Again, most words that end in silent 'e' have that long vowel prior! We hunted around the room to find good examples of silent 'e'. Next week we will be working with 'r' controlled vowels and reviewing high frequency words from first grade. Word lists will come home in the next week or so to help review these important words at home.

Language Workshop

In our classroom we also do something called Language Workshop. Each week we spend the week studying a high quality picture book enriched with descriptive language. Books we have read from this year have included: Peter Brown's My Teacher is a Monster, Becky Bloom's Wolf!, Jackie Mims Hopkins' The Three Libearians, and Kevin Henkes' Lily's Purple Plastic Purse and Chrysanthemum. The first day of the week we just read and get to  know the story. The second day we revisit the story, re-read it in its' entirety and then practice retelling the story (beg-middle-end) orally as well as do some comprehension questions about the story. The remaining days we take time to do a visible thinking routine (writing about our thinking about the reading) and then we also tackle 2-3 vocabulary words from the text and add them to our picture dictionaries.

Math Workshop

In Math for Unit 2 we are digging deeper with all of the different addition strategies that we can use! Friendly 10s are a huge help when it comes to adding single digits. We can use doubles, doubles helper facts and turn around facts for addition. We have been learning to play new games like: The Exchange Game and enjoying exploring with our math toolkits! It's amazing how much fun a calculator still can be ;-). Thank you for taking the time to do the homelinks you find beneficial for your child! I love seeing their work and progress. These will continue to come home every other math lesson.

Social Studies

In Social Studies we are wrapping up our first unit all about our local community! We have brainstormed the important people and places in a community. We have taken time to find our place in space as we went from our house, to our neighborhood, to our state, to our country! We have learned about our needs and wants as well as the needs and wants of a community. Then we moved on to learning about human and natural features in a community! One day we dug out a basket of maps just to see how maps work and to explore our local community on the map. We will wrap up the unit next week learning about the three types of communities (urban, suburban and rural) before we launch our science kit!

Halloween Party Update... Room Parent Volunteer Update...

Our Halloween Party will be on the morning of Friday, October 29th. I expect more information to be sent out from Danielle Bigi on this special morning. We are going to be asking that the kids come to school in their costume... yep, you read that right! Obviously no masks, weapons, shields, etc. and even moreso if your child takes the bus! The school day is a half day and we will still have Art for an hour in the morning. We will still have a Halloween Party in our classroom, but there will not be any parent volunteers allowed (and this is building wide). Right now with Covid protocols still in place, we are limited to one parent volunteer a day. Having to pick only ONE parent to help with our party would have been difficult and honestly, seems unfair. We do have one parent, Erin Roosen, who has offered to organize the party and she is going to handle all of the supplies outside of school, and I will handle it all inside of school. We may ask for a small donation per child to help cover the costs. I will keep you posted. I will also be reaching out to parents with children who have food allergies so we can all enjoy the party together. At this point, I am going to ask that you not send your child in with any type of food treat that they might share with everyone (i.e. like a goodie bag of candy) because of allergies. However a few kids have asked, and if your child wanted to pass out a bag of goodies moreso like stickers and such, that is totally fine. We have 18 kids in our classroom.

Parent Volunteers - Let's do it! I'm going to be reaching out in the next week to get some days/times set up for November. I will need a criminal background form for any parent looking to volunteer, so please let me know if you need another. The office has asked that we submit a calendar of dates prior to the month with the days/names filled in for all of the month. I am going to begin working on November so we are ready to go! Copying, laminating, playing math games, reading with kids... those are the types of things we could best use help with at this point. 

Last but not least, Dublin Trunk or Treat is next Friday night and a great time to come up to Dublin for some fun, outdoor fun! Kids can wear costumes and PTA has done a great job organizing this event! Thank you to everyone who has sent in Skittles for the Second Grade participatory donation. 

Friday, September 17th

 Hello Weckie Families!

Wow, what an incredible first couple of weeks of school we have been having together! I am loving my time with this group of students. They are picking up on classroom routines nicely, learning to work with new friends and new learning styles and just seem super happy to be here each day! Could I be any more lucky? Every couple of weeks I will post a Blog about our learning and successes in second grade... away we go!

