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!