Phonics Workshop:

In our phonics study, we have taken a step back and begun our year with the final unit of phonics from first grade (as this was not covered last year). We have been doing all sorts of work as "Word Builders" learning about vowel teams in words. We have studied the: "ee", "ea", "ai", "ou" and "ow" vowel patterns in words. We are slowly creating a vowel team chart to keep in our Writers' Workshop folders to help us when writing and reading with these vowel teams. You'll notice periodically your child will bring home a baggie of word cards. Often times these go along with a game we played in class. Be sure to ask them about the game and play the game with them to increase their familiarity with these words! We also sent home a list of First Grade SNAP words that we will be working with for a few more weeks. These are great to use at home to dig deeper with your child's recognition of familiar words.

Readers' Workshop:

In Readers' Workshop we are working on strategies for growing as readers! In Second Grade our first unit is all about how "Second Grade Readers Grow like a Beanstalk". After learning some routines for reading in our classroom we began talking about: How to read a book (i.e. if it's a scary book your voice might sound spooky, whereas if it is a book with a kid talking, you want to sound like a kid talking, not like you are reading word-by-word). Next we spent some time talking about sneak peeks and what a reader can do when approaching a new book to get a feel for the book before they start reading. We have talked about our reading stamina and how it takes practice to be able to read independently for 20 minutes! We have also begun working with partners and begun to learn how to share responsibilities during partner reading time. 

Writers' Workshop

In Writers' Workshop we have begun working on our first small moment narrative piece. This is a writing where the kids are telling about a time they did something (i.e. a time they lost their first tooth, their 6th birthday party, a scary ride at an amusement park that they rode, etc.).

We have spent time planning what we would write across several pages of a book, then we took time to add thoughts and feelings onto our writing and last we looked at a mentor text to see how the pictures in a story need to match the words on the page. Students were then sent off to illustrate their story and to make their illustrations tell their story!

Math Workshop

In Math we have been focusing in on patterns with numbers - skip counting by 2s, 5s and 10s. We have spent time looking at hundreds grids and finding patterns on the grids such as an entire column having the same number in the ones place, or how when you go across on an number grid you add one, but when you go down on number grid you add ten! We have worked with our basic addition facts and we have also learned some new games using math! Look for the first set of Homelinks to come home next week with your child. Remember, while these are not mandatory, they are a REALLY great way to review the math work we have done in class and help your child with any skills they may still find tricky from the work we did that day in class.

Social Studies

Our first unit in Social Studies is all about "My Community". We read a book called On the Town and spent time talking about all of the important places in a community and all of the important people who work and live in a community. Students worked on their own small community mini-books to focus in on their home, their neighborhood and places they like to go in their community.

Important Dates/Reminders:

• Monday, September 20th is Picture Day @ Dublin - We take our pics at 10:35am
• Please remember to sign up for the Dublin PTA. They go above and beyond to help us with funding in our classroom and for field trips. The link is here and it's really simple to do... Meetings are optional, but your $10 contribution helps keep them going! https://dublinelementary.memberhub.store/
• Tuesday, September 28th - Half Day of School - Dismissal will begin around 12:10pm
• FAPES Schedule was emailed earlier this week (Monday: 9:15 Music, 9:45 PE; Tuesday: 2:45 Music, Wednesday: 2:45 PE, 3:15 Media; Thursday: 10:30 PE, Block Recess 2-3; Friday: Art 10:15)
• Please sign up for our REMIND app so you can keep up with the latest news from our classroom
  
  
  

Welcome Back 2021-2022

 Welcome to our Classroom Blog😀😀

AND... Welcome to 2nd Grade!

This is our classroom blog where I will post information all about our learning and share pictures here every couple of weeks! An email will be sent on Friday's when a new blog post is shared with the group so you will know to come and check.

:-) Mrs. Weckstein

Friday, April 16th

 Happy Friday Weckie Parents!!

Thank you for taking the time to read this News Blog as I have a lot of important updates in here about our current learning, future learning and classroom needs! We are really picking up steam and speed as we move into this third and final trimester and are literally beginning to plan out our learning to the end of the year. Wow! What a year it has been!

A couple of reminders first:

• Please make sure your child's device is in working order and that they have a pair of working headphones. I began the year in November with about 40 new pairs of headphones and I now have ZERO pairs of headphones... So, we need help there! Please make sure your child has one pair that does actually work. Have them check at home and show you that they can hear sound. Daily we go onto iReady lessons as a part of WL's curriculum and your child needs their laptop AND working headphones. With MSTEP starting next week in third, fourth and fifth grades, we will no longer be able to borrow a device from the office as many of our kids are doing. Please reach out to Tech Dept at the ESC if you need a Chromebook to rent for free. Additionally it would be REALLY helpful if devices were charged nightly. Several kids are reporting dead laptops each day when we jump onto iReady. With a packed schedule we are only on the computer 20-30 minutes max and at times, waiting for them to charge can consume their lesson time. 
• Outdoor recess is happening daily this year - even when it's a little wet out there (unless it's really bad)! We are really trying to get the kids fresh air and time, when distanced, to take off their masks. Please make sure to pack your child a coat or appropriate weather attire. It has been cold this second half of the week and many of our kids are without coats.
• All students in our room prior to the pathway change in March were given a colored book bag with books. I need these returned in a timely manner. Book bags come home every other Friday and need to be returned a week later so that they can sit a week before coming home with new books. I have many kids who have not returned their colored book bags in weeks or months. Our new friends will also be bringing home book bags starting next Friday with just-right books to read at home as well.
• Market Day is April 23!! We are planning to do our Market Day on the afternoon of April 23rd. If you were unable to send in your child's 10 items today, please have them in no later than Monday! They should be fine to sit in quarantine for 5 days. Each child will need to bring $2 with them in CHANGE (no pennies please) so that we can practice making change as we sell our items!
• Water Bottles: All of the drinking fountains remain covered at school. It is super important that your child brings a water bottle to school daily as only the bottle refill stations are open and the office is not providing bottles of water to students who are without. For awhile I had extra bottles in the room that I could give out, but we have depleted my source (I think they caught on that water from Mrs. Weckstein came from my fridge and was cold).

Phonics Workshop

In Phonics Workshop we have been working on some tricky letters and their sounds We have taken time to look at the soft and hard 'g' and the soft and hard 'c'. Check the poster below to see some of the hard and soft 'G' sounds we have worked with this week!

Then we have been working with what we call "camouflage" letters! These are letters that are paired up with another letter but sound silent. Think of the 'g' in the word "gnome" or the 'k' in the word "knuckles". We have worked on noticing that the silent 'e' after 'g' is also one of those camouflaged letters! To celebrate our fun with camouflaged letters, we have decided to ALL wear camo to school on Friday, April 23rd if you have some!

Readers' Workshop

In Readers' Workshop we have been wrapping up our unit on Series Books. We have spent a ton of time learning about different series books including: Yasmin, Alexander books, Pinky and Rex, Otis books and MORE! We have spent time talking about how:

• Author's plan their story endings
• What to do when you love a book series and can't keep it to yourself
• What makes a series good, better or the best?
• How to share a series book with a friend
• How to share your opinion about a book
• How to debate about a book or book character

 This week we gave out awards to our favorite book series and recorded videos on FlipGrid with our three reasons and WHY we picked our book series to be our favorite. Each child then had time to watch their classmate's videos and leave compliments and comments. Please check them out! Click the link provided here and when asked to login, type in your child's last name, with a capital letter. If you are unable to login, ask your Weckie for help, they are pros! https://flipgrid.com/3288ae51 You can even leave comments if you'd like from their account. 

Writers' Workshop

In Writers' Workshop we have been working our way to the conclusion of our Opinion Writing Unit. We have been giving out book awards these last two weeks to different books for different things! Awards I have seen given out have included: Best Graphic Novel, Best Friend Characters, Funniest Book, Best Illustrations, Book with the Most Facts, Best Book about Sharks and more! We have talked about how you could nominate a book for an award and how you would write your opinion up of why the book is deserving of this award. We have learned how to add quotes from the story to support our opinion and we have also made plans for the very best way to share our books! This week we took a look back at our Opinion Writing and used a checklist to help us make it stronger and make sure we were including all of the important parts of an opinion piece. Punctuation and spelling have also been a topic of focus.

Math Workshop

In Math Workshop these past two weeks we have been learning all sorts of new things when working with addition. I have attached a picture here of the anchor chart we refer to so that we keep things straight. Learning to write base-10 blocks shorthand, learning to write expanded notation, learning to do ballpark estimates and solving double digit addition with partial sums are ALL topics we have really been working a lot with in Workshop. Please continue to practice these skills at home with your child!  We have completed Unit 6 and will take our Unit 6 Assessment on Monday. Please send your completed Unit 6 Homelink packets back!

Homelinks for Unit 7 will come home on Monday and the planned lessons are:

    Tuesday, April 20: Lesson 7.1

    Wednesday, April 21: Lesson 7.2

    Thursday, April 22: Lesson 7.3

    Tuesday, April 27: Lesson 7.4

    Wednesday, April 28: Lesson 7.5

    Thursday, April 29: Lesson 7.6

    

If you can try to stay on pace with the instruction at school, that will help your child to review those concepts at home with adult help where needed. Please be sure to read the directions as so much of this math is being solved differently than we were ever taught!

Friday, March 19th

 HELLLOOOOOO Weckie Parents!!

Wow, the inn is FULL!! We have grown this week by four students and our room is full and my heart is so happy!! We were able to get ALL of our virtual "our path" learners back from the beginning of the year and it has been like a dream come true!! There has been A LOT of excitement and energy this week as our four friends returned to the classroom after a year of virtual learning. Of the original 25 students we had on Zoom, I have 24 back with me. I feel like my little ducklings have all come back! 

We have also had to slow down this week and really focus in on our safety protocols and hygienic routines! Please make sure that you are sending your child to school daily with minimally 3-4 masks. We are going through masks right now at record pace and many kids are saying they only have one mask with them. With the warmer temperatures outside, we are coming in with soaked masks from recess and most kids change them after recess as well as any time they sneeze into their mask. I know, gross, but it happens. I do have some paper masks here, but with 24 kids, we can go through those in a day or two. We have also been talking a lot about our masks and how to wear them properly. A few too many noses have been sighted lately. Please make sure that your child's mask have a good snug fit. Last, reminders about keeping our hands to ourselves and distancing are always helpful too. 

With my own first grader at Keith Elementary, I have seen firsthand this last week just how fast a school can close down due to an outbreak of Covid... and it's scary and quick! We got one email Tuesday night of a positive case, an email in the morning about a staff member who was exposed and then a third email about three more positive cases. It was quick and now they are on Zoom over there until after Spring Break. We REALLY want to try to prevent this at Dublin Thank you for your help and understanding. While I am fully vaccinated, I want to make sure we keep these kids as healthy as possible. I greatly appreciate parents keeping kids home as well to err on the side of caution when they are feeling under the weather. I realize 100% this gets tricky with spring colds and allergies!

Math Workshop

In Math we have been wrapping up our work in Unit 5. This last unit has focused a lot on: coin value, counting coins, using coins to pay for items and making change with coins when subtracting from a dollar. We have also spent time working on number story problems and have used different diagrams (change to more, part-part-total and open number lines) to help organize our data and our thinking about the solution. A unit 6 Home Link packet has come home with your child to remain at home for the remainder of the unit. When pacing out the lessons, we will do:

    Lesson 6.1 - Tuesday, March 23

    Lesson 6.2 - Wednesday, March 24

    Lesson 6.3 - Thursday, March 25

    Lesson 6.4 - Tuesday, April 6

    Lesson 6.5 - Wednesday, April 7

    Lesson 6.6 - Thursday, April 8

Please make sure to look over these with your child as we get into the more complex math work of our year these last few months! At the end of the unit, please send the Home Link packet back with your child.

Readers' Workshop

In Readers' Workshop I have NEARLY heard all of my original students read and have been adjusting their just-right reading levels in the classroom with our classroom library as well as the books that have come home in the book bags. New books were sent home this past Friday. Please keep them the remainder of this week and if needed, over Spring Break. Returning them on Monday, April 5th will help to quarantine them for the week and send out new books on the 9th!

I will continue working with students on reading assessments as well as taking time to listen to our new students read and get some books out to them as well, I just cannot guarantee this will all get done before spring break. It takes a lot of one on one time with each reader and is important to go slow.

In Workshop we have been digging deeper with series books. We have been noticing patterns in how a character acts throughout the series and within each book. We have noticed similarities in the problems that arise and the solutions that are used. We have looked at author's craft and noticed patterns in this throughout a series. We have also been looking at the details our authors use to tell a story so that we can picture what we are reading!

Writers' Workshop

In Writers' Workshop we continue to dig deeper with our work around writing about our reading. We are learning to pull evidence from the books we read to use in our writing to support our opinion. So if your child found a book to be funny, they are learning to pull out details from the story that made them laugh and how to add those details into their written letters. Learning to write about your opinion is hard but also such a great life skill to have and be able to do effectively!

Science

We are wrapping up our Science unit on Air and Weather this coming week! The last few weeks we have been exploring with air! We blew bubbles safely spread apart outside and watched as the soap caught air. We used cups and tubs of water to see how we could trap air in water. We created pinwheels and snake spinners to take outside and catch air. It was hilarious to see how well they worked last Thursday when the temperatures were cold and the wind was blowing hard! The kids were frozen but loving watching their pinwheels take flight!

Important Reminders/Notes

1. Sunday, March 21st is World Down Syndrome Day. As a way to raise awareness and educate people about the day is by wearing brightly colored socks. We are going to talk about this on Monday and I would love to see your kids in their best and brightest of socks on Monday, March 22! Feel free to even just wear mismatching socks! A good friend of mine has a young son with Down Syndrome and I would love to send Briggy a picture of all of "my kids" honoring him and his importance while also educating our kids a little more about kids like Briggy!

2. Devices - Please make sure your child's device is in working order. As the year goes on we are having a lot of trouble with working devices. Remember, you can take your WL Chromebook back to the ESC to swap for a new device if it is not working. The Dublin office only has a limited number of spare computers and most often they are gone before we can get kids down who need them. We use them daily to work on iReady Math and Reading lessons. A charged device is also helpful!

3. Friday, March 26th is a school wide Read-In Day at Dublin! Please send your Weckie to school on Friday in their pajamas. They can also bring in favorite books from home (please make sure these are labeled) as well as a small blanket and stuffed animal friend. Each child will have their own space around the room to read and will not be allowed to share books, stuffed friends or blankets. Nothing needs to come in early as there will be NO sharing. Please remind your children of this as I will too! They will have access to the classroom library, but it will work as it always does, once you take a book, it's yours for the week and cannot be returned! 

Thank you, thank you for your continued support this year! I know it has been the most strange of school years, but I am grateful and thankful for our supportive parent community! We have been LOVING seeing parents on Zoom this month as we miss having you all in the room and in the building. We are striving really hard to keep things as normal as possible and the enthusiasm in the kids shows each day as they truly are excited to be at school! :-) Jen W.

Friday, February 25, 2021

 Happy Friday Weckie Families!

It's hard to believe we have completed the entire month of February THIS QUICKLY! We have been busy here in Second Grade doing all sorts of things and learning lots. It appears that maybe we have survived the coldest of this winter's weather and are really enjoying the milder temperatures we have had at recess this week! That being said, please remember to still send ALL winter gear as there is still snow on the playground AND it is SUPER muddy and wet out there! I have also suggested to our kids that they keep a spare set of clothes in their backpacks - extra pants and socks would be great as they come in soaked!

Word Study

In Word Study we have been "tackling long words part by part"! We have been practicing breaking up new words starting at the beginning and figuring out how to break them apart to figure out what they say. Words like: against, before, begin, either, excited, favorite, several and usually, have been added to our word wall as words we can break a part into smaller parts to read them bit by bit. This is a great strategy to review with our readers!

 

We also spent time this week reviewing the words on our Word Wall and trying to use these words in our Writers' Workshop work!

Readers' Workshop

In Workshop the week before break we wrapped up our unit about growing as readers! We finished up lessons on stamina and focus while reading. We also dug deeper into books and the main character in the story - we looked at their character traits, how they solved problems and if we saw any patterns between the same character in a different book. The characters we studied included Otis the Tractor from Loren Long's "Otis" series and Alexander, from the "Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day" series by Judith Viorst. Both characters taught us lessons and gave us many laughs along the way. 

Our new unit was launched this week and is all about series book reading. This week we spent time:

• collecting information about the main character
• paying attention to how characters respond to problems
• noticing the things that are the SAME across the series

Thank you to ALL who returned book bags the Friday before break. ALL of those books have been quarantined, sorted and returned to our literacy library. New books will come home either today or Monday! Please be sure to spend the week with the books reading WITH your child, talking about their reading, and helping them along the way with tricky words or to retell you the events of the story. These books are at their just-right levels which are adjusting slowly as I work through reading assessments with the kids in the coming weeks!

Writers' Workshop

Our new writing unit is ALL about writing friendly letters! Students learned the features of a letter on Monday including: the date, the greeting, what goes in the body of the letter, how to add a closing and where to sign their names. The rest of the week was spent writing letters about favorite books we have read this year! There was lots of enthusiasm about writing about our reading! We will share these letters in the room with each other as we make book recommendations to our classmates!

Math Workshop

In Math Workshop we have been working our way through the beginning of Unit 5. We have covered lessons 5.1, 5.2, 5.3, 5.4 and 5.5 so far. In the Homelink packets, this would b be a great place to work up to over the weekend and coming days. Next week we will work through lessons 5.6, 5.7 and 5.8. It would be a great idea to try to time these lessons in the next week so that you can review and practice these skills with your children!

The first few lessons about counting coins and making change were tedious but also really good! The kids have a had a lot of practice showing coins for different values but we will continue working on this in the coming weeks too. Try having your mathematician count coins for you the next time you need to buy something; the more we practice working with money, the better!

Science

We have launched our Air and Weather Unit and boy are these scientists excited! Coming home today you will see a baggie for some science at home. Please make sure to do these activities this weekend so we can talk about them in Science on Monday. These were all things that required breathing air through and obviously not safe in our current set-up. In school we have explored the past two days with parachutes! We learned about air resistance and how we can essentially trap air in a parachute, know that it is there, without actually being able to see the air. Next week we will explore with plungers, air and water!

March is READING month!

The month of March is always a busy one at Dublin as we celebrate March is Reading Month! We will have a couple of Spirit Wear Fridays as well as some special activities going on at Dublin, like Battle of the Books. In past years we have had a PTA sponsored Family Literacy Night, and this will return again this year, except it will be virtual! More info will come home in the coming weeks about how to access the webpage which will be filled with literacy activities and videos from the Dublin Staff.

Friday, March 5th - Hat Day 

Friday, March 19th - Dublin Spirit Wear (or Green) Day

Friday, March 26th - Pajama Day and school-wide "Read In" (more details to come)

Additionally... March is like my MOST favorite month to get parents into our classroom and this whole pandemic has really crimped my style! Typically I would aim to have one or even some days two, Mystery Readers, who would come and surprise their child and read to our class. In the past I have used: student relatives, former students - both current Dublin kids and kids who are much, much older, my district employee friends and my own family. This year looks so different as we cannot even bring parents in on a normal basis to volunteer or even help with copying. What I am thinking, is we could use the power of technology.

IF you are interested in being a Mystery Reader for March, for this year, I'd like to just keep it to parents of our children. I will also create a Sign-Up Genius and email that out later today with a Zoom link (I'll email the link out prior to your time), so you can "virtually" visit with us and share a story. Another teacher has also mentioned if you are tech saavvy, you could even record a book and send the video file or link to me to share with our class. Please know either way works, and anyone who does volunteer, is greatly appreciated.

Friday, January 29th

 Good Friday Afternoon Weckie Parents!!

What a fantastic week we have had in Second Grade! This week we have been super busy doing all sorts of learning while sprinkling in some fun along the way too. It was fantastic to speak with everyone yesterday at Parent-Teacher Conferences and I look forward to finishing up with a few more today and on Monday. It was fun to still hold these meetings and share out all of the great work and learning our kids are doing. It was also wonderful to hear the same continual theme of happy kids because they are back in school. The feeling is SO mutual! 

Readers' Workshop:

The past two weeks in Readers' Workshop we have been up to a lot! Our mini-lessons have been on topics like:

• how to figure out the meaning of a new word
• how to check yourself as a reader to make sure what you are reading makes sense
• the intent of authors and what their lesson/message might be in a story
• writing craft moves that authors make that we can also use in our writing
• how the parts of a story go together to make a whole book click

With the completion of our latest iReady Diagnostic in reading, I will also soon be switching up reading partners. Books will be coming home for your children as well with information on what to do with them, how long to keep them and when to return them! Keep an eye out for the colored cloth book baggies in the next week :-).

Writers' Workshop: Work continues in WW on our Expert books! Many of you got to take a glimpse into your child's expert writing at conferences. The kids are working on writing a book all about a topic they consider themselves an expert! Several students are on to their second and third books already! They are very eager to teach us about things they already know. Mini-lesson topics have included:

• how to help readers' "picture" your writing
• writers' aim to "hook" an audience's interest
• how to do more than one thing at once in your writing
• how to clear up any confusion in your writing by answering the: who, what and why questions
• how to set goals to make your writing even better using a checklist

I will be eager to see which expert book each child selects to take to publishing to share with our class in the coming weeks!

Phonics:

In Phonics we spent a ton of time working with tricky homophones. We spent time with:

• there, their and they're
• your and you're
• to, two and too

We practiced writing these words and then took our new found words back to our own writing to improve our pieces. It was great to see so many students erasing their original writing to fix something up in one of their books using these tricky homophones!

This week in phonics we spent time looking at patterns in rhyming words to help us solve for other words. We were able to find that if we knew how to read a word like "light", we could also read: sight, night, fight, tight, might, etc.

Math Workshop:

Ones, tens, hundreds... oh my! We have really zoomed in on place value in Math! We have been working with base ten blocks and using them to show numbers in the ones, tens and hundreds values. We have also started using base ten blocks to add and subtract, showing how we can borrow or exchange a long (worth ten) for ten cubes (each worth one). Remember, a home link packet came home to launch the unit and you can follow along with the home-links to match our lessons.  

This coming week we will do math lessons: 4.9 The "Inch", 4.10 The "Centimeter", 4.11 Unit 4 Explorations.

Completed packets can be returned to school for a special surprise! :-)

Important Dates/Info

We are headed into a SUPER busy time of year...

Here are the dates to keep in mind:

• Monday, February 1st - 10:15-10:25am PICTURE DAY
• Tuesday, February 2nd - HALF DAY OF SCHOOL - Dismissal begins around 12 noon with the Shamrock Pick Up line
• Wednesday, February 3rd - Global Day of Play - all toys were due in TODAY for this activity. If your child forgot, they can always play with the loads of classroom toys that we have (which are also quarantining in anticipation).
• Friday, February 5th - 100th Day of School - Also known as: Dress like you are 100 Years Old Day / Valentine Cards and Boxes can begin coming in to school
• Monday, February 8th - ALL Valentine Cards completed and designed boxes are DUE in to school (We cannot take anything late and REALLY need your help turning these in on time).
• Friday, February 12th - Valentines Pizza Luncheon and Craft 

Friday, January 15th

 

Happy 2021 Weckie Families!

We are off to an awesome start in our classroom for the new year! We actually spent the first few days back talking all about our goals for the new year and things we hope to accomplish in the second half of Second Grade! Yes, you read that right, we are at the half way point! We created projects with our New Years' Resolutions and Goals. It was fun to hear what the kids want to work on (and then we can all check back in down the road and see how they are doing - Are they really cleaning up more at home? Are they really helping with the dishes, or doing 50 pushups a day?) To be continued...

Phonics:

In Phonics we have been learning all about homophones! Homophones are words that sound the same, but are spelled different and have different meanings (for example: see and sea, meet and meat, pair and pear). We spent time looking for homophones in our books, we spent time writing silly riddles and jokes using homophones and then we wrote sentences using pictures that were showing homophones. We also spent time in Phonics working on ending punctuation and the purpose behind these different symbols. We did some group editing where we fixed up a writing passage that was missing things like: periods, question marks, exclamation marks, commas and apostrophes. We took what we learned in the Phonics mini-lesson and applied this to our expert non-fiction writing in Writers' Workshop as well.

Readers' Workshop:

In Readers' Workshop we are still working to establish routines for independent and partner reading time in our classroom. We are really working hard to build our reading stamina so that we are focused and on task during independent reading time. We are working on our partnership skills as well as we learn to navigate partner time with sharing of the responsibilities when reading with a partner. Our mini lessons have focused on: keeping tabs on comprehension, using post-it notes to mark important spots in our reading, skills for tackling tricky words, using more than one strategy at a time to figure out tricky words, using familiar beginnings and endings to help us figure out new words, and then how to figure out the middle part of an unfamiliar word.

We also worked on the iReady Reading diagnostic this week and are about 75% with this! The goal is to wrap this up next week and then move into the math diagnostic. I will have the data from both diagnostic available for parents for Parent Teacher Conferences on January 28th.

Writers' Workshop:

In Writers' Workshop we have launched a new unit on Expert Writing! What does this mean? Well our writers are writing a book about ANYTHING that they are an expert about! We have books about: dogs, sharks, snakes, dresses, Christmas, King Kong, soccer, baked goods and more. During this unit our writers are working on building their stamina for writing more and more about a topic, so that they are really educating their audience about this topic. Be sure to ask your writer what topics they are experts on and what they have been writing about in workshop!

Math Workshop:

This last week we finished up Unit 3 in math. We took the Unit 3 Assessment as well as completed the Unit 3 Challenge Activity and Open Response. The kids really did well as a whole with the Unit 3 topics considering some of the unit was taught virtually, some of the unit was taught in person and we had a 10 day break in between. These assessments were not scored but instead I have been leaving lots of feedback. These will come home next week with your child. Please know that the challenge and open response are meant to be difficult but also to push your child to think at a higher level about the basics of the math skills we are teaching.

This week we started Unit 4. I have sent the Unit 4 Home Links home so that you can do these at home along with us. We have just launched the unit and covered Lesson 4.1 and Lesson 4.2 , all about telling time with clocks! Next week, if you want to stay in line with us, we will be doing Lesson 4.3 on Tuesday, Lesson 4.4 on Wednesday and Lesson 4.5 on Thursday. Please remember, Home Links are optional in second grade however, this year more than ever, our kids REALLY need practice with Math and these are a great way to reinforce the concepts we are doing at school at home. If there is something on a Home Link that you are unclear of, please know I'm always here to help answer questions about the math skills we are learning.

Second Step:

At Dublin we use the Second Step program for our Social Emotional Learning (SEL). This happens to be near and dear to my heart as I am our Dublin building SEL Team Chairperson. This past week our classroom led the building wide Monday Morning Meeting on Zoom for all of Dublin to watch at 9:15am live from Room 204. This was a passion project of Mr. Drewno's to encompass our SEL themes across the building and give a common message to all students. With his retiring I have inherited this giant task but have to brag and say that our kids were AMAZING last Monday with this!! They were in the room of course at 9:15am when we went live in all of the Dublin classrooms and were super quiet while I was teaching, but also super helpful! They all came up to the computer and helped to lead the Dublin Promise (it was so cute). We had Mrs. Lenze do the Star Spangled Banner (our new Music teacher is AWESOME) and it was a great first Monday Meeting! We will be leading again on Tuesday next week... and most likely for many, many more weeks.

This week in our own SEL learning we have been talking all about feelings. In a matter of about 15 minutes we generated a list of 61 feelings we can have in our bodies and funny enough, we only stopped because we were getting tired of sitting on the floor in a giant circle. Later in the week when we had an issue arise as a class in PE, we were able to circle back up, identify our feelings, and do a Restorative Circle where we talked through the problem with the four students who were in trouble from PE, we brainstormed ways they could have prevented or changed their actions and had the BEST discussion. It was a true Restorative Circle!

Important Info:

Please make sure to jump on Skyward to sign up for Parent-Teacher Conferences. These will be held on Zoom on January 28th. We will have a very short day of school, I believe dismissal begins for the Shamrock Pick-Up close to 10:45am. And then conferences will begin on Zoom at 12:15pm. I will send out our classroom Zoom link once more, much closer to January 28th with a list confirming times, but you can also always find the Zoom link on our Google Classroom page.

Thank you to everyone who already answered the call of sending in cleaning wipes! We average 60-80 a day depending on our day (more on Tuesday when we eat lunch in the room) but have really done a nice job keeping the place clean and each other safe!

Valentines' Parties - These will still be happening at Dublin but the details have not yet been worked out. Please hold off on buying ANYTHING until we hear more. The traditional sending in of Valentines and goodies will most likely look different this year, but we will still do something! I am looking for 3-4 parents who would be willing to help from the outside to organize some fun for the afternoon of February 12th.

Last but not least... Covid Vaccines. Info will be coming out in various WL publications about teachers receiving the vaccines and what happens if it happens that our appointments are on week days. If a teacher is scheduled on a week day, their class will be notified ahead of time and will have ASYNCHRONOUS learning that day (independent tasks posted on Google). Keeping my fingers crossed, my two vaccines are scheduled for Sunday, January 24th and Sunday, February 14th. If these remain in place, we will NOT participate in this random asynchronous learning day as I'll be doing these on weekends. So please, no need to panic if you are worried about your child being home from our class on a random day. I do know that many teachers are working hard to secure night time and weekend slots, but having also seen what the Oakland County Health Dept. page looked like on the night it launched, 80% of the slots were weekdays during the day. I was fortunate to get those Sunday slots. You may have other children at Dublin who will need to be home on a random day, but minimally 7 days notice is supposed to be provided. 

Alright - that's all I have!! Get on with your weeekend!! ;-) Jen